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Transitioning is not easy but it's doable. Real talk, if you went to a really good undergrad school, accounting wouldn't even cross your mind. Many top schools don't even offer accounting as a specialization or major. For the rest of us that went to Top 50-100 public schools, accounting gets your foot in the door. Where you go from there is up to you.
I know I wouldn't have gotten the career I wanted (Banking/Consulting) straight out of undergrad. Recruiters wouldn't even look at my application.
I wrote in my original post. I thought accounting to finance would be an easy transition. It’s what i was told in college. I heard audit had “exit ops” but my fault for not researching what exactly those were.
What do you mean by “the exit ops you see”? Recruiters will 100% push strictly accounting roles on you as those are the quickest sell, but it’s not too difficult to land fp&a roles applying on your own if you tailor your resume for them.
What do you consider as a finance role? Depending on what that definition is, will determine the difficulty.
FP&A shouldn’t be that hard. A couple months of networking and interviewing maybe. There’s enough people from audit that go into FP&A that I would say it’s a reasonable exit. At first I though you meant like IB, then I would’ve said no shot
Pro
I feel you. Forever stuck.
Transfer into FDD and watch your exit opps improve
Plenty of people go to CorpDev from advisory. No mba required. Unless you’re only aiming at Fortune 500 corpses jobs. Those are more competitive
I’d disagree. There are plenty of options to transition from accounting to finance. Granted, I’m in a HCOL metropolitan area so opportunities are plentiful.
How many years experience do you have as an associate?
I think that’s doable. Definitely don’t stop looking, you can find some sort of FA position at some sort of banking, RE development, or some other type of professional firm. I would first figure out what industry you’d want to ultimately be in and begin researching & applying to companies in your area with FA openings.
Pro
You can go into FP&A with a bit of work, especially if you aren't manager yet.
If by "finance" you mean things like investment banking or PE, then yeah that's a tough one...
If you're okay with a transfer, I've seen people from FDD exit into FP&A, small/mid-size IB, and some corp dev. The actual work kinda sucks tbh (better than audit though) but the exit ops get a bit better.
Pro
FDD is very overrated, but it does increase your exit ops slightly. Lots of data formatting/analysis. It's honestly an accounting job, and the PE/other M&A people you work with will literally call you "the accountants" lol. FDD people like to say they work in finance, but they really don't. Also need to be okay with random weekends going up in flames due to a last minute deal or a trial balance uploaded into a dataroom at 5pm on Friday.
If your end goal is FP&A, maybe you can simultaneously (1) push for a transfer to FDD and (2) apply to FP&A analyst/senior analyst jobs. Of course, if you hate the idea of FDD, then put your focus into FP&A. FDD pays a good amount better than audit, but FP&A pays even better with way better hours. No reason to waste time trying to switch into FDD if you already know it's not for you.
I was told the same and was in for a surprise almost 3 years in accounting, thought about looking into financial analyst jobs and realized a lot of places like for you to have a MBA.
Like we can work later hours but take a half day the next, or you can work remote from a vacation spot and make your hours work however you want just as long as you get them in! Yeah i totally get avoiding busy season… last busy season got in the way of my relationship a little I was just so busy. If it happens this busy season I might actively look for an out. I do feel like corporate finance sounds a lot better than these hours haha