Public Accounting

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Well,

The jobs like my current one I got via Monster. Many I got via recruiter were hell and they had high turnover - hence why they needed a recruiter. Please, don't be so hard on your self. Really.

I am no CPA whiz. And I have never had an issue with the 20 somethings in the work place. They mostly go the route of the Public Accounting and then into a Controllership job. Robert Half, don't listen to the recruiters. Been there, I do OK but it is not for me. They are usually looking for a specific person skill set. The impossible person or super accountant.

Getting 30 or 40K should not be hard if you are a CPA. Take less and get experience but please don't discount having credentials.

Look, my GMAT was terrible. Getting a MBA would be extremely hard for me even though I could pass all the tests fine. But a CPA is really not that hard. Becker taught me if you know one problem you know at least 5 on the exam. If you know 10 you could answer 50 on the exam. Without Becker I would not have come close to passing. To me it was easier than an MBA.

But in the beginning I must admit I was as intimidated as hell.

B

This is a headache for me as well. I got my accounting degree, graduated highest honors, and now I work for a reverse-collections auditing firm however I've noticed that we've really dried up for work, they aren't laying off but when I've looked around and tried to see if I could get in somewhere to learn general ledger or even try an Accountant II type position they want that same exact type of esperience - overpayment auditing the way you would with say PRG, Apex, etc. for experience doesn't seem like its portable in that sense.

Also yes, I hate the fact that I have to worry whether - if I start a new job - it will be one where I'm fired within a month because they're unwilling to train. My work history is one of extrema; I either stay somewhere from five years to a decade or I'm fired almost immediately, and so much of that seems to rely on who I'm working for, how reasonable they are at understanding what they need to convey to people to have successful employees, I'm very proactive in trying to learn as much as I can but that only goes so far. You would *think* that capitalism means competition, that competition means that every place of work wants to be the best, and wanting to be the best would mean that the rule rather than the exception would be places of work where they have great training resources that you can hit at any time and nearly any question you could dream up would be covered somewhere or you couldn't find it out from someone - strangely it just doesn't work like that.

That said I'll admit, I'm lucky enough that my rote social skills don't get me in too much trouble, my ASD seems to hit me harder on executive functioning, chronic fatigue, etc. than it does with social skills and mirroring, however if I am working with people who are flamboyant frat boys or sorority girls and where almost everyone will barrel-chest you, talk at you without hearing a word the other way, smack you on the back, and run, I'm in just as bad of shape as any of you would be, mainly that there's simply no penetrating the heads of people like that and, yes, you're either one of them or your not.

I truthfully don't know what to do going forward. If I get laid off or let go in the next year from overstaffing I'd like to go back to school or, if I can find a replacement job of a similar pay with a bit more assurance I may keep on with the goals I've had in the past year to start acquiring properties and become a land lord (I'm not financially set now necessarily - I just live with my parents and have the ability to save for the moment, which I'll need to keep at for a long time). I'm in agreement with what's been said on the economy as well; the shorter the supply of jobs becomes the more it gets to be an employers market and of course the most eminent skill above anything else will always be social skills - that's the kind of world we live in and it keeps becoming more and more important as the well of manufacturing jobs dies and service/information becomes everything.
The world does seem to keep getting weirder, I'd love to think something will give in a positive way some time within our productive lives but its hard to call it.

This thread seems to be the antithesis of what's been paraded around in job/career/major discussions the last few years. I took a couple of basic Acct. classes in HS, enjoyed them, and decided to major in Accounting in college. I'm in Principles of Managerial Accounting right now and will take Intermediate I in the summer or fall. I'd been well-set on finding a career in accounting; these are not the kinds of stories I want to hear.

wow , i have never thaught of this but to be honest i thaought accounting of something which i did not imagine

I graduated in 2008 with an accounting degree and passed the CPA exam in 2009. 4 years later, I'm still stocking shelves at the supermarket. I can't even afford to pay back my student loans nor move out to a place of my own and I doubt I ever will. I've sent out more resumes than I can count. I've been thrown out of buildings for sneaking past security so I could hand deliver them to companies that never responded. I don't have any network to use so as a lone wolf, I'm pretty much screwed in society these days.

I never post or read here much anymore, but wanted to mention that I finally got an accounting job with a government agency and have been working for about six months.
I had to move to do it and have had to live apart from my wife the entire time but we're hoping that she can be out here maybe in May/June depending on what happens with selling our house.

It's all worked out, apparently. Someone just had to give me a chance. The hardest part for me was moving away.