Retrain as Accountant?

[NameChangeCareerChange1]

I'm in my early forties working in a senior role in a regional technical consultancy business.

I've reached the furthest point I can in my current career, it's fairly niche sector and isn't well enough understood or valued to make a sideways transition into another sector where there are better progression opportunities.

I'm interested in retraining in accountancy (possibly tax, specifically interested in VAT). However I'm neither qualified enough for experienced-hire type roles, nor am I a recent graduate. I am already ACCA qualified, though have never worked for an accountancy practice.

My ideal is to find a fairly junior role in an accountancy practice, or a graduate fast track type role and work my way (hopefully relatively swiftly) back up.

Any accountants or recruiters with advice about whether this is do-able, or how to frame approaches with firms?

There are loads of accountancy jobs around - no reason why you can’t pick this up quickly and you wouldn’t necessarily need a joy IIt role.

Wy not sign up with a few agencies and you can take your pick as you are already working.

On one hand you may do better in a smaller practice, where you can accelerate at your own pace. On the other hand, salary, flexibility and training may be better at a larger practice.

Graduate schemes in the huge firms tend to hire way in advance at specific intervals eg for a group intake in Sep or Jan and won’t expect you to be fully qualified. So maybe you want to avoid top ten firms.

How come you have ended up doing ACCA and what’s behind your special inter in tax/ VAT?

Thanks @Scarletttulips

@UndecidedAboutEverything My firm is a technical specialist and some consultancy engagements include some financial aspects (budgets etc). I already had SME bookkeeping experience. ACCA was personal development, useful to my current role and, I'd hoped, something recognisable to employers if I wanted to change sector.

I think I would prefer to be a technical specialist, rather than a GP/client manager, and I find tax and VAT interesting.

I think that without experience you’ll struggle to get a tax specific job other than at entry level. I’d suggest looking at CTA /ATT exam qualification by way of demonstrating tax competence and you could also consider entry level at HMRC (VAT side) before coming out again into a VAT specialist role. Ex HMRC seems to be where many VAT specialists come from.

Alternatively you could be very in demand as an R&D tax specialist especially if your technical consultancy role comes anywhere near Software. The new HMRC focus on R&D claims is really shining a light on the lack of people who really know the legislation inside out but, critically, also know the technological industry in question so that they can offer accurate advice on whether there is enough advancement of the field, and back that up at enquiry.

To become a specialist is going to take years of training and junior roles

Can you afford to take junior roles? Salaries in accountancy practices tend to be much lower than industry

Can I just clarify how you met the practical experience requirements to qualify as an ACCA member? Or do you mean you are an exam-qualified affiliate only?

Asking because I'm trying to think through options.

You can't join a graduate scheme in practice as a qualified person - graduate schemes in practice are to put people through their first qualification as ACA, CA, or ACCA.

You could potentially apply for HMRC's tax specialist scheme. That's 3-4 years, graduate entry, on successful completion you'd be a G7 on c£52k.

ATT/CTA are the natural top-up qualifications for a qualified generalist wanting to specialise in tax. But that assumes you already have a minimum 3 years of practical experience in qualifying.

@NeedingCoffee I'm resigned to needing to take an entry level role, but my impression was that either these are graduate trainee or 'technician" type roles which aren’t geared up for progression. I'm not averse to a graduate trainee role in a firm where I can progress as swiftly as my ability allows but would I even be considered? Hadn't thought about HMRC.

ATT requires 2 years of practical tax experience to qualify. It's compliance focused. (I think it's a level 4 qualification but not 100%.)

Achieving CTA membership requires 3 years of relevant and recent practical experience in addition to exam passes. The exams are tough and advisory focused. People often say they are harder than ACA/CA/ACCA even though on paper they are all level 7 qualifications.

I don't think it would be a good idea to embark upon CTA without first addressing your level of experience.

The right employer would put you through the appropriate tax qualifications, so I think your priority should be experience rather than more exams.

@folkjournals I'm a full member - effectively I'm a management accountant but it's not my official job title.

Edited to say that I enjoy the management accounting or business advisory aspects of my role far less than I enjoy getting my head around complex VAT rules, hence thinking of a tax speciality.

I’m not in UK so not sure if relevant but one of my kids has an accountancy degree (so assume this is what they do as their job?), and they pull decent hours (70+/week) at their job so I’d factor that in if relevant in UK?

Practice has a very fixed career hierarchy. At very junior level if people are performing and meeting the right milestones then annual promotion is pretty normal. Once at a qualified grade it slows to 2-5 years between promotions.

If you were achieving everything required to progress into the next role up, I can't see why you would be excluded from promotions just because you didn't join as a graduate trainee. That's just not how practice works.

The only things that would prevent promotion would be if you weren't qualified (and therefore max out as a "senior"), you hadn't met the expectations for the next level up, or business reasons if they didn't have enough capacity to promote you on a given promo
tion cycle.

@folkjournals do you think it's the graduate trainee programme contacts that I should speak to in bigger firms, or the experienced hire team?

Ah ok that makes sense.

Right, just thinking out loud here, but if you want to get practice experience as a first step to becoming a tax specialist, then you could look for practice roles in "outsourcing" or "virtual finance" functions.

Top50+50 practices are more likely to have an outsourcing department - management accounts, bookkeeping, payroll, etc. Depending on the practice it may also extend into statutory accounts prep which would then include liaising with their tax department. This would give you some exposure and relationships to work towards a side step.

If you want to work in VAT, outsourcing would also be a good department because usually that's the department handling VAT compliance. VAT advisory tends to be a tax department function but there would be ways and means to transition to advisory once you'd proven yourself with compliance and practice.

At the bigger practices they may have an outsourcing function and also a separate function that purely does statutory accounts prep (either for non-audit clients or clients audited by their audit dept or another firm). That might be a manageable direct transition for a management accountant, although the learning curve might be steep depending what grade you joined at (probably mostly in terms of how things are done in practice).

Off the top of my head, those would probably seem the most natural transitions to get experience in practice (of culture and how to succeed in practice) as well as giving you exposure to other functions. Once you've proven yourself to be a safe pair of hands there are options to side step across into a different department either as a secondment or permanently.

Alternatively you could look for tax trainee roles that are offering ATT/CTA pathway rather than ACA/CTA. You would be starting at the bottom but probably annual promotions and six monthly pay rises so you should be on around £50k by qualification after 3-4 years. Which is on a par with the HMRC tax specialist route.

It also all depends on what you want to be able to be doing 10 years from now?

If you try the outsourcing/pure accounts route as your entry point, then experienced hire.

If you want direct entry to a tax team then trainee/early career/graduate (won't necessarily be advertised as graduate schemes because you don't need a degree to do accounts qualifications) - but either find a place using the ATT/CTA route or one that's open to negotiation/allowing you to use your ACCA exemptions from ACA so you don't have to do another 15 accountancy exams for no purpose.

If you do join a traditional intake for a training contract you will most likely be 20 years older than everyone else.

If you took a more squiggly route and moved across from an outsourcing team to secondment and then being sponsored for CTA that would probably be less jarring. (E.g. you wouldn't have people referring to you as a "first year"...)

Oh, also to add - I've known a few people move from audit or pure accounts roles into corporate tax or VAT roles by initially doing a secondment. They did very well and their accounts knowledge and experience gave them an advantage for those tax specialisms.

I'd just get your CV out there and discuss what type of role you want. You are already qualified, although have no practice experience, so practice graduate trainee jobs won't quite suit either. Most start off with general accounts, and lots of audit work, then a bit of Corp Tax and Personal Tax and VAT experience. At a low junior salary. And that isn't quite what you want either. Just apply to a few practice jobs, liaise with some agencies and see what they say.

Thanks for taking the time to explain, @folkjournals I'll take a look at those suggestions.