What do you do when your realize that you don’t want to use your accounting skills to be a CPA? You have worked as an office accountant for the past couple of years but you are just looking for something new.
Whatever your reason for changing careers, you can still use your accounting skills in other careers. If you want to learn more about this then let’s get started:
1. Professional Translator
If you are bilingual or a polyglot, and you always have had an interest in linguistics, why not become a specialized translator? Because of your financial and accountancy background, your expertise will greatly be needed for business and finance translations.
Tomedes, a translation company specializing in the translation of business and financial documents, wrote about the different courses in translator certification available online and in various educational institutions in the US. They explained there are two types of certifications: generalized translation certification and specialized translation certification.
Generalized translation certifications are translation courses that usually take longer to complete because they explore translation and interpretation theories in the lectures and practical evaluations. Meanwhile, specialized translation certifications are courses in specialized fields like medicine and law.
If you are wondering if there are online courses, there are translation courses online that offer training in different languages. Depending on the language pairs you want to be an expert in, make sure to look into their courses before enrolling.
2. Forensic Services
You might be wondering, what can your CPA skills do in forensic? A lot actually. Ever hear of “white-collar” crimes? These are crimes like Ponzi schemes and money laundering. “White-collar” crimes are usually nonviolent crimes that would financially enrichen individuals, corporations and government professionals.
If you’ve always wanted to fight for justice then working in financial forensics would be the right career for you. Chron explained that under financial forensics, you could use your accounting and auditing skills in investigating and interpreting financial statements of possible fraudulent activities.
If you took courses for a translation certificate online, you also can use that skill to examine foreign financial transactions and translate them for the court to understand. With your financial and linguistic expertise, you could help authorities determine money laundering operations that came from overseas then brought to the US.
3. Not-for-profits
Do you believe in a cause but do not know how to support it? Well, why not join or start a not-for-profit organization? Your accountancy skills will be beneficial for a not-for-profit organization because you can facilitate spending control. Because of its business model, not-for-profits tend to have limited budgets.
Often, these organizations are not tech-savvy or have an in-depth understanding of accounting. They usually employ external accountants for these certain activities. If you become part of a not-for-profit organization, you could closely monitor financial translations and spendings and provide insights on financial matters.
4. Financial Advisor
As a financial advisor, you will be responsible for assisting your clients with trade. Because you graduated with an accounting degree, you know explaining financial trades and plans and helping clients achieve their financial goals.
The plans that financial advisors create also include budget, insurance, tax and savings. They regularly re-evaluate their client’s current financial situation.
Many financial advisors work from home and have left behind conventional offices to become more technologically driven, especially due to the pandemic. It makes sense because of three key reasons that were explained in an article by Insightful Accountant:
- It is more efficient because instead of commuting to and from work, you can just do work from home. You can maximize on different tech and tools to maximize your productivity.
- With remote work comes flexibility, which a traditional office setup can’t accommodate. In this work model, you must constantly be on the lookout for how to improve productivity with your team and dealing with clients.
- Due to all of this, it fosters rapid improvements. Remote work models are all about efficiency and it might take some time in finding a work culture and system that will work for you and your team but eventually, you will get there.
5. Buy-side Financial Analyst
Being a buy-side financial analyst can be demanding as it’s a career that’s all about research. However, if you are the type of person who likes to do thorough research regarding investment and management of portfolio and assets then this is the career for you.
Investopedia explained that buy-side financial analysts are focused on avoiding major financial mistakes and evaluate the risk management of investments. They’re up-to-date with news, keep track of internal and external information, and develop a keen eye and skill in determining the best stocks to invest in.
Buy-side analysts communicate and interact with other financial analysts while coming up with their own research. They also are the ones who have the say regarding the direction of their firm’s trades.
But before you can become a buy-side financial analyst, you must be an associate first, which takes up to two to four years. Another consideration you must think about before planning to become a buy-side financial analyst is that the working hours are around 70-pllus hours per week.
It makes sense that the number of hours would be that long because this job requires someone that is detail-oriented, can work with cerebral activities, quantitative, and work independently. These are just some of the careers you can pursue if the regular 9-5 office accountant work-life is not for you.
Clarriza Mae Heruela graduated with a creative writing degree. She has previously written articles regarding cryptocurrency, fintech, financial services and the language industry.
Like what you're reading?
Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and we'll deliver content like this directly to your inbox.