A Counting School - Hardcore Chartered Accountancy

That whole "CPA, CA" thing? Someone at the ICAO tripped up yesterday

Yesterday I noted that the nomination period for the next ICAO council election is now open. One of my friends noticed that the original invitation to vote was signed by "Michael K. Banks, CA, Secretary". Today, a curious second e-mail came out with the subject line "Legal Notice - Official Call for ICAO Council Election Nominations". I didn't pay close attention to it, with a busy day not giving me a lot of time to look careful - but it really seemed odd they repeated the notice a second time. That same friend, being a good auditor, took a good look at the second e-mail and noted the enhancement: the second invite is signed by "Michael K. Banks, CPA, CA, Secretary". I wonder whether someone within the ICAO quickly noticed the missing "new" CPA designation, or whether this was in response to someone outside the Institute calling them out on the oversight? I'm guessing an insider called them out on the mistake - a silly little oversight, though...

Writing a good cover letter and resume to join the Big 4 is easy - iff you want to

As promised in my last post , I can share with you some personal thoughts regarding how I prepared my cover letters and resume. It obviously worked for me, because I got hired - partially on the strength of my unusually long cover letter, weighing in at two pages. It also "worked" for me in the sense that I'm still at the firm, enjoying my job a half decade later - wow, a half decade - and I continue to encourage people to join, if they're into the Chartered Accountant in general, or the CISA in addition to that if they want to work in my particular specialized field. Before I get all deep and philosophical about getting into this line of work, I recognize that you may just want a quick technical answer. If you want that, google "resume guide" or "cover letter guide" - I'm sure you'll find something useful. You'll even get some more "technical" thoughts below the illustration, but first some thoughts for people wondeirng what...

Going to Kitchener for food, fun, and sometimes audits

The summer of road trip adventures and weddings continues - a week ago sending ACS to a wedding in Waterloo, with a stop on the way at Kitchener's Golden Hearth Baking Company . I've been out there many times for audits, but this weekend had nothing to do with auditing anyone, unless witnessing people get married is a form of auditing. Damnit, this work nevers escapes me. Oh well, at least we make it fun. And delicious, as I explain below. Although the wedding was a fun way to fill up on said deliciousness, it only lasted one night, so I loaded up on some of the wonderful baked goods for Sunday by stopping there on the way. Read a little about them, courtesy of their own website : "They have been at it ever since. The bakery makes everything from scratch including the croissants. They use only the finest quality local and organic ingredients. They do not use preservatives or artificial ingredients. They bake the old fashioned way with butter, fresh milled flour, farm eggs...

Teaching your new and transferred staff to be rockstar IT auditors

Training new people is huge in accounting firms. As you gain experience, you typically end up doing more teaching than raw accounting. With that in mind, consider this questions, one of several I've received from my readers who have been sending me a series of interesting questions that are giving me a delightful backlog of topics to discuss.. In this case, we're asked about the difficulties you may encounter switching from one group, say the regular financial audit team, to the IT audit group in a given firm: If, let's say, a first year financial audit staff is starting their second year in a firm and transfers into a second year IT audit staff position, wouldn't there be an almost insurmountable learning curve? The first year financial staff spent the entire first year in learning about financial auditing techniques, and now has to deal with tests on data conversions instead of auditing operating expenses!" The good news is that no, this isn't an "almost...

Do you ever get job security as a CA?

So. Will you ever get to enjoy job security? There's only one pair of answers that can adequately address that sort of question: "...short answer: "Yes" with an "If," long answer: "No" -- with a "But."" - Rev Lovejoy, 4F07 I write that, inspired by comments in response to one of Francine's popular blog posts on big four layoffs, this time with a tail of comments over 300 postings long and counting, including the following question : "Is at-will employment fairly common for 1st years? When can I expect to gain some sort of…security?" I couldn't help but quote the Simpsons in response to that question because in many ways you can give a simple "yes or no" response, but what you say, your words will be empty without some kind of explanation. If you want to treat "job security" the way classic unionist types look at it, not only is there no such thing in this field - a job for life - but the idea of...

The first “... consider becoming a CA" in a series

Realizing that I a healthy number of readers - and friends! - come to me asking for career advice, it struck me that I should probably start sharing this advice in an organized fashion. So I’m starting a series of posts filled with quirks and trivia that will you a vague idea about what the other aspects of becoming a Chartered Accountant are like - such as the first entry: Consider becoming a CA if you have a good eye for detail. For example, if you noticed that one of my site’s ‘tag’ categories just got renamed to Brilliant Career Advice from something else, you should consider becoming a CA. If you remember what that tag used to be called, you get bonus points - and risk being accused of being a stalker... unless you’re really just proving how much you want to become a CA. Mentioning stalking and how it's a Bad Idea, however, is one of those brilliant Good Ideas: I'll get back to that topic in a future post.