I would consider myself to be a very practical and
thoughtful person when it comes to making money based decisions. Even in high school, when most of my peers
were more concerned with the football game on Friday night than their bank
accounts, I was working after school to save up money to buy a car. Not only was I consciously saving money from early on, I was also thinking about my future. I knew I wanted to go into business and I was fortunate enough to do well enough on
my ACT and had a good enough GPA to have my pick of quite a few very good schools. I chose U of I because
at the time (and 5 years later it still is) it was one of the top schools for
accounting in the nation. I had some
experience with very basic accounting in high school, and I understood it. However, other than that, I really had no
idea what working in public accounting would be like. All I knew about it was there were plenty of
jobs available, it was a growing market, and the salary was pretty nice
too.
When I finally started here at U of I, I made it a point to
join several organizations on campus, including a business fraternity. I knew this would give me the best chance of
making those connections that are so crucial in the business world. Of course I made some of my best friends
along the way and my college experience has been phenomenal because of them,
but speaking honestly, my original motivating factor was securing a job.
Fast forward to the end of my junior year and I have secured
a winter internship in tax (busy season) with an accounting firm in
Chicago. In order to take the
winter/spring semester off and still graduate in time, I had to take summer
classes in Champaign. Besides being
incredibly boring during the summer, and all my friends being at home, classes
in the summer are much more expensive.
From that viewpoint, I intentionally took on more debt in order to
increase my chances of landing the job at the firm I was interning with, a
gamble if you will. Thankfully that gamble paid off. I was fortunate enough to have accepted a job
offer by the end of my senior year, however, the job requires me to attain my
CPA license.
Everyone who sits for the CPA exam needs 150 credit
hours. To obtain those credit hours, I
needed another year of school, which is why I am now a graduate student. Graduate courses are far more expensive than
undergrad, but this time it is not a gamble, more of a calculated
decision. Having a job offer provides
great peace of mind as well, however, it leads to less caution when it comes to
monetary decisions. For example, after
interning and receiving my job offer, I took out a loan on a car. Again, this was a very calculated decision,
however, knowing I would be earning a salary and be able to afford the payments
made the decision much easier to make.
A friend of mine on a similar career path also had a great
job offer towards the end of his senior year.
However, he decided it wasn’t quite good enough and turned them down in
favor of going after his dream job.
While I am all for people pursuing their passions, sometimes common
sense needs to rule. After turning down
his existing offer, things did not go so well.
He interviewed with quite a few firms, and was turned down by all of
them. He was forced to go back to the
company his original offer was with and ask for them to reinstate the offer,
which they did. At this point, you would
think he would be done. Instead, he
continued to interview with several new companies, all while letting the provider
of the original offer think he was accepting their offer. One of the new firms did end up offering him
a position which he readily accepted. He
then had to tell the company he had turned down and the beginning that he was
rejecting them, again. As you can imagine, they were not happy at
all about this. My friend now has a job
he is happy with but has burned some very important bridges along the way. Only time will tell how this will impact him
in the future.
My key takeaway from this whole experience and going through
it with him is there is a fine line between being “complacent” with your
decisions in life and being cocky or greedy.
Yes he turned down what he thought was just an okay job offer (it was
actually a great offer) and ended up getting what he thought he deserved, but
how much damage did he do to his reputation in the industry along the way?
I would say what your friend did was unethical. Alas, that sort of behavior is too common in other domains, and sometimes people get away with it, which encourages the next person to trying something similar.
ReplyDeleteIf you will be working at one of the Big 3, then I guess the goal would be to climb the job ladder there. So the game changes, but in some sense it remains similar. The question then is whether there are still risks that need to be managed and how you do that?
In Champaign-Urbana PhDs are a dime a dozen. Having one doesn't guarantee you anything regarding a job. At the big accounting firms I suspect that is likewise true about CPAs. You need some other to be earned on the job type of credential to climb each step of the ladder.
I do wonder sometimes about Accounting students, whether they have a certain personality that welcomes the conformity which the job seems to require, so unlike your high school peers, or if they bottle up that aspect of their persona. If the latter, there needs to be some other form of release. Chicago is really great for live music on the North side (he says remembering grad school back in the late 1970s). In any event, I think part of managing this is finding some balance in your own life. I wish you luck with that.
Your assumption about obtaining a CPA would be correct. While it does set you apart from the general non-business population, it does nothing among other accountants. It has actually become a requirement of the job and in fact most upper level execs have multiple business related certifications such as CPA, CFA, J.D., etc.
ReplyDeleteI believe Accounting gets a bad rap as boring and repetitive that it does not necessarily deserve, anymore. The days of "bookkeeping" are essentially gone with the use of computers and software to do so. An accountant graduating from U of I is far from the stereotypical "bean counter" as much of accounting is far more complex than that, especially in the larger firms where most U of I grads will end up working.
I do agree that there needs to be some outlet to achieve a work life balance but if you look at the current reputation of U of I's social scene I think its safe to say many students here are rather adept at that. I have no reason to think I will be unable to attain enjoyment outside of work, albeit in different ways than I currently do.