Career Advice

twitpants

I'm looking for advice on my career. With my current situation I feel like I'm stuck in a whole and don't know how to get out of it. Here's my situation.

I'm 27 years old. I recently completed the ACCA accounting exams. I completed the exams while working as a Fund Accountant. These exams were the hardest thing I've ever done and I was delighted to see the back of them. But to be honest, finishing the exams has been a bit of an anti-climax. I didn't do the exams because of a desire to be a top accountant for a company. I did them because I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do and I thought having the accounting exams would open more doors.

I am still stuck in funds and badly want to get out. I find my day-to-day work life extremely boring and I feel I'm just wasting my time. I want a career but the problem is I don't know what in. I've looked at moving to some other form of accounting like auditing or a finance department in a company but so far I've had no luck. They all want people with experience in that particulat industry. My other thought is going back to college doing a masters in some form of IT. I find IT interesting and a lot less boring than accounting. The only part of my current job that I like is working with excel and using formula to solve problems.

So, my questions are:
Do people think I should go back to college next September full time for a year and try to start a career in IT

OR

Would people recommend moving into a different accounting job and if so what would be the best approach to do this?

Thanks in advance for your help

Mr. Loverman

Tell me what you think IT is.

Most people working in IT hate it. Boring as hell and (if you do something like software development) quite low paid for the skill and effort involved.

CreamCrackers

Answer me this... Are IT or any form of accounting things you'd like to do, or are you just pigeon holing yourself because you think they are the easy options? From what you said I feel its the latter.

I'm not sure what you think IT is exactly but I have many friends who are studying computing in DCU and they absolutely love it. Its not something that they consider to be 'less boring' than something else. They have a passion for coding, operating systems software development etc. One of my friends spends his spare time improving on his graphic design skills and learning new programming languages. Another one of my mates has a degree in video game development and he's been trying to get into that industry for quite some time now, so much so that he has started developing his own video game in his spare time. A job in IT involves a lot of hard work. I don't know a huge amount about that industry but the impression I get from my friends is that its a tough industry to be successful in. You have to be good at what you do and definitely have an interest it. There is a lot of problem solving.. but its more than just excel.

I was at a career fair in Dublin during the Summer. And like yourself I didn't know what I wanted to do. My friend wandered over to a computing company of some sort and I asked whether they take on people from other fields and their reply was 'they can apply but they wont get very far in in application process because we have access to a large pool of people who are actually qualified'. That's fair enough. I was talking to my friend about doing a masters in computing that DCU have on offer and she told me that unless I do it through a company there isn't much point because I'll be going up against people who have undergrads and depending on where they studied, experience under their belt. Technically they would a little more qualified.

I don't want to put you off doing computing, but really think it through and also look at all your options. There may be other careers that you might prefer. Don't limit yourself to what you have qualifications in or what you might consider to be an easy option. Think about what you actually want and go for it, even if the route you decide to take is slightly more risky. The aim of the game is to be happy right?? Best of luck!

Have you considered using your current qualifications and experience by perhaps going into something like data analysis? - you might be able to move internally or take on extra responsibility to get a start.