Career Crisis?!

[QuestioningChoices]

Hi all,

I work as a Tax Advisor and whilst I love the job and the work, I can’t help but think there’s more to life than managing all of the stress of 400+ clients and having a really difficult team around me (nobody takes on ad-hoc work, or pulls their weight)

How do I know if I want a change of career or just a new job in the same role?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

DH is a tax advisor and I showed him your post, he reckons you’re in personal tax. No need to confirm or deny to protect anonymity. He worked in personal tax and hated it, moved to a different area of tax and is mostly a lot happier.

I’m not in tax but also considering whether I want a change in career or new job in the same role. I’ve been paying attention to which aspects of my job I find most enjoyable. For me, the pets of my job that I most enjoy are not my day job, so I’ve figured I probably need a career change. Taking out the workload, politics, pressure - which (if any) bits of your job do you enjoy? If none, it’s probably time to start thinking about retraining for something.

Hi, so you really need to sit down and write some lists!! (I'm a careers coach with 20 years experience). Start by writing what you want so your dream job! It doesn't have to be a specific job but how it makes you feel, the type of work you might be doing. Then write down what you actually need from a job, look at hours and salary as well as satisfaction. (It's a little bit like dating!) Then you need to start writing down your skills! All those things you're good at. A lot of these will not be job specific. They will be transferable. Once you've done that you can start looking at job adverts. Have a look what is out there that meets your requirements. It might be something in the same field or it might suprise you.

If you want any more help please let me know xx

@RaspberryToupee I’m in a mixed role, personal and corporate. May I ask what area of tax your DH works in?

Feel free to PM me if you’d rather!

I definitely enjoy working with numbers, I enjoy building the relationships with clients. So I do think I really enjoy the career path itself - but perhaps just not the role as it is as the moment.

@Careersmummy

Thank you so much for your response - especially as you’ve come on to just do your day job again! So kind of you.

I just worry I would be throwing away years of my work for professional qualifications - so perhaps I would like a role where they are actually worth something (even if not as much!) xxx

Wondering if I work with you.

Speaking as a miserable mixed tax person myself, I think it is the worst of both worlds and tends to descend into drudgery once the novelty wears off.

Mixed tax sounds great on paper from a client service and "variety" perspective except the reality is filled with monotony and conflicting (barely manageable) deadlines that never let up.

I also think that UK tax law is too complex for a mixed tax role to be manageable beyond a data entry level. But who'd want to spend their career doing tax data entry?

Do you think you'd be happier if you had a narrower specialism? Or a caseload with a smaller client element and higher training, technical, advisory, whatever focus?

I would like to narrow my specialism but feel a bit stuck right now. All the jobs I've seen on the market lately have sounded like the same monotonous drudgery I currently fill my days with, even if they're not mixed tax.

@chchchchchch it sounds as if you do! Haha!

You’ve hit the nail on the head completely.

I do have a genuine passion for personal tax and HNWI / UHNWI. I’m considering undertaking the STEP qualification (if I stay in the role) which I’m hoping would give me some more focus and direction.

At the moment, as you said, my role is just deadline after deadline and being expected to manage my portfolio, pick up adhoc work and work on client advisory pieces ranging from brief to pages of reports.

I was worried to narrow my specialism so early into my careers. (I’m mid 20s and started as a school leaver.)

What area would you consider specialising in?

I think perhaps November is a difficult month for us - with the December CT600s due (accounting deadline extension only stressed me more) and January personal tax ....

Here’s hoping we can make it !

@QuestioningChoices I’ve sent you a PM. I’ve not been overly detailed (mostly because I’m in a completely different field and some of the nitty-gritty is lost on me). If you need more detail about what DH gets up to in his area though I’ll ask him the questions.

STEP sounds like a great plan from what you've said, and should allow you to focus more on the work you enjoy. I know a few people with STEP and the narrower caseload to match - they seem to be doing well.

I regret staying in mixed tax when I was at your stage rather than specialising. I was afraid of losing the breadth of knowledge/experience, but I now realise that means I lost the opportunity for interesting and manageable work instead.

Based on my observations (and hindsight!), specialising once you know what you enjoy gives you more time to build up a depth of knowledge and experience and to really establish yourself, rather than being limiting as I once thought.

Thinking about it, I also know people who've specialised and then branched back out and picked up taxes they hadn't worked on for years. So I guess it doesn't close as many doors as it seems.

Definitely agree with you on the time of year and extra aggro from filing extensions. Not helping.

If I were to specialise I'd go in the corporate direction, ideally a subset of corporate rather than the endless annual compliance cycle stuff.

@chchchchchch thank you so much for your response.

You’re so right. I’ve been so worried about closing doors for myself that I have subconsciously made my own work unmanageable and ended up started to strongly dislike the whole industry!

Yes - the corporate tax compliance is what I loathe the most. It just feels endless...

Maybe we should just go for it! You only live once. I wish I enjoyed corporation tax more - I think I just dislike it due to the monotonous compliance. I’m sure the advisory is fine !

Are you London based at all?