Dear Future Accountant,
I went to school in South Africa, I did not go to university, so I was looking for a career where I could train on the job and have a good career without a degree. Accountancy seemed like the perfect choice, so completed my ACCA qualification and it gave me the freedom to learn on the job and study.
When I started working, my second child had just been born so it was important for me to earn at the same time. It took me approximately 3 and a half years to fully qualify as a chartered accountant as it was important for me to maintain a healthy work/life balance. Before becoming an accountant, I wish that I knew it is not really a 9-5 job, it is not a job where you can just leave your work in the office and it’s also way more people orientated than I initially expected.
Working at Raffingers is a unique experience because we have a wide range of services which makes it a treat to help clients. Every single day, I can honestly say that we truly help people and make a tangible difference. During this pandemic, many business owners were nervous about how they were going to keep their businesses going, and when we could direct them to the right support and advice and help them through the challenges, they were facing it was extremely rewarding.
Our firm is set up so that staff with expertise in certain areas work together to deliver a better service. The cloud team deal with Xero and other cloud software and work with the clients that use those daily. The tax team deal with everything tax-related from personal tax returns to specialist tax planning areas, such as Research & Development (R&D).
When deciding whether to work in industry or practice, take some time to do research, work experience, and weigh the pros and cons. Working in the industry means you are stuck with what you’ve got, you work with the same company and in the same sector but you don’t get the variety that you would in practice. Personally, I feel that the ACCA qualification is steered more towards working in a practice I think someone wanting to work for industry would find the qualification CIMA to be more suited to them.
All in all, my advice would be to go for it! Do not be afraid to ask questions and get things wrong, you are not expected to have everything figured out.
Yedidya Zaiden,
Partner
Find out more about our culture, current vacancies and how you can join our team here. To hear the career journeys and gain advice from the other partners here at Raffingers please click here!