Making Manager: The Key to Accelerating a Career in Public Accounting: Here's Why Being Promoted to Manager Is an Important Step for Young CPAs-And What They Need to Learn to Land the Promotion
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jessica Kober, CPA, knows the challenges that young accountants are going through as they try to carve out a career in public accounting. "Public accounting is a very humbling field," said Kober, 30, who works in the Long Beach, Calif., office of Windes Inc., a CPA firm with about 150 employees. Young accountants, even those who may have been star students in college, will have a lot to learn and must take plenty of constructive criticism to heart. They also must spend many long hours preparing for the CPA exam. Young public accountants are on the receiving end of a never-ending stream of assignments, especially during the rigors of busy season. But Kober has good news for CPAs who stick with it: All that hard work pays off. "Once you get that promotion to manager, you see so many doors open," she said. If you get promoted to manager, suddenly the prospect of becoming a partner is very real. And even if a CPA opts out of public accounting, the management experience gained in public accounting can help his or her career advancement prospects in business and industry. There are other, more immediate benefits as well, according to Kober, who was promoted to audit manager in July. She received the requisite salary boost that a promotion entails. The firm paid for a steak lunch for all the recently promoted managers--an event that gave her plenty of face time with partners--and placed a celebratory bottle of Champagne on her desk. Soon, she'll be getting her own office. All those benefits, especially the long-term ones, make obtaining a promotion to manager a linchpin to a successful accounting career. This article examines why that position is so important and explores the skills young CPAs need to master to be named a manager. The manager role is a bridge position. In roles below that, accountants are primarily responsible for nuts-and-bolts accounting production. Positions higher on the food chain spend much more time running the firm, including supervising employees, developing new business, and implementing strategic initiatives. To be promoted to manager, a CPA needs to show that he or she can handle any of the work being done by employees below him or her on the pyramid while also displaying the nascent skills needed by those above. STRONG TECHNICAL SKILLS To be a manager, CPAs must first prove that they possess strong technical skills. That's because managers are the glue that holds a project together. Managers need to be able to jump in and assist on any part of a job if necessary. They'll also be required to instruct their less experienced direct reports and catch any errors those workers make. "For me, the best part about it [being a manager] is being able to train the young seniors and staff," Kober said. "I think it's really exciting to be able to see people grow and move up in the organization." In some industries, business school majors can move into management without initially being experts in a particular field. The same is not true for the accounting profession, where being technically proficient is a requirement to advance at firms of all sizes. Ryan Thorpe, CPA, an assurance manager at Pulakos CPAs, a 2 5-employee firm in Albuquerque, N.M., cites technical proficiency as the No. 1 skill needed to be a manager at his firm. Jennifer Busse said that McGladrey also requires its manager prospects to become subject-matter experts. CPAs usually pick an industry to "major" in--such as private equity, for instance--and another to "minor" in (e.g., manufacturing) early in their career at the firm, added Busse, a regional and national recruiting director for the firm. INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS All that technical proficiency won't matter much if a manager can't properly communicate with his or her direct reports. Managers are leaders, so they need strong spoken and written communication skills to explain the engagement to a team of staffers and seniors. …