Accountancy
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.
June 5th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
[...] Actuaries are often thought to be part of the accountancy profession and while it’s true that many of the skills are the same (the old joke is that actuaries are those who found accountancy too exciting) they’re not actually the same profession at all. Actuaries deal with statistics, working out the likelihood of something happening and the cost if it does. For example, we know roughly how long people live on average. We also know what it will cost to pay someone $20,000 a year for the rest of their life, as in a pension or annuity. We can add in whether they smoke or not, many other factors. OK, now, what we want to know is, how much do we charge this individual for a pension of $20,000 a year? [...]
June 7th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
This is a great article about accountants and the jokes they provoke: http://www.camagazine.com/6/0/7/5/index1.shtml. For such a ‘dull’ group of individuals, we certainly get a lot of laughs out of them!
While the article promotes accountants and all they do, it also admits that many of the accounting stereotypes (dull, frugal, controlling, etc.) are too often true. As one accountant cited in the article puts it: “Our reputation is pretty well-deserved. It’s like that chicken-and-egg riddle. Are you an accountant because of your personality? Or do you have that personality because you’re an accountant?â€
But I do know of one accountant who does not fit the bill. My neighbor, the accountant: blondish-reddish streak-dyed hair, addictive shopper with inclination for short skirts, low, low top blouses (and large, large implanted breasts to fill them out – she’ll even show them to you if want to see them….), chic, expensive, high-heeled shoes, lots of dates. She’s an interesting one to have in the neighborhood. She’s an interesting one to have in the accounting profession, I imagine.
I’m sure she rarely hears this joke:
The patient asked, “Oh doctor, what should I do?”
The doctor replied, “Marry an accountant.”
“Will that make my life longer?” asked the patient.
“No,” said the doctor, “but it will seem longer.”
June 11th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Lucy, this neighbor of yours…should I tell her my degree was finance and accountancy? Ahem.
While at college I did an internship in the accounts office of an investment bank. I offer you, for free, the intelligence that it’s not an interesting (although it is a well paid) lifestyle: but then that’s only true for people with my type of emotional intelligence (or as my friends delight in pointing out, emotional unintelligence).
The actual work that was being done was more akin to puzzle solving than anything else. If everything was done perfectly in the first place then a computer could do it. It’s working out why the computer can’t do it, where the error is, which makes it fascinating to a certain mind set. If you like crosswords, chess, word and number puzzles, then it might actually be the thing for you.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Accountancy obviously draws on a person’s systemitizing abilities and a person’s way with numbers. But the job can amount to more than number crunching. The fact that you can draw on other areas of interest to create a personalized career path is an aspect of the field that may not be readily apparent. For example, you can go glam and specialize in accounting for entertainers. Or go ag (agriculture) and specialize in accounting for horse-owners, as suggested by this website on career’s with horses–or, if it’s race-horses and polo-ponies we’re talking about, perhaps that’s a new category, ‘glam ag’. Prospective accountants remember: many a hobby or passion has a business side. Why not spend your time among fellow enthusiasts?
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Well spotted Millie! that’s the sort of intelligence we like to see around here (both intelligence in the sense of interesting information and in the one of the good sense to think of it). My small experience of actually doing accountancy (a couple of internships) was in the investment bank sector and it absolutely wasn’t the calm sort of atmosphere you would expect in a bean counting office. We were infected with the adrenalin from the trading floor (and had to be, we were trying to keep up with them!).
I can see, as you point out, that an accountant in the entertainment industry will enjoy some of the glamor and perks of that, just as one for racing stables will get to go to the races a lot.
You’re right, in short. You can create that mixture that you want as a career, for the simple reason that just about every area of life and endeavor needs accountants. Not for profits, for example, if you want to help change the world.