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So I recently changed careers and finished my degree in Accounting. I'm working as an entry level Staff Accountant for a large corporation.
I'm the type of person however that really loves a quiet/behind the scenes type of job. I don't mind dealing with co-workers at all, but I REALLY dislike dealing with the public, customers, vendors, clients, etc. I went into corporate accounting because I knew public accounting was probably not a great fit for me, but even with this job I find myself having to make so many collection calls, or calls to vendors about issues, or other inquiries to companies.
Are there any jobs in Accounting in Finance where I could work more behind the scenes and not have to deal with customers/clients/general public at all? For example, I absolutely love working with numbers, doing reconciliations, putting a meaning behind the numbers, solving issues with numbers, etc. and building and maintaining excel spreadsheets makes me really happy! If there was a job where I worked with excel all day modeling, reporting, recording, whatever, I would be quite happy doing that.
Does anyone know of Accounting or Finance positions that mostly involve the technical side of making meaning out of numbers/data or is what I'm hoping for in my career just a dream?
Last edited by the_grimace; 05-26-2015 at 11:17 AM..
Yes, go into corporate tax. I am 2 years removed from school working in corporate tax (my team is tax depreciation - PP&E) for a very large regulatory utility corporation that has a lot of plant assets.
If your company has a large corporate tax department in-house (a lot of large corporations do, but some also contract from places like Ernst and Young), try to see what you need to do to transfer over there. There are many areas in corporate tax that offers the work you mentioned you like doing, including income tax, property tax, tax depreciation, state tax, federal tax, tax operations, international tax (if you like to travel and your company has a presence in other countries) etc. It isn't just filling out returns come tax time like you may think.
I was a Staff Accountant when I first got out of school and I hated it. It was for a very small company, extremely low pay (~$35K/yr), and it involved a lot of ***** work like making collections calls on past due accounts receivables, accounts payable, and payroll. Your scenario may be different because you mentioned you are in a large company... but when I moved into corporate tax at my current company my salary basically doubled that.
Other areas that would be work that you described include Analyst positions or Regulatory Accounting, of which I haven't worked in so I cannot give more details.
Yes, go into corporate tax. I am 2 years removed from school working in corporate tax (my team is tax depreciation - PP&E) for a very large regulatory utility corporation that has a lot of plant assets.
If your company has a large corporate tax department in-house (a lot of large corporations do, but some also contract from places like Ernst and Young), try to see what you need to do to transfer over there. There are many areas in corporate tax that offers the work you mentioned you like doing, including income tax, property tax, tax depreciation, state tax, federal tax, tax operations, international tax (if you like to travel and your company has a presence in other countries) etc. It isn't just filling out returns come tax time like you may think.
I was a Staff Accountant when I first got out of school and I hated it. It was for a very small company, extremely low pay (~$35K/yr), and it involved a lot of ***** work like making collections calls on past due accounts receivables, accounts payable, and payroll. Your scenario may be different because you mentioned you are in a large company... but when I moved into corporate tax at my current company my salary basically doubled that.
Other areas that would be work that you described include Analyst positions or Regulatory Accounting, of which I haven't worked in so I cannot give more details.
Thank you. I've had a lot of people suggest that Tax or Business Analyst positions would be a great fit for me. Can I ask how you went about making the change into tax accounting for corporations? I've always found it a bit tough to make lateral moves! It would definitely help me shape my plans over the next couple years to get a better idea what approach is best to take.
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