[JEQueen]

Hi Everyone,

I have come to accept that I don’t like working in a corporate environment and once I get my CPA I would like to pursue other options. Can you please share what kind of roles are out there outside of a corporate or manufacturing setting? Tell me about your experience in government, nonprofit, or whatever else is out there. I honestly don’t know where to start looking and your perspective would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

REG-74,77
BEC-70,70,73
FAR-70
AUD-1/9/2016

[Anonymous]

That's kind of a too open-ended question to know how to answer… I work as a Controller in a non-profit college. I enjoy my job in many ways, but colleges nationwide are in a financial pinch as the higher-ed world undergoes a lot of change, so we're under-staffed and over-stressed. If you review the accreditation decisions in my accreditation region, most of the negative decisions are not due to academic reasons, but due to financial going concern issues, if that gives you any insight into the higher ed financial world right now.

Some of the biggest perks of my job that I really looked forward to are that it's a 37.5 hour work week and the time off is pretty generous – 2 weeks at Christmas; 3 days (Wed-Fri) for Thanksgiving; etc. Some of the realities I've not enjoyed are that due to staffing issues and being salaried, I haven't seen that work-life balance I'd expected; each week it's a different reason, but I think I've only worked 1 week that was actually my scheduled hours since I started this job, and I felt guilty leaving on time that week…as for Christmas break, I worked as many days of the break as I was off, and should have worked more than I did.

As to the day-to-day, without knowing more what you're curious about, it's hard to know what to say. I do accounting work, but that's evident given that it's an accounting job. 🙂 I'm at a small college (less than 1000 undergrads), so our accounting department (or “Business Office” as they call it in the college world) is small – one A/R (Student Accounts) person, one A/P person, one H/R person, one “floater” who helps with A/R, A/P, and some J/L work, the Controller (me), and the CFO. Since we're such a small department, I do a bit of everything – from bank recs to sales tax returns to investment analysis to process improvement to preparing schedules for our auditors to lots of J/L entries to filing paperwork to expense analysis to trying-to-figure-out-why-my-piles-of-paperwork-keep-growing! I enjoy this job, but I also enjoyed my job in public accounting (though I didn't enjoy the long hours in tax 😐 ), and I enjoyed my job in corporate A/R…and my non-professional jobs as a grocery store cashier, bank teller, etc.

If you helped us understand why you don't enjoy your current corporate job, it might help us advise if you'd enjoy our jobs in non-corporate fields.

[JEQueen]

Hi Lilla!

Thanks for your input. It sounds like you have gained interesting insights working on the education side of nonprofit. I refrained from talking about why I don't like corporate because I am afraid that I sound like an entitled brat but here goes. I don't like the culture of always assuming people want to move up instead of develop a skill set and be an awesome contributor, I hate open office plans but not all offices have that, and I want to work somewhere where I care about the mission/product.

Sometimes I get bummed out by how much emphasis is placed on “being a good fit” and always having to demonstrate the corporate values that feel imposed. I have always been curious about working in a public service capacity as well. My work is challenging and I believe it is value adding but I don't feel overly inspired by it. I work for a private company so the close and reporting process is not as stressful, especially around quarter end and year end. Before this I worked for a public company that went through too many “turn around” initiatives to keep track of but the people were fantastic.

I guess, what I want in my career is to feel fulfilled. Outside of my loved ones and hobbies, I want to feel like what I do matters and working in a mission based organization or government is something I think can help me achieve that goal.

REG-74,77
BEC-70,70,73
FAR-70
AUD-1/9/2016

[Author]

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