Net-Temps Accounting & Finance News

It’s a good time to be looking for a job in public accounting firms. After contracting during the business slowdown of the early 2000s, hiring is now on the rise—especially, as demand for accounting services soar due to a newly healthy business climate, for experienced candidates who can come in and start contributing on day 1.

Far and away, the most positions available in public accounting are in audit, with tax coming in second. The need for forensic accountants—specialized accountants who focus on digging into clients’ balance sheets to look for red flags—is growing as the industry and its clients look to rebuild their reputation. Demand for in-house corporate accounting and finance employees is expected to grow, as well.

The accounting industry has been through some difficult times in recent years, as all major accounting firms have been implicated in scandals, and accounting-rule changes have added work to the plates of public accounting firms and industry finance departments alike.

What You'll Do
Accounting concerns itself with the day-to-day operations of bookkeeping. Accountants balance the books, track expenses and revenue, execute payroll, and pay the bills. They also compile all of the financial data needed to issue a company's financial statements in accordance with government regulations.

Accountants are taking a step away from the ledger sheets and are becoming essential to every successful business team. They're the ones who understand the language of money and a company's complex financial situation. Consequently, accountants are increasingly being called on to offer advice and even make business decisions based on hard facts rather than on speculation or gut instinct.

To be sure, an accountant's day-to-day work is still very different from that of a lion tamer, especially for those who are just entering the field. Most public accountants, for example, still need to know the specifics of tax law and must file audits that meet the generally accepted principles of accounting (GAAP). Here, there's little room for people who want to think outside of the box. The box has been well thought out, and it's the accountant's job to make sure a company's records fit inside it and are in lockstep with the law.

Who Does Well
Finance and accounting jobs require critical, detail-oriented thinking. If you have a knack for using numbers to understand patterns that influence business, you're going to be valuable to a company. If you can't crunch and analyze them, this isn't going to be the right job for you. You should also like, and be good at, solving problems and be able to think critically about the numbers you're working with.

While accountants need to be good at math and have strong analytical thinking skills, attention to detail is usually considered more important. And as accountants are increasingly being promoted to the boardroom, they are finding it necessary to develop strong written and verbal communication skills.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants strongly recommends that all accountants balance their technical business training with a classically liberal arts education. Furthermore, as business is increasingly being performed electronically, accountants need to pick up as much knowledge about computers and information systems as possible, not only to understand their utility but also to assess their value to a company.

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