Advice. What about free market?

As an accountant, what is your advice to accounting students graduating college with bachelor degrees, heading into the job market?

• This advice can be from anything to finding the perfect job match, to finding the job with most opportunities, to any other advice, such as what to expect in your first years. *Your answers can also include advice for those with advanced degrees.

• Answer:

  First, seek professional-style experience as early and as much as possible.  Internships are the most common method.  Others include performing the accounting for a volunteer group, club, etc.  I also encourage college students who have taken a basic tax course to prepare some simple tax returns (the IRS has a program and will provide some training), even if their focus is corporate accounting, auditing, or another specialty.  Being versed in various aspects of accounting helps inform your decisions and recommendations, and at the end of the day, accounting is about making decisions.  Second, seek variety of experience.  Being able to see the entire picture while still understanding some of the detailed issues increases your marketability much more quickly than sticking to a single area.  I've found variety through working in small companies and through consulting. Third, keep learning.  Accounting isn't a field of static rules- new legislation and various jurisdictions/regulating agencies are causing the field of accounting to change as much or more in the last decade than probably the whole of the field's history. Notice I said learning.  Formal education and preparing for formal certifications is a way to learn, and I've got that T-shirt.  My preferred method is to do primary research and then follow-up by explaining both the issue and the solution to a mentor, member of my network of other accountants, or other knowledgeable party.  When I can do this, I find that by the time I'm done, I understand the issue and the solution much better than when I simply research the solution and then apply it and move on. Note: One of the major benefits of working for a Big 4 firm is the opportunities for learning that take place there- they offer some of the best education courses, their method of using several levels of review helps teach accountants to be thorough and to confirm information.  But it is very possible to be successful outside the Big 4, just be aware that you will have to manage your learning to a greater extent. Sorry for the generalization, but many accountants (myself included at times) prefer working away at a computer, comfortably crunching spreadsheets and often going hours at a time without speaking to others.  If this is you, I recommend you find a way to spend time with someone your work affects on a regular basis.  When you see how your work has helped someone make better business decisions, it increases the job satisfaction considerably and helps you to have options when time comes for a change.