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Career Opportunities in Accounting |
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Accountants have become integral to the maintenance and sustainability of today's corporations and governmental agencies. Beyond their fundamental services and skills - preparing, analyzing, and verifying financial documents as well as designing internal control systems - accountants have begun to expand their skill sets to include offerings such as financial planning, budget analysis, and limited legal advice. Although many accounting students go on to become general accountants, bookkeepers, CPAs, or CMAs, today's career opportunities in this field range from actuary to claims adjuster and from general auditor to professor. There are generally four different types of accountants, each with a different financial or operational focus: internal auditing, government, management, and public.
Public accountants work for clients such as corporations, governments, nonprofit organizations, or individuals and perform a wide range of financial services. Public accountants most often work for public accounting firms or as independent consultants.
Management accountants - sometimes referred to as private, industrial, or corporate accountants - analyze and verify the financial information corporate executives need to make sound business decisions; these accountants tend to work for large corporations as a part of executive teams involved in strategic business planning.
Government accountants and auditors maintain and analyze the financials of government agencies as well as audit private individuals and corporations subject to federal, state, or local taxation.
Internal auditing groups have recently grown in numbers within many private and public organizations in the past few years. Members of these teams are responsible for examining the accuracy of an organization's financial records as well as their corporate operations - evaluating operating procedure and federal, state, and local regulation compliance.
Accounting educations tend to focus on developing problem solving and analytical skills, an understanding of corporate financials, and the strong communication and presentation of financial information. These skills and proficiencies open the door to a world of opportunity in both the for-profit and nonprofit worlds.
Schools such as CollegeAmerica, Kaplan College, and Nebraska College of Business offer intensive accounting degree, certification, and licensing programs designed to provide students with the wide range of skills needed to pave one of the many different paths to success in this field.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Employment of accountants and auditors is expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations through the year 2010." With some of the highest starting salaries, highly motivated accountants are in a position to achieve great financial and professional growth.
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