Sunday, March 15, 2015

Singapore & Malaysia - accounting graduate - should you start your career from audit firm or commercial

If you are an accounting graduate in Singapore or Malaysia, more often that not , you maybe asking if you should start your career in audit or commercial firm (note: for those accounting graduate, who intend to pursue non-accounting field, it is different set of stories / analysis).


There are pros and cons that one would have heard about having a career in audit, as summarized below:


Pros:
- Exposure to different industries and client
- Steep learning curve to build up career foundation
- Favorable increment and promotion
- Exposure in different aspect of financial accounting, including: tax
- Opportunity to deal with different client


Cons:
- Extensive working hours
- Tight dateline
- Health


Above are the pros and cons one should expect from audit. Different personnel has different priority at different stage of life - it's important for one to weigh the key considerations that matters in determining the career. Of course, for youngster, we recommend them to start from audit.


No doubt, commercial do provide pros that may be listed above - e.g. you start with a finance department in commercial, who is a big conglomerate. However, through our observation, more often than not, the financial controllers/ finance managers/ chief financial officer of most of the listed entities had some background in audit.


The exposure in audit allows one to gain different insight of the business. Our comments could be bias, as we are auditor.


Any blog reader who want to share with us your thought or other side of the stories?

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