Don’t be put off by the stereotypes – accountants provide a wide range of services to a diverse range of clients and enjoy a varied and rewarding career.

Accountancy involves much more than adding up columns of figures. Accountants provide a broad range of advice to clients, who can be individuals, small businesses or international conglomerates. Accountants need to be well informed about the businesses they advise, and the options available to their clients.

Graduate accounting roles today are vastly different from the stereotypical image of accountants as ’bean counters’ or ’number crunchers’. These outdated terms are references to the often tedious process of book-keeping, which was once seen as the chief activity of accountants. Today, computers do the crunching, while accountants analyse and present the resulting information in timely and meaningful reports.

Training as a graduate accountant

Qualification as an accountant comes with completion of a training contract with an approved accountancy firm. The firm’s size and location have a bearing on the length of training, but it generally takes three years.

Trainee accountants receive in-house training and work experience. The syllabus involves both home-study and external tutoring.

There are various companies graduates can work for while training. The options include:

• public-services companies
• the Big Four – Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers
• the ’top twenty’ group of large- and medium-size firms
• small firms with only a few partners.

It is also possible to train within a bank or the accounts department of a large company.

The attractions of accountancy and tax

Training involves hard work, but the opportunities – both immediate and in the future – are numerous. The larger companies often offer the chance to travel. Trainees are given steadily more responsibility, and progressive increases in salary. Having qualified, it is possible to double your salary.

Graduate accountants work in organisations or with clients that range from high-earning individuals, small businesses and charities to large multinational companies – every type of enterprise needs accountants.

’Whether you choose to work in the corporate or public sectors, financial services or public practice, as an accountant you will be responsible for making businesses successful,’ says Sarah Hathaway of ACCA (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). ’As part of that you will communicate with a wide range of individuals, right up to those at senior management levels’.

Accountancy can offer a top-flight graduate career that will give you early responsibility, a good salary, challenge, variety and great progression opportunities.

Accountancy professionals are also at the heart of business, offering increasingly diverse skills. Louise Mason, Student Recruitment Manager at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, says: ’Globally the role of chartered accountants in world economics has never been more important.

’People making financial decisions need knowledge and guidance based on the highest technical and ethical standards, and chartered accountants are able to provide that better than anyone.’

Accountancy and tax graduate job descriptions

• Chartered accountant
• Chartered certified accountant
• Financial accountant
• Forensic accountant
• Management accountant
• Public finance accountant
• Tax adviser
• Treasurer

Find out more

• Accountancy employers
• Management accountancy
• Professional services
• Public finance accountancy
• Tax
• Treasury