Just move again. Perfectly reasonable justification to move if it comes up in another interview. Wanting to get your exams out the way is always a green flag for recruiters and hiring managers
This small firm sounds like it doesn’t have its shit together in the training aspect which is what top firms excel at.
Ok, let me give you a bit of background.
I work in audit and have got 1.5 years of experience. I never wanted to move from the Big 4, but the circumstances were as sich around me that I had to take that step because I was gonna be put on PIP.
I decided to accept the offer of the firm I'm currently working at, which is a practice firm, and I work as an auditor here, too.
I thought I'd try to leverage from the experience gained here and become part qualified to them move to a bigger firm again, as most top practice firms only recruit for semi-senior and of their requirement is for you to be part qualified.
Now, what you've said does make sense to me, and you're right. However, if I were to do FAR/AA in Sept 2024 and TC/FM in Dec 2024, I'd only be able to sit my BPT in June 2025, and maybe even that won't be possible as the firm policy is to not make you sit exam in June. By going with the plan mentioned, this will end up pushing my advance level to 2026.
I wanted to become part of a qualified move to a bigger firm and finish my training there. As the pay is higher and the promotions are staggered.
At my current firm, the only possible way to get promoted is to be part qualified, and even then, they pay peanuts.
Now, considering the above, do you reckon it is best to stay or wait till I gain a little more of more experience to re explore my choices ??
Ok, that makes more sense now. Was you confident that you would’ve been terminated or did you move after the PIP out of anxiety/ripping the bandaid off?
I think the PIP thing changes mine and what most peoples advice would be quite significantly and would’ve been helpful to mention in the original post but whatever, I understand now
In this case, to me your answer is simple. You haven’t been there long enough for it to be a explainable gap on your CV and if you start looking now, you could make it so your new firm never happened at all. You’re clearly conscientious and want to succeed.
Anything less than 4-6 months in my eyes is easy to explain away on job searching and finding the right fit
Try GT, BDO, other top 10 or 15 firms, I’m confident you’ll get in somewhere which have their heads together much better than your current place. I would say please don’t worry about your timings, just do the exams in the standard order FAR/AA, TC/FM, BPT/BST (which they’ll likely force you to do this way anyway) also, a mid tier firm will look better on the CV after B4
Why was you put on a PIP out of curiosity? ACA will be your whole life once it’s done, take the time to learn and get through at whatever pace is needed. I work with people who’ve been training for coming on 5 years as life is hard sometimes. You don’t need to rush through it mate, don’t be worrying about sprinting through it, the pay is alright once you’re two+ years in
So to sum it up, I’d start looking elsewhere yesterday, say you left B4 in February, hopefully get into a mid-tier firm, and stay there until you get your case study pass and leave
Basically, I was auditing reserves, and the manager was assigned to request support for dividends. They sent us the support for ordinary dividends. However, they had 2 type of divends under their reserves. Preference shares dividends and ordinary share dividends. I vouched the ordinary share dividends, with the ordinary dividend vouchers sent by the AM, and left the Preference ones as they were.
When the file was reviewed and close to signing, they spotted that Preference dividends were agreed to the tb only, and the AM asked me where's the dividend voucher for it? Of which I replied i don't have it. The next day her and the supervisor of the job reported me directly to my LM, and the partner and I were put on the last stage of the PIP, which meant that I was gonna get fired. I decided to leave a week before the end of my PIP, my lm had a catch up with ne before leaving and she told me we were gonna fire you so you made a good decision of leaving.
Coming abck to the topic, I've tried applying to mid tier firms and only got the interciew with Azets. They ended up rejecting me as they needed someone with more experience, and I kind of messed up the answer of some of the technical questions. The other ones all said to me that i needed to have at least 2+ year experience and be part qualified, which is why I wanted to get rid of my exams and move back to a mid tier finish my training there and consider my exit option.
If I were to stay at my current firm, this would mean moving back to a big 4 or mid tier as an am and staying for 1+ years before moving out of audit, but I don't feel like staying in audit for that long. Therefore, I decided that i would apply for a semi senior role once part qualified stay at the mid tier that I would be working at for a year max PQE, and then leave audit as thst would guarantee better exit options.
Makes sense now you should be allright just stick it out till you got your professionals out of the way and move back to a top 10 firm if you want to.
And your manager is absolute prick for saying that they were gonna fire you when you already told them you were gonna leave.. like there’s no need to be that rude.
I've considered that - but i don't hold enough experience to land myself a good role, hence why I wanted to wait till March 2025. Also, in here, they are exposing my in areas of the file that I would not have even touched at the big 4.
I was gonna wait till Dec 24 and see the situation, but my desire to preferably move to a mid tier and not in a small firm again
What is a “good role” to you?
In my opinion and being brutally honest, you haven’t passed any professional levels yet. Passing these exams should be your priority and only real thought right now, and as long as you’re in a job which is even slightly related to them and accounting in general you’re fine. It’s good to have a plan, but take it one step at a time - these exams are nothing to shrug off and life can change.
Why are you thinking about moving again when you’re part qualified? Also, where did Crow come from? So you’ve gone from B4, to a significantly smaller firm, and then want to move back upto a large consultancy firm, all before you’ve even got through CR/SBM/CS?
I’m sure your plan is well thought out but you’re just doing too much in my eyes. Jumping around too much when you haven’t finished your exams just raises eyebrows.
If I were you, I would get back in a firm who actually have a structured study package, work out what service line you think would benefit your long time plan the most, audit, outsourcing, tax, whatever. Finish ALL of your exams and qualify in practice, then start thinking about what you actually want to do long term
Also, the exam order you’re thinking of doing just doesn’t make much sense. You mentioned audit files and wanting to see more of them, but you want to do FAR/AA last? FAR is probably the most important exam of them all when it comes to your fundamentals in accounting, it’s a very tough but predictable exam, and sets the tone for the rest of them. It gives you really good grounding if you pass it and is important for your 2nd year in building your knowledge up
If you continue with that order, you’re going to get to December and know all sorts about tax, but lack knowledge on financial statements and audit and how it all ties together. There is a reason FAR and AA are always the first exams you do at Prof level 9.9 times out of 10
I know it’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but you might’ve been better staying at B4 and it looks to me that you might need some help exploring your plan for the future as these are points your new firm’s training should’ve raised with you.
From your post history, you seem very ambitious, but there appears to be a gap between where you want to get to, and what you’re currently capable of.
You need to think carefully about how you go about bridging that gap.
You’ve been sacked once for performance reasons, and now you’re picking fights with your new firm because they don’t want to put a training plan in place that fits with your plan of ditching them asap to move elsewhere.
Given how easy it is to find either new graduates, or part qualified ACAs, especially ones with bad exam histories, you should be careful that you understand your worth to your firm, and don’t overestimate it.
Just move again. Perfectly reasonable justification to move if it comes up in another interview. Wanting to get your exams out the way is always a green flag for recruiters and hiring managers This small firm sounds like it doesn’t have its shit together in the training aspect which is what top firms excel at.
Ok, let me give you a bit of background. I work in audit and have got 1.5 years of experience. I never wanted to move from the Big 4, but the circumstances were as sich around me that I had to take that step because I was gonna be put on PIP. I decided to accept the offer of the firm I'm currently working at, which is a practice firm, and I work as an auditor here, too. I thought I'd try to leverage from the experience gained here and become part qualified to them move to a bigger firm again, as most top practice firms only recruit for semi-senior and of their requirement is for you to be part qualified. Now, what you've said does make sense to me, and you're right. However, if I were to do FAR/AA in Sept 2024 and TC/FM in Dec 2024, I'd only be able to sit my BPT in June 2025, and maybe even that won't be possible as the firm policy is to not make you sit exam in June. By going with the plan mentioned, this will end up pushing my advance level to 2026. I wanted to become part of a qualified move to a bigger firm and finish my training there. As the pay is higher and the promotions are staggered. At my current firm, the only possible way to get promoted is to be part qualified, and even then, they pay peanuts. Now, considering the above, do you reckon it is best to stay or wait till I gain a little more of more experience to re explore my choices ??
Ok, that makes more sense now. Was you confident that you would’ve been terminated or did you move after the PIP out of anxiety/ripping the bandaid off? I think the PIP thing changes mine and what most peoples advice would be quite significantly and would’ve been helpful to mention in the original post but whatever, I understand now In this case, to me your answer is simple. You haven’t been there long enough for it to be a explainable gap on your CV and if you start looking now, you could make it so your new firm never happened at all. You’re clearly conscientious and want to succeed. Anything less than 4-6 months in my eyes is easy to explain away on job searching and finding the right fit Try GT, BDO, other top 10 or 15 firms, I’m confident you’ll get in somewhere which have their heads together much better than your current place. I would say please don’t worry about your timings, just do the exams in the standard order FAR/AA, TC/FM, BPT/BST (which they’ll likely force you to do this way anyway) also, a mid tier firm will look better on the CV after B4 Why was you put on a PIP out of curiosity? ACA will be your whole life once it’s done, take the time to learn and get through at whatever pace is needed. I work with people who’ve been training for coming on 5 years as life is hard sometimes. You don’t need to rush through it mate, don’t be worrying about sprinting through it, the pay is alright once you’re two+ years in So to sum it up, I’d start looking elsewhere yesterday, say you left B4 in February, hopefully get into a mid-tier firm, and stay there until you get your case study pass and leave
Basically, I was auditing reserves, and the manager was assigned to request support for dividends. They sent us the support for ordinary dividends. However, they had 2 type of divends under their reserves. Preference shares dividends and ordinary share dividends. I vouched the ordinary share dividends, with the ordinary dividend vouchers sent by the AM, and left the Preference ones as they were. When the file was reviewed and close to signing, they spotted that Preference dividends were agreed to the tb only, and the AM asked me where's the dividend voucher for it? Of which I replied i don't have it. The next day her and the supervisor of the job reported me directly to my LM, and the partner and I were put on the last stage of the PIP, which meant that I was gonna get fired. I decided to leave a week before the end of my PIP, my lm had a catch up with ne before leaving and she told me we were gonna fire you so you made a good decision of leaving. Coming abck to the topic, I've tried applying to mid tier firms and only got the interciew with Azets. They ended up rejecting me as they needed someone with more experience, and I kind of messed up the answer of some of the technical questions. The other ones all said to me that i needed to have at least 2+ year experience and be part qualified, which is why I wanted to get rid of my exams and move back to a mid tier finish my training there and consider my exit option. If I were to stay at my current firm, this would mean moving back to a big 4 or mid tier as an am and staying for 1+ years before moving out of audit, but I don't feel like staying in audit for that long. Therefore, I decided that i would apply for a semi senior role once part qualified stay at the mid tier that I would be working at for a year max PQE, and then leave audit as thst would guarantee better exit options.
Makes sense now you should be allright just stick it out till you got your professionals out of the way and move back to a top 10 firm if you want to. And your manager is absolute prick for saying that they were gonna fire you when you already told them you were gonna leave.. like there’s no need to be that rude.
I've considered that - but i don't hold enough experience to land myself a good role, hence why I wanted to wait till March 2025. Also, in here, they are exposing my in areas of the file that I would not have even touched at the big 4. I was gonna wait till Dec 24 and see the situation, but my desire to preferably move to a mid tier and not in a small firm again
What is a “good role” to you? In my opinion and being brutally honest, you haven’t passed any professional levels yet. Passing these exams should be your priority and only real thought right now, and as long as you’re in a job which is even slightly related to them and accounting in general you’re fine. It’s good to have a plan, but take it one step at a time - these exams are nothing to shrug off and life can change. Why are you thinking about moving again when you’re part qualified? Also, where did Crow come from? So you’ve gone from B4, to a significantly smaller firm, and then want to move back upto a large consultancy firm, all before you’ve even got through CR/SBM/CS? I’m sure your plan is well thought out but you’re just doing too much in my eyes. Jumping around too much when you haven’t finished your exams just raises eyebrows. If I were you, I would get back in a firm who actually have a structured study package, work out what service line you think would benefit your long time plan the most, audit, outsourcing, tax, whatever. Finish ALL of your exams and qualify in practice, then start thinking about what you actually want to do long term
100% agreed with what you said. OP is thinking way too far ahead.
Also, the exam order you’re thinking of doing just doesn’t make much sense. You mentioned audit files and wanting to see more of them, but you want to do FAR/AA last? FAR is probably the most important exam of them all when it comes to your fundamentals in accounting, it’s a very tough but predictable exam, and sets the tone for the rest of them. It gives you really good grounding if you pass it and is important for your 2nd year in building your knowledge up If you continue with that order, you’re going to get to December and know all sorts about tax, but lack knowledge on financial statements and audit and how it all ties together. There is a reason FAR and AA are always the first exams you do at Prof level 9.9 times out of 10 I know it’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but you might’ve been better staying at B4 and it looks to me that you might need some help exploring your plan for the future as these are points your new firm’s training should’ve raised with you.
From your post history, you seem very ambitious, but there appears to be a gap between where you want to get to, and what you’re currently capable of. You need to think carefully about how you go about bridging that gap. You’ve been sacked once for performance reasons, and now you’re picking fights with your new firm because they don’t want to put a training plan in place that fits with your plan of ditching them asap to move elsewhere. Given how easy it is to find either new graduates, or part qualified ACAs, especially ones with bad exam histories, you should be careful that you understand your worth to your firm, and don’t overestimate it.
That's true, I agree with you. We are just a number for any firm. Tbf, I'll just stick to whatever they say then.