Careers Choices

I am sure most of us have been asked the question ‘what would you like to be when you grow up?’ at least once during our youth and I would hazard a guess that most of our answers would have been to become a fireman, hairdresser, footballer, doctor, or perhaps even Superman.

What was my answer? Well, let me tell you a story. After one particular trip to the supermarket (being as observant as I usually am), I turned to my mother and said “I know what I want to be when I grow up! A cashier”. “Why?” my mother responded. “Because you just sit there and people come and give you money to keep in a box.” At the time of course no one had explained to me that the money they collected was not theirs to keep. From that moment onwards, I knew that ‘counting’ would probably play an important role in my life.

It was not until my GCSEs and later A Levels that I really understood how important the role of an accountant is. As I matured, I wanted to find out more. In order to find out exactly what an accountant actually does, I thought I’d do some research on the Internet. I found out that the word accountant has an interesting history.

It is actually derived from the French verb compter, which, like a decent proportion of English and French, originates from latin, in this case, the Latin verb computare meaning ‘to count’. The word was formerly written in English as accomptant, but over time, (having always been pronounced by dropping the ‘p’), the pronunciation and its spelling has evolved into the current, more anglicised form.

Whenever I would tell people that I wanted to study accountancy, I was surprised to find that most people think that being an accountant is a boring profession. I could not understand the negativity shown towards my choice of profession. They do not seem to express that kind of negativity towards professions such as firemen, police officers or soldiers, which can be really dangerous. I believe the negativity towards accountants may be derived from a lack of understanding (perhaps even phobia) of the number crunching involved in accounting, or a fear of filing an incorrect tax return.

Having friends who work in the City of London, I had the opportunity to ask them what a typical interaction with their accountants is like. I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to discover that they all thought their accountants are a very valuable part of their organisations. They seem to think that their accountants are like the ‘doctors’ of their firm. They analyse the financial health of the organisation, they find remedies to ‘cure’ any hiccups in the everyday transactions and advise their clients how to make their business more profitable.

Those answers were good enough for me. And before you forget, “my name is Ellie and I would like to be an accountant”.

Below are job sites which I recommend:
eFinancialCareers
The Accountant Magazine - Job Section

By Ellie Fanis
BPP University College

This post first appeared in The Accountant (February 2012)