Auditing your Accounting Career

Accounting careers are a journey. There will be peaks and troughs throughout the lifespan of your career as it naturally evolves.

However, most people tend to let their careers ‘just happen’ rather than taking control and working towards a specific set of goals or aspirations. By not taking control of the way your career is evolving it becomes easy to lose sight of what you really wanted to achieve and become disengaged at work.

To help ensure your career will have long term satisfaction, it is important to take time to reflect on your goals and put in place an action plan to achieve your objectives. This is where a career audit can be helpful. A career audit is a process to systematically incorporate your wider life goals and values into your career to ensure consistency, a sense of direction and focus. This process consists of two steps: Think & Reflect, and Assess & Plan.

In ‘Think & Reflect’ you will answer various self-assessment questions such as, ‘Do I want to become a Partner at an accounting firm?’ or, ‘What is my favourite part of my role – advisory, tax or something else?’. This process will allow you an opportunity to evaluate your career as well as rediscover why you got into the accounting profession to begin with. The questions should be based around your original career aspirations, previous roles you have had and your future ambitions. Your responses are crucial in understanding your past successes and strengths to determine your next step.

The next step of process is to ‘Assess & Plan’. After identifying your goals, it is vital you strategically plan the steps you need to take to see them to fruition. When reflecting on each answer, their individual importance to you and your career needs to be considered. For example, from your assessment of your answers it can become clear that a change in the size of accounting firm or a step into management is the best course of action. Or perhaps small changes to your current work habits are all that are necessary.

Whatever the outcome of your assessment, you will have a plan of action. You have re-established your career goals and the direction of your career is back under your control.

For more information how best to complete your career audit or to discuss the market and roles that are currently available, please contact us on 03 9946 7300 or support@lawsondelaney.com.au

Lawson Delaney is a leading executive search and professional recruitment firm based in Melbourne. We specialise in recruiting CEOs and leadership teams, and accountants of all seniorities for Accounting firms.