CV for unemployed accountant

jockey#1

Hey,

I am making adjustments to my CV having being in my previous role for nearly 5 years. I am a qualified accountant.

Basically my question is would it be inappropriate to mention names of audit clients I would have worked on in my CV? By background was in a medium sized practice not Big 4 therefore none of the companies are PLCs so most prospective employers will not have heard of these companies bar a couple.

Would appreciate other peoples advice and also would anybody have a link to a decent cover letter as most of the ones online are from americans who tend to blab on a bit too much!

Thanks

Jockey

miec

Hi Jockey

I would be cautious about mentioning company names, purely because the work you do is confidential, it is probably wiser to wait until the interview to mention them, and even then I'd be careful, but I may be over cautious in a sense. The thing is you could mention something like high profile businesses, etc., I think if you describe what you actually did that should be enough, or information on handling budgets etc. Mind you I'm not in the accountancy field so I could be wrong.

In relation to your second question, I recently checked out the guardian newspaper website on their jobs section, they have some brilliant tips and advice, along side excellent cover letters (not like the American's). You can check them at http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/cv.html

Hope that helps.

Wolff

Of course you can mention companies you have worked in - the work itself might have been confidential not the fact you were auditing them.

Only mention them though if they are well known -

Im from a systems implementation background and it always helps employers see where you have worked - ie similar types of company to them etc

PhiliousPhogg

I wouldn't myself. If you give the name of the company then you can't give much more detail about the audit can you?

I would just give the industry sector or type of organisation with turnover, eg. fishing company, t/o €15m. That way you can then specify pretty much any other detail about the audit you want without worrying about confidentiality. Accountants love detail (but don't feel you need to remember everything either, that's why you're good at documenting your work, get it? it's all positive).

If you went into an interview and the employer saw you worked on an audit of John Moran Fishing Company, you'd be a disgrace if you gave details on company size, audit procedures, risk areas, what they were like as people. Accountants are typically discreet and it wouldn't give a good impression. At the very least you'd have to concentrate on what details you could or could not go into. You don't need that in an interview.

jockey#1

Thanks for all your sound advice. I think it is best not to include names of companies but I will mention the industriess, turnover etc as the companies would be well known in their respected industries but wouldn't be PLCs.

Do you all think it is neccessary to restrict my CV to two pages? Trying to get a financial accounting role however it is proving very tough and having had a free review of my CV recently, I was told I was really underselling myself!

Johnny_Fontane

Having worked in recruitment for 10 years on the accounting side - there is a bit of a grey area over whether to mention clients names or not.

Remember its a sales document - it very common knowledge in the accounting sphere who is audited by who. So if you work for Deloitte, saying that you audited a multinational food company - everybody knows its Kerry Group, so stick the name down imho. Of course if you have completed audits for some unknown sole trader with a turnover of €150k, not worth putting that down.

At the moment for qualified ACA's coming from Big 4, the market is very difficult particularly for those looking for financial/group accounting roles - you really have to have worked on the biggest audits - so I personally would say that if you're applying for a competitive role, have the big name clients on your cv.

Remember, you can have more than one version of your cv. Its a sales document at the end of the day - have one with client names, the other without - if you're applying directly make a decision before you send it out which one to use.

Whatever you do, dont send a cover letter, your experience is very self explanatory - you're a qualified aca with probably 1-2 years pqe in audit.

jockey#1

Johnny_Fontane wrote: »

Having worked in recruitment for 10 years on the accounting side - there is a bit of a grey area over whether to mention clients names or not.

Remember its a sales document - it very common knowledge in the accounting sphere who is audited by who. So if you work for Deloitte, saying that you audited a multinational food company - everybody knows its Kerry Group, so stick the name down imho. Of course if you have completed audits for some unknown sole trader with a turnover of €150k, not worth putting that down.

At the moment for qualified ACA's coming from Big 4, the market is very difficult particularly for those looking for financial/group accounting roles - you really have to have worked on the biggest audits - so I personally would say that if you're applying for a competitive role, have the big name clients on your cv.

Remember, you can have more than one version of your cv. Its a sales document at the end of the day - have one with client names, the other without - if you're applying directly make a decision before you send it out which one to use.

Whatever you do, dont send a cover letter, your experience is very self explanatory - you're a qualified aca with probably 1-2 years pqe in audit.

Thanks for your thoughts. Unfortunately I am not from a Big 4 background so I can't say I have worked on big audits, biggest was about T/O €20m. I am also ACCA not ACA which seems to be putting me behind other candidates who are ACA and Big 4 trained. Would you agree with this?

When you say don't send a cover letter, do you mean to recruitment agencies are when applying direct?

Jockey

bigjohnny80

Well the audit firm of any plc/Ltd is publicly available information.

I would not mention on CV or in interview though. Discretion is best. In fact u can talk more about what you have done if you don't mention the client name.

smcgiff

Firstly it's a fact that accountants (at least some) will include on their CV the names of big clients they have worked on. This may be unique to the accountancy profession, but I doubt it.

When you are in an interview, however, you would not specifically mention particulars of audit work you carried out on a particular company, so you're not going to say you discovered the senior management of company X were not paying BIK on their VHI etc. But you would mention the types of work you were involved with in a general sense which is what other practices partners will want to know about.

It's not such a big deal.

If not national companies there's probably little point in highlighting them, but you would give other particulars i.e. €20m t/o 200 employees, Balance Sheet worth €10m.

RE ACA or ACCA it depends on whether you are applying for Big 4 (they like those that are used to the Big 4 type of audit methods) or not. Big four will be more used to ACAs, but there are a lot more audit firms out there that wont care, and then there's always industry which it will matter even less.

RE not including cover letter - I found that advice strange I must say.

SIBHCHEVIE

I have just recently moved from a medium sized practice myself to industry, within my contract there was a paragraph about client confidientiality. I would check your contract to see waht it says but I would be surprised if it allows you disclose the names of their clients.

The best way to prepare your CV is describe the work that you did on clients, say they were a retail client, or in the motor or construction industry and they had a turnover of x. That way the potential employer knows what type of clients you have worked on and what size they were.

Don't go in to too much detail on your CV though just be brief, that way you have something to talk about in your interview.

smcgiff

SIBHCHEVIE wrote: »

Don't go in to too much detail on your CV though just be brief, that way you have something to talk about in your interview.

Just get the bloody interview first!

cabrwab

smcgiff wrote: »

Just get the bloody interview first!

Wow helpful:rolleyes:

As helpful as this post is.


Personally i wouldn't mention companies names. Surely confidentially clause would definitely have you there.

smcgiff

cabrwab wrote: »

Wow helpful:rolleyes:

As helpful as this post is.


Personally i wouldn't mention companies names. Surely confidentially clause would definitely have you there.

Ok-ay - will try to keep it to sin-gle syll-ab-les. Large com-pan-ies get aud-it-ed. FACT. There-fore how will it break a con-fid-ence to say you aud-it-ed cer-tain com-pan-ies?

Now I'm assuming everyone has worked on the audit of more than one company (even Big 4 have more variety than that) and therefore when in an interview you mention the work you've done the interviewer will not know which company you are referring to.

And if you don't understand how important it is to get the interview then god help you. You need to include everything in your CV (and don't go out of your way to mis-interpret me - it of course needs to be concise) to get to the interview stage. There's no point holding back ammo to wow them at the interview.

Also, a good cover letter is essential. It's the first thing I look at and a poor cover letter means I'm already looking for an excuse to chuck the CV.

SIBHCHEVIE

Look the OP is not from a big 4 so the clients are not going to be obvious to any employer and nor should they be, any employer would not ask the names of clients you have worked on and I know from experience.

OP If you give the name of a client it really limits what you can say because if you've come across major issues while doing the audit you can't really talk about it because thats divulging confidential information. Its better to say "I worked on a company in the motor industry and they were not keeping proper records" and we had to report them or they had going concern issues stuff like that.

OP keep the CV concise mine was 2 pages, give details of industries you've worked in and if you are going for an industry job like I was emphasise your management accounts experience because thats what they will be looking for. The size, amount of turnover of companies i left to talk about in my interviews.

Good luck OP if you are really having trouble pulling your CV together maybe try sending it to a recruitment agency they will guide you, I used Hays and they were brilliant.