re: Starting Salaries for Accountants

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BTW it doesn't matter whether you're in a B4 or working for Joe Schmoe, busy season will kill you. Every person I know has said that. So just prepare yourself for it if you really want to do PA. There's a reason most people jet after 2 years, if you can squeeze into an industry job first (which IMO your skills fit better), I'd do that.

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I was working 80-85 hours a week at my last job for 6 months straight (with only one day off in that time period-was trying to keep the business open) so the hours aren't a big deal. That and I haven't had a vacation in over 2 years. So I think anything will be an improvement over my last situation.

I've done accounting for the business just not exclusively accounting. I kept up with the balance sheets, income statements, statements of cash flow, did some journal entries, sales taxes, accounts receivable, accounts payable, etc. It's just not as good as the wide range of scenarios you would get experience wise in public accounting.

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know my firm does a lot of small business accounting stuff, which sounds like the type of thing you were doing. As far as I know, most of the large local/regional firms here (nola) do a lot of that. B4, not so much. As long as the undergrad acct and mba got you the classes you need to take the cpa, I think you could get on with a local. You gotta have that though, everyone expects you to get that done. Go look at UNO's career page, they're about to start up accounting interviews right now (just got a bunch of emails). I think your chances there are as good or better than any other route, including B4.

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I do have the classes to take the CPA and I plan on taking it also. I've always planned on taking and passing the CPA exam. It's just been tough for me to do that in the last few years with the hours I was working. I will check out UNO's career page. Not sure if I can still access it. I am an alumni so maybe I can.

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Or you could just hire me and skip interviewing all the inexperienced college kids.

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Get the CPA done. That will remove doubt with potential Public Accounting firms.

You considering any markets outside LA?

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Or you could just hire me and skip interviewing all the inexperienced college kids.

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You're not listening brah. Your experience is not PA, so you're experience is not all that relevant to PA. Its relevant to industry. I'm saying most people just to PA to get into industry, why not skip the PA and just go straight to industry.

Nah I don't think that's the case at all. At a small business, yes, probably. Either way, last I talked with RH (a month ago)the attrition at the B4s in nola was ramping up big time. Life is all about timing.