A few people have written to me looking for help either getting a job with the Big Four, or with SOA/UFE exam preparation tips. I'm unable to offer any one-on-one services to help people with these exams as I'm fully booked helping colleagues at work and writing here. I will address specific...

I have, not surprisingly given my little writing-break, an extensive backlog of topics to write about. I'm going to do two things right now: shine the spotlight on an aspiring CA , and answer someone's question. Judging a book by its cover, " Second Rate CA " has an excellent dark sense...

Another one of my intelligent comments to the PwC blog got blocked . This is getting a bit annoying . This time, I had some free job application advice to share. The pumpkins sum up my feelings about this shabby treatment rather succinctly. Here's the advice, for those of you looking for tips on...

I found another CA blog out there - the first French Canadian one I've come across . If you have trouble reading Julien's French, run it through Google Translate. The translation's not perfect, but it'll do. The newest posting caught my eye ; in the spirit of hyper-critical UFE prep,...

I try to help people, they turn me down. That's about par for the course, I should say - auditors are used to not getting much respect. With the exception that other auditors usually listen to what we have to say. If I offer help to someone, they're usually happy to get it. My UFE mentees are...

I just wrote about getting the CPA designation - a relatively easy task for someone who already has either a Canadian or Australian CA at this time. You might ask - "so does this mean that's the next step for Krupo?". Well, probably not.I feel like I have enough designations at the moment...

Part three in the series of "vacation question" posts. Click here for part two . Another reader's question: Is it common for juniors to take extra unpaid time off to study for CKE, SOA, and UFE? If so, on average how many unpaid days/weeks do people take for each of those tests? Using paid...

This is part two, continuing a series of three posts. Previous post . A reader asks: I assume it's next to impossible to take vacation during the busy season, so that leaves April to October, and maybe mid-late December open for vacation requests? But as a junior staff accountant, how hard is it...

I just wrote about the importance of taking your vacation time - and got some great comments and questions in response. In fact, I'm running a three-part response. This is part one. One of the comments I received points out that the mere ability to think about going on a decent vacation depends on...

Shortly after writing about how to get hired to work in audit , I got another question from another reader: "when can I transfer out?" There are two issues - how do you transfer, and when do you transfer? The when is relatively easy: anywhere after about a year after joining the company you're...