In this podcast episode, we discuss how a person outside of accounting can transfer his or her skills into the field. Key points made are noted below.

How to Transfer Skills Into Accounting

The basic question is, how does someone in a different field transfer their skills into accounting? This is really more of a career planning question, and so I wouldn’t normally address the topic – but an awful lot of people are asking it. Given the amount of interest, I’ll give it a try.

First, we have to attach some assumptions to the question. The context seems to be that everyone started off going down a different career path, so they have training in something else. They don’t like what they’re doing, or perhaps they were laid off, so now they want to give accounting a try.

Age-Related Restrictions

Next, let’s point out the restrictions on trying to jump sideways into accounting. First, a formal accounting degree can take up to five years of college. If you’re a little older, with a family to support, it’s probably difficult to impossible to get that training. The next restriction is that the auditing firms tend to hire people who are pretty young, and right out of college. So if you want to get into auditing and you don’t fit that profile, good luck. And to make matters worse, some of the larger companies prefer to hire from the audit firms, so you’re not going to be targeted by these firms.

So these are some barriers to getting into accounting. So, we need to find some alternative paths. Let’s take a look.

Working for a Smaller Company

The first alternative is getting a job with a very small company, like a startup. Their founders may not be too picky about qualifications, as long as you’re willing to take a cut in pay, and do work that covers more than accounting. So, for example, if you have skills in purchasing, you could head up that area, and volunteer to supervise accounting, too. Over time, senior managers might fork over a controller title to go with all of that responsibility.

But the trouble with the small company approach is that small companies tend to grow. And when they do, they may hire auditors to do an audit, and the auditors may point out that the accounting staff is kind of underqualified – at least on paper. So this approach may work initially, but gets riskier over time. Still, it gives you the job you want for a while, and you can use that time to pick up some additional training or certifications.

Working in a Specialized Area

The second alternative is to get a job in a specialized area of accounting that relates to what you already do. For example, if you already do purchasing, get a job in payables. Or if you work in the warehouse, get a job doing inventory valuation. Or if you do engineering, there might be a home for you in cost accounting. Or if you do sales, perhaps there’s a way to shift that experience over into calculating commissions. Now, this is a bottom-up approach. Once you’re in the department, it’s up to you to work up through the management levels.

Working in Rotating Positions

A third option is to find a company that makes a point of rotating its staff through a bunch of positions. You see it sometimes in restaurant chains, airlines, consumer goods operations – it just depends on how senior management wants to run the company. If you’re lucky enough to be accepted, make it known that you’d like to eventually take a turn in accounting. Of course, the downside of this approach is that you’ll eventually be moved through accounting and on to something else. Still, this is the type of operation where not having a perfect resume is less of a problem.

When Your Educational Background is Weak

Another variation on the initial question comes from a couple of listeners that are currently controllers or CFOs, but they’re nervous about their ability to shift jobs because they never piled up the credentials to begin with, and now a lot of years have gone by. I know some of these people personally, and they’re totally competent. The trouble is that they stayed with one company for a long time and worked their way up from the bottom without getting formal training or certifications.

This is a really scary place to be. They’re a little older, their resumes are a bit weak, and so they’re not sure about how the marketplace will view them. And to make matters worse, they’ve been with their current employers for so long that their pay is well above the industry average, so a job with someone else is almost certainly going to require a pay cut.

In this case, I point out that you currently have a job in the accounting field, so stay there as long as it takes, while you fill the resume holes. That may mean multiple years of night courses at college, but if you’re serious about it, then get going now, and stick with it. You may be doing this for a long time, but having a solid resume means you can break free from your employer with a lot more confidence, and hopefully get a pay raise out of it, too.

In most of these cases, if a company is looking into going public, you might be screwed. Even if you’ve made it into the accounting department and it looks like you have a successful new career, your lack of training and certifications might stop you cold. When a company goes public, advisors are going to recommend that management bring in a real pro with perfect credentials, just to impress the investors.

Parting Thoughts

So in short, getting into the accounting field from some other profession is not that easy, especially if you’re coming at it from a position of minimal accounting knowledge. If you’re already in the field but have a weak resume, you may do pretty well within your current company, but can’t go elsewhere. Though I’ve made some suggestions that might help, there’s really no quick and easy workaround. If you want a solid career move that you’re planning to stick with for a long time, nothing beats getting a formal degree and perhaps a certification, too.

This may all sound a bit gloomy, but on the other hand, there’re a lot of job opportunities in accounting, and that’s not supposed to change, so it can be worth the effort to get in some extra work to either make the switch into accounting, or to bolster the position you already have.