Staying Current

If you are looking to keep abreast of what's going on in the field of accounting, below are a few online resources that are useful sources for industry summaries and headlines:

CPA Letter Daily

The AICPA offers a daily briefing of the news and events impacting the accounting profession. When you subscribe to the CPA Letter Daily, you'll receive an email each day which includes the major top stories, along with tax, accounting, regulatory, financial and international news of importance to CPAs. Click on any headline link to read the entire story. This is a great resource for staying on top of important business news. One of the most professionally embarrassing situations is to find yourself among a group of non-accountants who know more about accounting and financial news than you do.

http://www.smartbrief.com/cpa/

Journal of Accountancy

The JoA is a monthly industry magazine with includes feature articles about various aspects of the accounting profession. While some of the JoA articles might be a bit heavy for students or practitioners outside of the specialty subject, there is a useful headlines section that is updated daily with the latest announcements from various regulatory agencies impacting the profession such as the SEC and the FASB. Even if you don't read the entire monthly issue of the JoA, the featured article summaries give you a good idea of what the hot topics are among accounting professionals.

http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/

Big 4 Alumni Blog

Keep in mind that the current Big 4 firms (Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers) were previously many different firms that have been consolidating since the nineteenth century to form their current organizations. Some of their predecessor firms also spun off consulting practices. Therefore, this blog contains headlines and alumni news makers from the current Big 4 firms, their predecessor firms, and their former consulting practices. This is a good place to find job postings and employment leads, however the advertised positions are typically looking for highly experienced candidates.

http://bigfouralumni.blogspot.com/

Making Your Career About More Than Just You

There are countless books published each year under the heading of personal development, self-help, or psychology offering quick bullet points for achieving succeed. While the titles and tables of contents vary, many of these books talk about the same thing....you You YOU! But success in your career and life does not occur in a vacuum. It's important to recognize your obligation to invest in others as you advance in your profession.

Only after you've secured the corner office do you have an obligation to give back to the little people right? Wrong. U.S. Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr. once said that "a person who is worthy of being a leader wants power not for himself, but in order to be of service." Even if you are early in your career and have a long list of professional benchmarks and goals ahead of you, a prescient indicator of your leadership potential is your willingness to invest in others. This is because someone who is always looking to share what they have learned with others is investing in something bigger than themselves, which is exactly what leadership is.

The accounting profession would not be held in such high esteem by clients and the capital markets if experienced accountants ignored their obligation to mentor less experienced professionals. You may only have one or two years of professional experience on your resume, but think of how much you learned during that short time that an intern or college student could benefit from knowing. While working in public accounting, I had the opportunity to participate in a national intern training program as an instructor. I only had 3 years of audit experience at the time and wondered how I could have anything of value to share with the interns who were used to hearing from college professors with PhDs and decades of expertise. My co-instructor and I incorporated into the curriculum many personal client examples and real-life experiences from our own careers. At the conclusion of the training, our students asked us how we knew so much, and if we had been formally trained as teachers. They were awestruck to learn that we had only minimal training as instructors, and had merely been sharing all that we had learned on the job in a few short years. They exclaimed that our class had been more informative than any college accounting course they had yet taken.

Having gone through any professional experience, whether it be passing Intermediate Accounting, getting recruited by an employer, sitting for the CPA exam, or surviving your first day working with a client, there is always someone new behind you who has not yet lived through these things and could benefit from a kind word of encouragement or piece of advice. The only way you yourself can succeed is because of the teachers, senior students and professionals, and mentors in your life who shared with you their knowledge and experiences. You have an obligation to make that same contribution to the accounting profession, so that the profession will continue to develop strong business and community leaders.

A leader always makes time for others.

Coming Soon....Engagement: Jump Start Your Audit Career in Public Accounting

College graduates across the United States are scrambling for jobs as the recession continues to constrict employment opportunities. Accounting majors are no exception, which is why newly minted accountants are fervently competing for a chance to launch their careers with one of the largest international public accounting firms. Collectively known as the Big Four, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers have refined their highly selective recruiting methods, carefully offering jobs to only the most ambitious, intelligent, and gregarious accounting students. These firms use structured processes and specific criterion for recruiting, training, and developing fresh hires from college campuses across the country. Any accounting student hoping to be hired by a Big Four firm would have a huge advantage in advancing their career were they to have an inside glimpse into the way the firms work and what they expect of job candidates and new hires.

Having been courted by the majority of the Big Four as an accounting student, as well as having spent the first four years of my career as an audit senior associate active in recruiting, training, and mentoring young accounting professionals, I understand the mistakes many students make early in their careers. They often unknowingly handicap their chances of being hired by or advancing their careers with the Big Four because they lack an understanding of how the firms operate and what is expected of them as public accounting professionals.

Engagement: Jump Start Your Audit Career in Public Accounting is the first career field guide to empower accounting students to not only land a job as an auditor with the Big Four, but to also equip them to succeed in this fast-paced, highly competitive environment. By providing a thorough overview of professional terminology, a detailed discussion of the recruiting process, practical recommendations and warnings for new professionals, and an evaluation of what it takes to succeed in the public accounting profession, Engagement: Jump Start Your Audit Career in Public Accounting is the quintessential reference tool for any accounting student or young audit professional.

The book incorporates personal anecdotes from my tenure in public accounting as well as the recommendations and cautionary tales of Big Four senior managers and senior associates interviewed. The book is designed to mentor new accounting practitioners to build a solid professional foundation, thereby unlocking thier career potential.

Engagement: Jump Start Your Audit Career in Public Accounting will be available for download this summer. Stay tuned to The Aspiring CPA for further information.

The Benefit of Hindsight

Today I was fondly reminiscing about my inaugural client assignment as a newly minted auditor. While it is a "fond" memory today, at the time I was living through it, I thought for sure my career was over just as soon as it had begun.

A notoriously hands-off manager had selected me to head the audit of a financial services subsidiary. Given the recent headlines about senators demanding explanations from bank executives as to how their complicated financial products work, it's incredulous to think that I could be expected to understand the inner workings of a securities broker-dealer given my lack of experience. My ignorance, combined with a willingness to learn, would not have been a problem had I had an experienced teammate to guide me through the audit. Unfortunately staffing constraints unexpectedly pulled the senior associate from the engagement, leaving me camped alone outside of New York City for a month with no one but my client's controller to talk to. It was an overwhelming experience, but one that taught me more about audit execution than any classroom instruction ever could. I reached out to anyone in the firm willing to give me some guidance on each issue I encountered.

After such a difficult first assignment, working on large public companies seemed a bit more predictable. But the initial challenge had whet my appetite for a new gauntlet. After a few years working on the same client engagement, I was suddenly reliving the same situation where I had started, this time working on clients in manufacturing, real estate, and construction. All of the entities under audit were new to my firm, and most of them were small organizations. So I was leading the exploration team into the uncharted territory of a brand new audit.

While my public accounting career has been far from easy, I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything. Many of my teammates along the way followed a much different career path within the same firm, commencing their first few years in the profession on the same client engagement, in a more predictable environment. So when they found themselves thrown onto a new private company engagement in a new industry, they had no idea where to start. Their territory had always been mapped out before them, and now they were being asked to chart new waters without knowing how to read a compass. Thanks to my early challenges, I had learned to navigate uncertainty and complexity, maximizing the resources available within the firm.

If you are ever tempted to feel sorry for yourself because you think your career path has been much more difficult than those of your colleagues, remember that in hindsight, every challenge you conquer propels you much farther on your journey to professional success than the smooth, predictable road your colleagues may be on.

Midday Mental Break

Have you ever stared blankly at a spreadsheet for so long, you see grid lines when you close your eyes? Do you tend to have eight or more windows open on your laptop at any given time, switching to a new window every 45 seconds? If you have trouble focusing during a long day on the job, perhaps you should take a mental break. Don't worry about feeling like a slacker relative to your co-worker in the next cubicle. Even though she seems to be so engrossed by her work and dedicated to following her client's audit trail to the pot of gold at the end, don't be fooled. She's more than likely doodling away or checking her Facebook account. The average adult attention span is 3 to 5 times their age. So I shouldn't really expect to focus on one task longer than an hour and a half to two hours at the most.

Consider scheduling some small breaks for yourself throughout the day. Perhaps every three hours, plan a trip to the break room for a cup of coffee, tea, or water. Take time to focus on your breathing. Close your eyes for just a minute and take some slow, deep breaths. If you have to make a personal call, use that as your breather, and step out into the office lobby or walk down the street and get some exercise while you chat. Even walking up and down the stairs will help get some blood flowing, enabling you to return to your cubicle alert and ready for another two hour power session of ticking and tying work papers. Kicking that mid-afternoon fatigue is always the toughest part of my day, so if I have to run an errand, I try to schedule it in the late afternoon.

Don't let your clients or teammates pressure you into sustaining 16 hours of uninterrupted face time at work each day. Taking periodic breaks will help you to refocus and be more efficient and effective in tackling your daily to-do's.

Branding Yourself

On their recruiting web page, PricewaterhouseCoopers offers a phenomenal eBook about developing your personal brand. Following a five day work week, the book shares a personal branding topic for each day. While the eBook is geared toward students, I found it to be a great refresher for myself. It hit on several topics that current students are familiar with but are often neglected by experienced professionals, such as using social media to market yourself and develop your network. To download the eBook, visit the following link:

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/pwctv/pbw/personal-brand-week-ebook.pdf

Table of Contents

Monday: The foundation of your personal brand

Tuesday: The power of passion

Wednesday: Relationships & mentoring

Thursday: Social media & your career

Friday: Career momentum

Mastering the Art of Career Growth

In the Spring 2010 issue of the Pennsylvania CPA Journal, David Maturo published an incredibly insightful article, taking self-motivational concepts used in martial arts and applying them to a career in accounting. Mastering the Art of Career Growth is just the sort of article I print out and keep in my day planner when I'm in need of inspiration. Maturo lists three truths shared by a martial arts master when instructing his students to aspire for perpetual growth:

Truth No. 1: Keep your eyes on the road.
Many newly minted accounting graduates jump into a public accounting career gnashing their teeth over the long hours typically required of young professionals. Many of us find ourselves wishing that we could just skip the first five years and go straight to being a manager. But as the martial arts master put it, "with one eye on the horizon, there's only one eye on the road." If all you care about is putting an end to long hours, then you'll lose sight of your end goal, such as making partner, starting your own firm, or becoming a CFO. Instead, keep your eyes on that long-term career goal, and look at those early, grueling years as a training period. If you really want that end prize, you'll be willing to put in the time needed to develop your professional skills and expertise.

Truth No. 2: Never break your egg.
Having earned their black belt, many martial artists fall into a rut in their training regimen. Their skills might begin to plateau after having satisfied such a prominent goal in their training. So the master challenges them with a question: "How do you drop an egg three feet without breaking it? Drop it four feet. Extend your journey." Now that you've overcome the ranks of staff to be promoted to management, don't be satisfied with having done so. Set a new goal, and challenge yourself to evolve as a manager. Every time you reach a new goal, stretch yourself further. Even partners strive to improve themselves by joining boards, working with their communities, and training and mentoring other professionals.

Truth No. 3: Be an Amateur.
So you've raised the bar, reached farther, worked harder, and have really grown as an accounting professional. But what do you do when you have set backs? Perhaps you don't get the promotion or transfer you were hoping for, or you lose a major client. You may begin to doubt whether or not you're cut out for your chosen accounting career path. Again, as the martial artist would say, you should strive to be an amateur rather than an expert. According to the dictionary, an amateur is defined as:
"One who loves; a person who engages in a study, sport, art, or other activity for pleasure or pastime, rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons; a devotee, an enthusiastic pursuer of an objective."
You should be an accountant for the love of it. If you think of your profession this way, every challenge will be just another step in pursuing your dream. You'll put up with a lot for something you love: busy season, travel, difficult clients, complex accounting standards. Having a passion for what you do will help you to stay positive, resilient, and motivated no matter what happens.

If you look at your chosen profession as more than just a job, the above truths will help you to stay focused, motivated, and enjoy what you do, regardless of the hard times ahead. It won't be easy, but those who apply this winning strategy will be the leaders of their profession.

Nice to be Appreciated

In a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Ajilon Finance, Americans reportedly have an overall appreciation of accountants. It's nice to know that despite some occasional negative publicity about financial reporting fraud, auditor cover-ups, and "creative accounting," people do not harbor much bitterness against accounting practitioners themselves. Through personal interactions with accountants preparing tax returns, small business financial statements, and handling personal finances, most Americans have come to appreciate our profession.

A survey of 2,024 Americans found that 88 percent disagree with the common stereotype that accountants are boring. Not that we'll start seeing accountants on Hollywood's red carpet partying with the stars any time soon. But more astonishing, perhaps, is the fact that 84 percent of those surveyed did not think the profession itself was boring. Uhoh, now we may have even more competition for top accounting jobs if children stop aspiring to be professional athletes and start dreaming of a career in accountancy when they grow up. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the accounting profession is projected to grow by 22 percent over the ten year period from 2008 to 2018, making it one of the fastest growing professions in the country.

The majority of adults who use an accountant (53 percent of respondents) trust them entirely with their personal finances. Even though the April 15th Tax Deadline has passed, 98 percent of survey respondents recognized that accountants work hard all year round, not just during tax season. Thanks to all the grateful Americans out there who keep us accountants going!

See www.webcpa.com for additional discussion of the survey results.

CPA Exam Action Plan. Part II

Yesterday I suggested a few ways to mentally approach the CPA exam. Today I'll provide some tangible tips on preparing for and passing the exam:

• Set the date - When beginning my career in public accounting, many first year staff, including myself, thought we could conquer the CPA exam by passively studying, scheduling a section of the exam only when we felt fully prepared. This plan didn't work for a single person I knew. Over the course of my entire first year, I probably studied a total of 10 hours, nowhere near being prepared for the first part of the exam. After a year had passed, I attended my firm's annual training, and was shocked to learn that almost all of my colleagues in the classroom had passed part, if not all of the exam. This finally motivated me to stop languishing in laziness and actually schedule my first exam. Only when I had a date on the calendar was I able to keep myself in a rigorous study routine. Even though I had scheduled my exams in the midst of busy season, the fact that I had a deadline helped me to study late each night, despite the long work days.
• Have a plan - Once you have the dates of your exam permanently fixed on the calendar, work backwards to the present and figure out how many chapters/topics/lectures you need to cover in order to be well prepared for each exam. Figure out how much you can reasonably manage each day. For example, if your study materials provide you with a book, can you cover a chapter a day? If that is too much, perhaps 1/3 of a chapter. Create a spreadsheet with each date from the present to the test day, and detail what material you will cover each day. Don't forget to schedule reviews, practice exams, and a rare day off only if you know you won't have any time to study (e.g. if your wedding day is scheduled during your exam preparation period, you probably won't have much time for studying that day). But try not to take too many days off. Even if you have a special event scheduled, plan on reducing your study hours for that day, but not eliminating them. Breaking your routine for even one or two days could put you in a procrastination slump, which should be avoided at all costs.
• Hold yourself accountable - Sharing your goals, deadlines, and study plans with those closest to you will help keep you on track. I was so afraid to tell my co-workers that I had scheduled my exam, because that meant my manager might ask me how it went! Eeek! What if I failed miserably?! When I finally did tell me co-workers I was preparing for my first exam section, they provided a lot of encouragement. I was able to push myself harder in preparing because they knew I was planning to take the exam soon. My husband also provided a huge amount of accountability, since he knew the details of my daily study schedule, and would ask me regularly if I had completed my agenda for the day.
• Take a break when necessary- While it's important to keep the momentum going once your 18 month clock starts ticking, don't be afraid to take a mental health break after each section of the exam. Many people take a week off of studying after sitting for each of the 4 exams. This time is an important stress reliever, and helps you jump into your preparation for the next exam with renewed enthusiasm and motivation.
• Stay on target - Even if you're not in the mood to study one day, don't think you can save up the lessons you skipped and cover them all in a 10 study session over the weekend. The effectiveness of your studying will greatly wane if you attempt to conquer too much at once. According to the National Training Laboratories, we only retain 10% of what we read and 5% of what we hear in a lecture. So if you think you can take everything in through cram sessions, think again. It will be much more effective to incrimentally tackle all of the material you need to cover on a daily basis.

CPA Exam Action Plan. Part I

Whether you're weeks away from graduation, starting a new job this year, or an experienced accountant who has decided to take their career a step further, the CPA exam is likely staring you in the face. It seems like an insurmountable test of cerebral strength, computational dueling, and an 18 month sentence to solitary confinement spent studying. Rather than focus on the negative, look at some of the great things about beginning your preparation for the CPA exam:

• It should only last 18 months at the most. Thanks to the various state accountancy boards who administer the exam, you only have 18 months in which to pass all 4 parts. So even if it takes you the entire time to get through all 4 parts, it's not forever, right? Doctors and many other professionals are required to take periodic examinations throughout their careers. CPAs are different. Rumor has it the acronym actually stands for "Couldn't pass again!" So once you pass, you pass forever!
• Think of all that free time you'll have when you're done studying? After committing to an intense period of study and surrendering most extracurricular activities, you'll really appreciate all of the free time you suddenly have once you finish your final exam.
• You'll have an immense amount of professional and academic respect once you've conquered the CPA exam. Becoming a CPA opens doors for you to climb higher within the field of public accounting, or even to pursue a completely new career. Graduate and professional schools often hold CPAs in high esteem, because the title carries with it an implicit mark of self-discipline and professional expertise.

Now that you're focusing on all you have to look forward to after passing the CPA exam, it's time to roll up your sleeves and come up with an action plan to get there. Tomorrow I'll provide some tangible steps you can take in preparing for the exam.

Could the iPad Challenge the Workplace PCs?

In Bloomberg BusinessWeek's recent review of the iPad, columnist Rich Jarovslovsky speculates that the iPad could be a game changing device for business professionals. He touts it as "a marriage of the always-connected ultra-portability of a wireless phone with the power and flexibility of a laptop or even a desktop PC." The big question is whether or not tablet devices such as the iPad will be the primary computing device for companies, or a device in addition to laptops and smart phones already in use. The base model costs $499, in the ballpark with netbooks; however it only offers 16 to 64 gigabytes of hard drive memory depending on the model, compared with 160 gigabytes found in the average netbook. Citrix Systems CEO Mark B. Templeton predicts that business usage of the iPad will skyrocket, in part due to his company's virtualization software that lets owners remotely access the same screen they see on their office PC. The iPad has only been on the market since April 3rd, so it is too soon to know for certain how great an impact it may have on workplace computing. For now, companies will just have to wait and see if it elicits a strong demand from their increasingly mobile workforce.

You can read Bloomberg BusinessWeek's review of the iPad in issue 4173, published April 12, 2010. To see a demo of the iPad, visit http://www.apple.com/ipad/guided-tours/.

Happy Tax Day!

Well, it has come around again, the supposed crowning moment of every accountant's year: April 15th! For the 24% of America's 1.3 million accountants who work for CPA firms doing tax preparation among other things, today is the day you get your personal life back. For the other 76% of us who do not prepare taxes, not much has changed, other than the filing of our own personal tax return. I have always been on the auditing or financial reporting side of accounting, but never fail to receive comments on April 15th from family and friends about how relieved I must be that the IRS deadline has passed. So to all of those misunderstood, non-tax accounting professionals like myself, I hope you have a happy tax day!

(The above statistics were reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010-11 Occupational Outlook Handbook.)

Conversational Connections

When just beginning my professional career in public accounting, I often found an awkward rift existed between me and my middle-aged colleagues when making small talk at a happy hour or in the office lunch room. They spoke of kids, houses, and current events. My world still revolved around parents, friends, and college experiences. I wanted to be more informed and well-rounded when it came to talking with colleagues and clients. Over time I stumbled upon a few sources that have provided me with countless points of interest and a deeper understanding of the world around me. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine - I began subscribing to BusinessWeek when the thousands of airline points I had accrued during my first year traveling as an auditor were about to expire. At first I was a casual reader, but I soon began reading each issue cover to cover. By staying abreast of general trends and events in the global economy, I had a deeper insight into the challenges facing my clients as well as my firm. BusinessWeek always provided me with the latest business news and trends, contributing to my discussions with partners and managers over the dinner table, in the airport, or before a meeting.

• National Public Radio (NPR) - You're probably thinking that NPR is only for gray-haired classical music fans. Before you make a snap judgment, try listening to one of the many fascinating news magazine shows on NPR, like Marketplace, The World, or Morning Edition. Thanks to NPR, I'm constantly learning about world cultures, economic drivers, political issues, and public affairs. I started listing to NPR because some of the most interesting and well-rounded people I know were avid listeners. I too got hooked, and always have new insight on just about any issue to share with others.

• Some of my most recent favorite authors/books are Malcolm Gladwell, author of bestsellers The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink, as well as Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics by co-authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. The authors weave economic principles, public health statistics, crime rates, and a host of other random data-driven theories to answer some fascinating questions about human nature. The ideas presented, as complex as they are intriguing, make for a quick read. I couldn't put these books down, and read each one in a week or less. I still reference them frequently in conversations, and the contagion of their ideas effortlessly encourages many of my friends and colleagues to read them as well. I can guarantee hours of discussion and debate with friends and co-workers after reading any one of these books.

While many people are gifted with self-confidence and an ability to talk to anyone about anything, the majority of us are not. So if you are like me, and sometimes find it awkward to make small talk with co-workers, clients, or acquaintances, the above sources can go a long way in providing interesting and memorable material. Before long, the people around you might be saying of you, "he/she's one of the most well-informed people I know."

How healthcare reform impacts your student loans

The health-care legislation approved in March 2010 will have a major impact on student loans, but what does that mean for you? A recent article by Smart Money Magazine highlights the three major changes that will directly affect students:

1. Federal loans will be distributed by direct lending only – Effective July 1, 2010, all federal education loans will be directly distributed. The noticeable impact on students will be slight, such as more favorable terms for PLUS loans (available to graduate students and parents of undergraduates), as well as a higher approval rate for parents of students applying for PLUS loans. The later is due to higher approval standards maintained by private lenders, who are now eliminated from the process.

2. Subtle Pell Grant increases – Approximately $36 billion of savings from eliminating the private lenders from the Federal student loan equation will go toward Pell grant funding over 10 years. The current maximum for Pell grants is $5,550 for 2010-11, which will increase in tandem with the inflation rate for five years from 2013 to 2018. Ultimately, the maximum grant amount would reach $5,975 by 2020, not far from current levels.

3. Delayed changes to income-based repayment plans – Beginning in July 2014, students can take advantage of changes to income-based repayment (IBR) plans, aligning a borrower’s monthly payment to their income rather than debt. IBR currently caps monthly payments at 15% of discretionary income, which will drop to 10% in 2014. It also forgives the outstanding amount owed on the loan after 20 years rather than at the current 25 year mark. The IBR provisions only apply to new borrowers of new student loans beginning on July 1, 2014.

For additional details on the impact of the health-care reform legislation on your student loans, visit http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/college-planning/the-health-care-bill-and-your-student-loans/.

Mastering Excel: an invaluable skill for any accountant

Upon telling someone you are in the field of accounting, the immediate response you receive 90% of the time is "you must be good with numbers." This is the unspoken guise of the accounting profession, designed to mask our greatest secret: we're not necessarily good with numbers, just Microsoft Excel. While adding-tapes and calculators are still familiar to many auditors and tax preparers, Excel is by far the most widely used tool by all accountants. That is why it is so important to master many of its most useful functions as early as possible in your career. There's nothing more satisfying than putting together a macro that even your boss didn't know how to create, making a report much easier to generate. While working as a financial analyst preparing regulatory reports for a bank, I often dealt with a large amount of data pertaining to loans, deposits, and investments. During my first few months on the job, I generated countless analyses and reports using pivot tables, if statements, lookup functions, and subtotals. All of these functions were previously unknown to me, but proved invaluable in turning a massive amount of data into useful financial information. Here are a few resources to help you maximize the tools Excel has to offer:

• One of the many consulting companies that provide Excel tools and tips is Finney Learning Systems. At their website www.therightway.com/MSExcel.aspx you'll find a directory of free instructional videos and pdf lessons organized by topic. I found this site to be very informative and the lessons quickly and concisely illustrate some of the most widely used tools in Excel.


• Perhaps you find yourself in the same situation I am in. Over the past few years I've grown very familiar with Windows 2003, but since upgrading my computers to Windows 7 and Vista, I'm at a loss as to where to find things in Excel 2007. http://www.youtube.com/ offers a Cliff's Notes - like answer to any question I may have. For example, if I can't remember how to run a scenario analysis, I can just search "Excel scenario manager" in youtube and get 11 pages of videos illustrating how to execute this function.


• Microsoft has an entire suite of free Finance and Accounting Excel templates available, to assist in everything from personal finance and sales management to financial statements and budgets. Just visit http://office.microsoft.com/ and go to the templates page.

As accountants, we'll always rely on Excel, so it's never a bad idea to keep expanding your knowledge of Excel functionality. That way, you'll be ready to apply it whenever an accounting challenge arises.

Avoiding the Game of Politics

If you are just beginning your accounting career, you can quickly find yourself in the middle of office politics. It comes with human nature, no matter what the culture of your workplace. People will always try to manipulate co-workers for their benefit, exaggerate their own contributions while criticizing the contributions of others. In every workplace I have been, I've maintained a strict rule of "professionalism at all times." In so doing, no one will believe the jealous criticism of co-workers that come against you, because your actions will speak for themselves. However, despite your best efforts to keep your head above the waters of office politics, at times co-workers may try to pull you under.

A friend of mine recently found herself in this situation, as her company's HR Director had personal disagreements with her boss and tried to put her in the middle of it. Her employer had instituted an upward feedback program, asking staff to review their direct supervisors. Her boss, the Finance Director, was consistently absent from work and unavailable to his direct reports. Because the HR Director had personal disagreements with the Finance Director, he was looking for a way to get his rival into trouble with the company's CEO. HR approached my friend, and asked her to include several specific criticism about the Finance Director in her "anonymous" upward feedback form. While this is inappropriate in so many respects, my friend's greatest protest was the unprofessional manner in which she was placed in the middle of her co-workers' personal disputes.

My recommendation to anyone in such a situation is to remain professional at all times. Even though my friend had every right to criticize the Finance Director in her evaluation, doing so in a personal or negative manner would have played into the political agenda of the HR Director. I advised her to complete the evaluation honestly, drafting it in a manner in which she would like to have a review done of her job performance. By including praise as well as recommendations for performance improvement in her supervisor's evaluation, the anticipated incriminating negativity that the HR Director was hoping for would be absent. And my friend would avoid jeopardizing her professional reputation by getting in the middler of a personal dispute.

No matter what political battles rage around you between your co-workers, supervisors, and clients, if you maintain a professional response and avoid joining the fray, you will be respected for your maturity and wisdom.

Create Your Own Internship

This is my flagship blog for The Aspiring CPA, and I thank all of you who have found me. I hope you find something encouraging, creative, and useful that will help you to advance your accounting career and invest in yourself.

Given the current economic environment, many firms and companies are not only cutting back on full-time hires, but they are also paring down internship programs. Yet you are constantly told by professors, recruiters, and academic advisors that internship experience is the best thing to have on your resume before graduation.

So how do you get internship experience if no one is hiring interns?

Here are a few things you could do to gain the equivalent experience of an internship:

1. Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA). VITA is a program run by the IRS to offer income tax preparation assistance to low-income, elderly, disabled, and limited English speaking people. Volunteers are provided with training materials and optional classroom preparation, and must pass a short open-book examination before being certified to participate. Local VITA centers will then assign volunteers to clients. Even if you are not looking for a career in taxation, participating in VITA provides you with invaluable client service and accounting research experience. Your time and energy commitment will also illustrate your enthusiasm for the field of accounting. For additional information on the VITA program, visit www.vita-volunteers.org.
2. Nominate yourself for a position of fiscal responsibility within an organization. Whether it be with a student, community, social, or religious organization, holding a position of leadership and fiscal responsibility (such as Treasurer) will give you hands-on experience with cash management, internal controls, and checks and balances. Even if it is a small organization with only a few hundred dollars in the bank, you can always highlight your problem solving skills during an interview by discussing how you tailored your organization's accounting processes to the size and scope of the entity. When I was interviewing for jobs as a senior accounting major, almost every interviewer specifically asked whether or not I had held any student leadership positions. Such experiences are considered to be indicative of future ambitious leaders in the profession.
3. Offer your bookkeeping services to small churches or non-profits. What bookkeeping services do I have to offer as an accounting student? you may ask. Even if the only thing you've ever balanced is your own checkbook, that may be more accounting experience than many small organizations have. When I was in college, I took a non-paid "internship" with the church I occassionally attended, helping them to deposit contributions, pay bills, and record transactions. Even though the accounting and transactions were fairly straight forward, the experience was my first chance setting up a chart of accounts, using accounting software, and truly understanding the concept of segregation of duties. I learned a lot from that endeavor, which I was able to leverage during job interviews.
4. Make your own externship. Externships have recently increased in popularity among large employers, but still remain highly competitive. These are job-shadowing programs that typically last a few days, and offer students a chance to speak with professionals in the field, ask questions, and see what life is like for accounting professionals. Even if you are unable to secure an externship, you can always make your own by contacting local CPA firms and other small businesses. Your local Chamber of Commerce may be able to connect you with business owners who would be willing to offer their time to discuss their business. The important thing to extract from an externship is an understanding of the needs and functioning of the business environment. This background information will be extremely effective in communicating your professional maturity to potential employers.

While the "internship" experiences mentioned above cannot offer you a pay check, the short-term lack of wages is worth the long-term investment in your career. These experiences will give you a greater understanding of the professional world you are hoping to enter upon graduation, and will exemplify your ambition, enthusiasm, and intelligence to future recruiters and employers. If the current economy has made formal internships hard to come by, take advantage of the challenge and create your own internship experience.