The last of our subsets of accountancy are the auditors. In many minds this is really what the whole profession is all about but it’s becoming a great deal less important as time passes. Auditors are those who come from outside an organization and then check the accounts, to make sure that what is being said is in fact is what has happened. Enron and WorldCom are examples of what can happen when the auditing function goes wrong.

It might sound like a really rather boring thing to do, checking the numbers and adding up of what someone else has already done (and there is certainly a large amount of ticking things off on clipboards. Someone, after all, has to go and check that there really are 120,000 widgets in the storehouse.) but the great advantage is that this level of auditing is really treated as a training ground. It’s something done for a few years in the early part of a career rather than something done for all 35 years of it.

Training to do auditing is therefore very much the same as other branches of accountancy, a college degree with some semester hours of accounting normally, although there are still a few (but very few) opportunities to enter without that college degree. To advance you’ll need to get the degree at some point though.

As to our EQSQ personality tests as auditing is usually a way station on the path to one of the other accounting specialties, there’s no specific requirement. Yes, detail and systemizing are important but no more so than any other branch of the profession.

As part of the accountancy profession internal auditors are not the most glamorous but they are the most important practitioners. This may seem a little odd as we think of accountants as the people who work out whether the right taxes are being paid, or who prepare the information for stock holders and so on, but this is to miss the real point of having them (and why the whole subject was invented thousands of years ago) and that is to tell managers what is going on. Management accountants tell them what should be going on and help to make plans, but there still needs to be people who check that it is actually happening. That’s our internal auditors.

Training is just as with the other branches of the profession, almost always requiring a college degree which should be, if not in accounting itself, certainly include some semester hours in the subject. Traditionally it has been possible to enter without such a college degree, perhaps just with some experience of bookkeeping and then working up the hierarchy but this is becoming more difficult, even if there is substantial natural talent. Employers these days are much more fixated on paper qualifications than they used to be so that college degree is becoming ever more important.

As to our EQSQ personality tests and which personality type will thrive in internal auditing this is a rather difficult question. The real point of this job is to find out when people are lying and stealing: that’s what the auditing is trying to uncover. Now there are certain time hallowed ways of trying to do this but people are always inventing new ones so a certain empathy for the criminal mind is necessary. Given the attention to detail also required this is probably best for those with the balanced brain type.

Continuing our discussion of the different forms of accountancy we reach government accountants and auditors. You might not believe it, given the speed with which they get through our money, but they do at least try and keep track of it all. There are superficial similarities to what management accountants do but they are indeed superficial. Except for one area government accounting is really simply bookkeeping: there’s no worry about how much money is coming in nor when it will, as they are working with tax money. The one exception is in collecting that tax money, IRS auditors and the like. This is a very advanced area of accountancy as the work is trying to find out how people are doing business and then making sure that they’re not hiding something to reduce their tax bill.

The basic training requirements are the same as most other branches of accountancy. For the Federal positions, for example, a full college degree is required along with 24 semester hours of accounting. Some other branches require a further college degree, a Master’s.

As to the EQSQ personality type, governmental accounting is very much a systemizing or male brain type job, even by the standards of other accounting. There’s a very definite emphasis upon process, rather than substance, in the whole of government and this is even more extreme in the way they keep the books.

Our second group within the accountancy profession is management accountants. As opposed to CPAs and public accountants they work only internally to a specific company or organization. Instead of offering specialist advice from outside, they run the essential financial information systems within the system. So if you take this route you’ll be involved in budgeting and planning for example, in testing the financial viability of new ideas and processes.

As with the other types of accountancy a college degree will almost certainly be necessary. In fact, it’s highly likely, at least in larger companies, that they would like you to have a second college degree, a Master’s in accounting, or perhaps business administration. There’s very definitely an interesting career progression in this type of accounting. In the modern business finance is the absolute life blood, so there’s a definite opportunity to move up the ranks into general management, rather than staying within the specialty.

This in itself, over and above the way in which management accounting is so important in the daily life of a company, means that this would be a good field if you were, by our EQSQ personality tests, of the balanced brain type. Yes, the attention to detail of the systemizing brain is necessary, but the interaction with the wider parts of the company will mean those empathizing talents will also be needed.

As in the previous post, it’s worth looking through in more detail some of the more complex professions and careers and here we’re looking at accountancy. Public accountants are probably what we all think of as being accountants. They are professionals who work with a number of different clients. It can be anything from helping people with their taxes on a local basis all the way up to advising huge multinational corporations on their complex activities.

Along with almost all accountants public ones will need to have a college degree, usually with a certain number of semester hours in accounting itself. Over and above this in order to work as a public accountant you’ll almost certainly need to become certified, to become a CPA. It is possible to take and pass this exam without having a college degree but it is becoming ever rarer for people to do so, in fact, in most States it is not longer possible at all.

Something that distinguishes public accountants from others in the broader profession is that you’ll almost always be competing for work with people from other accountancy companies. There therefore needs to be a little bit of the salesman in you if you’re going to be a success here. This means that the EQSQ personality test profile will be a little different. Yes, it will still be systemizers who find the actual work enjoyable (and who will therefore be good at it) but having to sell your expertise, to actually land the client, will require a certain measure of empathising attributes as well, so perhaps something for the balanced brain types.

There are a number of jobs, careers and professions where a simple catch all description isn’t enough to capture the nuances that go on within the career. One such is accountancy and we’ll go over, over the next few posts, the way in which different subsets of the career require very different college degrees, (where they do indeed need different college degrees), different results by our EQSQ personality tests and so on.

We’ve already had a brief look at accountants and auditors but as I say, a brief look doesn’t do justice to the complexities and career choices on offer. For example, the attributes and personality traits that make a successful public accountant in one of the big consulting firms are really rather different from those that would make a good auditor, which are again different from a forensic accountant and all are again different from those required by an actuary (the old joke being that actuaries are those who find accounting too exciting).

It’s also worth noting that the majority of entrants into this field are now female despite the need for systemizing qualities and the associated attention to detail. Perhaps not despite, this may well be the career of choice for women with those EQSQ attributes.

When we’ve looked through the various types of accountants then we’ll move on to other similarly complex professions to see how they differ internally.

Writers and editors are those who, as we all know, write and edit the various publications that we all consume, from newspapers to books through to theater and TV and films. One of the very odd things about the profession is that to write a great novel, or play perhaps, absolutely no formal training is required. All that is necessary is that you are a great artist. However, to play upon the lower slopes of the mountain that is literature a college degree will almost always be required. To join a publishing house, magazine or newspaper, well, if you don’t have a college degree they simply won’t even bother to read your application.

For many such jobs the college degree can be in the liberal arts but if it is it’s becoming more usual to ask for a further degree, perhaps a Master’s, in journalism say. If you major in communications (perhaps) for that first college degree then you’ll have a better chance. There are many other types of writer of course (a technical writer might be expected to have a college degree in the technology she’s going to write about, for example) but that degree has become the starting admission ticket to the game.

What is also true is that there will also need to be a large amount of unpaid work done, on the job training if you like. It might start with the High School or College newspaper, or it might be internships at a magazine or PR company, but it’s very rare for someone to get a paying job straight out of training. The incomes of writers and editors (except at the very top, where superstar economics comes into play) are also rather lower than you might expect, given the training and internships required. About $45,000 on average across the whole profession. The reason is that there are a large number of people who would like to, and can do, the job. Lots of people enjoying what they do is a recipe for them to be paid not very much.
As to our EQSQ personality tests there’s room in the craft for people of every type, from the extreme systemizers to the extreme empathizers. The sorting goes on after entry. The male brain types tend to end up with the technical writing (manuals, the business pages) and the empathizing with more emotive subjects (novels, relationship pages). As readers have every possible EQSQ type, there are jobs for every type as well.

Woodworkers are those, (guess what?) who work with wood but that covers a multitude of actual jobs, from cabinetmakers and joiners (expensive one off pieces made from fine wood) to those working in sawmills.

Training varies, from a few weeks of being told which part of your body to not (and which part of the timber to) put into the machine to many years of hands on experience required to properly handle advanced techniques like creating inlays for fine furniture. As with so many other such trades, in recent years there has been a move away from a pure emphasis on solely on the job training to more formal systems, including programs at colleges and vocational schools. At the very top end of the skill range there are now college degrees in such things as furniture design, which require a deep understanding of what can and cannot be done with wood, as there are a few such college degree programs in joinery.

But for the majority in the trade training is a combination of learning while doing plus some class work for the more esoteric or complex activities.

As to our EQSQ personality tests, like so many of these blue collar jobs, it’s really a male brain or systemizing type of job. There is the attention to detail required, the general need for an ability to think in three dimensions (spatial ability is very much a systemizing trait) and also the fact that for most the work is done either alone or in very small teams. One area where the more female brain of empathic traints com into play is in the design and making of high end furniture but still all of those systemizing type skills are required as well.

Welders (soldering and brazing are variations) have at times been described as the aristocrats of the blue collar professions. There’s a great deal of technical skill that goes into the process at the higher end of it. Sure, in a few weeks someone can be taught (and it does happen) to simply weld this metal to this one but it’s also true that very simple end of the trade is being done by machines. At the other end there are over 100 ways to weld things, depending upon the metals and shapes in use (I myself am partially responsible for research into ways to make the welding of aircraft fuselages easier, as an example) and so this can be a highly skilled job, one requiring not just formal training but years of experience.

You can enter welding after just a few weeks of technical training and there are programs available at community and vocational colleges across the country that will enable you to do this. There are no college degrees available (although at the higher end the training is equivalent to a college degree) but it is possible to become certified. But to gain such certification, and also to be able to handle the more advanced techniques, some years of training and a combination of school and hands on experience are really necessary.

As the military have lots of large machines that inexplicably get holes in them from time to time, they run such programs as part of the regular military trade schools and this can be an excellent way of getting such training ( I know a few who qualified this way and their skills are excellent).

As to our EQSQ personality tests, this is work that requires excellent hand eye co-ordination and substantial periods of time working alone, needing (most especially at the more complex end) substantial attention to detail. This to me says that it’s pretty much the male brain types, the systemizers, who’ll do best here.

The full title of this occupation is water and liquid waste treatment plant and system operators which is a little too long as a headline, don’t you think? Anyway, with that longer title I think we all know what the job entails? Running the plants that purify our drinking water and then cleaning up the wastes after it’s come out of us again. It sounds like a most distasteful job to many but in these modern times it’s all done in near antiseptic factories and plants: the old images of actually going down underground into the sewers are restricted to the centers of the old cities.

There’s no specific and necessary educational qualification needed other than a high school diploma but it’s a great deal easier to get a job if you have a college degree. There are many vocational schools and community colleges that offer a college degree (or a certificate) in wastewater treatment technology which will boost the job opportunities considerably.

Using our EQSQ personality tests to see who might best fit this job I think it’s obvious that it’ll be the systemizers who do best. It’s a form, a branch, of engineering and as such is very much a male brain job.

One thing worth noting is that it’s a very well paid job for something that only requires that two year college degree at most. $35,000 a year or so on average, and as most such jobs are with local government they come with all of the usual associated options, such as health care, pension and so on.