Hi Tarun,
That depends on which state you are getting licensed through. I live in and am licensed in KY, and there's no ethics exam here…but for a CA candidate, I'm pretty sure they have an ethics exam that they are required to pass in order to be licensed. From what I've gathered more states require one than don't, but there are at least some that don't since I'm in one of them!
Basically your 4 options job-wise are:
– Join a public accounting (CPA) firm
– Join a private accounting department
– Join governmental accounting
– Join non-profit accounting
Joining a CPA firm is usually the easiest one to do, since the standard route in the private accounting world is starting out in public and then moving to private, so there's not a lot of private places that will hire without experience. However, which is best for you depends a lot on your goals, too. If you goal is to be a big public accountant, then getting a job in private would probably be a wrong step! From what I've gathered in other threads, though, you would be happy to get a job in the US in accounting regardless of what part of accounting, so in that case, getting a job in a CPA firm is as good of a route as any.
Oh, and check the experience requirements in the state that you are getting licensed in, unless you have already fulfilled them. Some require that you work in auditing or in public accounting or for a CPA or something like that in order to get the experience requirements to get licensed; if they do, then I would favor a job that fulfilled those requirements!
For salary, the best I can tell you is to look in the PDF available here: https://www.roberthalf.com/finance/accountant-salary It varies so much that it's hard to get a good figure just from people's personal opinions. It also varies a lot based on where you are in the country. Like my public accounting job paid about $20k/yr, but I live in an area with a very low cost of living and very low wages, so that was equivalent to more like $40k in the country as a whole! It was still low for what I was doing, but not as low as it initially sounds.
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