The Work of an Accountant Assistant - Essay Example

?Reflection During the internship, I performed the work of an accountant assistant in a construction company. For three months, I assisted in the preparation of the financial statement, which means I helped in the gathering of quarterly and year-end information on the company’s operations, particularly revenues, operating costs, administrative and selling expenses, and other extraordinary incomes and expenses. At one point, I assisted in totalling gross revenues from the company’s sales receipts and figuring out the sales commissions and discounts. I then removed the effects of commissions and discounts from the gross revenues in order to arrive at the net revenues, which are the money that actually enters the company’s coffers. While the major decisions and the exercise of accounting prerogatives are performed by the senior accountant, I learnt a lot about the demands of the profession by performing the regular or routine work such as executing the trial balance of the statement of financial condition or reconciling the sales balances for the month. Aside from helping in the preparation of the financial statements for the firm, I occasionally was asked to do some tasks that had to do with the individual projects which the construction firm was involved in. It happens to be a much more difficult accounting for projects rather than for the company in its entirety because projects have a budget that was drawn pursuant to the terms of the contract, and the interpretation of accounts, allocation of expenses, and reconciliation of records and activities pertaining to the project can be difficult while the project is in progress. For a short while I was assigned to other sections to gain a better grasp of the accounting procedures involved in those areas. While the stay in each section was brief and the work I was asked to perform was only routine, my brief exposure nevertheless added to my appreciation of the manner in which the job was done and the significance of the function of the section in the overall department. There are a number of skills I developed in the course of the program, the most of important of which is the set of people skills which I needed to deal with my superiors, co-workers and team mates, and with the clients who would consult occasionally concerning the progress of the projects. I also dealt on a regular basis with staff from the other departments, coordinating with counterparts in procurement, engineering, and marketing. From this I discovered that the organisation is more than just a rigid structure that governs people. An organisation is a dynamic set of relationships among its members who interact with one another to successfully achieve the organisation’s strategic goal. As mentioned, I worked under the supervision of a senior accountant. She has been in the profession for several years and with the construction company for almost the same duration. From her, I had learnt that because of the specialised knowledge which our profession implies, we are held to a higher standard of ethics than most other workers in the organisation. This is because we, as accounting and finance professionals, are relied upon by all major stakeholders who deal with the organisation, such as the management, shareholders or business owners, the government and regulators. I learnt in school that the position of an accountant or financier is imbued with trust, but it was only during the internship that I came to realise what this actually means in practice, and it is such a profound responsibility. There are other things about which I had been taught in school, but had only come to fully appreciate during the internship. I had gained a greater self-confidence during the program and began to trust my abilities and my decisions in addressing the tasks of my job. I learnt to face clients with a greater sense of self-assuredness by understanding that the service was all about satisfying their needs in the most convenient way possible for them. I also learnt the value of team work, particularly where the complexity of the work appeared so daunting. I found out that when a big job is broken down into smaller components and team members could count on each other to work on their own tasks and help each other, then the work gets done and is done well. Finally, together with the team members, I learnt how to be a leader. Leadership in a team is not merely the job of the team leader, but each member is empowered to share in the leadership initiative. We become our own leaders when we are engaged in the job, and we exercise our best judgement, motivated by the same team goal. Discussion In the past decade, there has been a sudden shift in the trend of employment for graduates. From 2001 to just before the 2008 recession, the rate of employment for recent graduates (i.e., those who graduated within six years of the survey date) was generally higher than the rate of employment of all graduates, notwithstanding the duration of time that has passed since graduation. This is only to be expected because as a group, the more recent graduates are younger and eagerly looking forward to finding stable employment, while those who had graduated a longer time ago are usually older, more mature, and would have opted for stay-home alternatives to look after the family (ONS 2012, p. 2). However, the recession appears to have impacted more the recent graduates, reversing the trend of the first half of the decade (Hoare et al. 2010). The curve corresponding to the employment rate for recent graduates in the following graph dipped below the corresponding curve for all graduates during the period of recession. Employment rate by graduation type, Q2 2001 to Q4 2011, UK Source: Labour Force Survey, Office of National Statistics 2012, p. 3 The following graph shows the median hourly wages for all graduates when grouped according to degree subject. Median wage for all graduates aged 21 to 64, 2011 (four quarter average) by degree subject Source: Labour Force Survey – Office of National Statistics 2012, p. 4 For accounting and finance, the relevant degree subject is business, for which the median wage is about ?17.30. This discipline is, therefore, more lucrative than the social sciences or liberal arts, but less rewarding, based on the hourly wage, than the physical sciences, technology and science, and health/medical subjects. Since my experience was specifically in the construction industry, my continued advancement depends upon the industry’s future performance. The most recent data show that the UK construction industry is not expected to grow significantly until 2014 according to the Construction Products Association. They forecasted zero growth for 2013 because some ?32 billion has been lost from the construction activity from 2007 to the present (Monaghan 2011). From the foregoing information, what may be expected is that older graduates (i.e., those who have graduated more than 6 years ago) are going to put up stronger competition for the recent graduates. For accounting and finance graduates – since the median age for graduates is younger – that means that the competition is still relatively young even several years after graduation, which makes it more difficult to find a job because even those who have graduated longer ago would still be intent on looking for full-time jobs instead of settling down and looking for alternatives or settling down with families (ONS 2012). The construction industry may not be the best sector to apply for, but since accountants or finance graduates are in demand in all business sectors (Krausz et al. 2005; James et al. 2009), it would be best to apply for a variety of sectors or industries. Despite the apparent contraction in the graduate labour market and zero growth in construction, accounting or finance graduates will generally be in demand because of the importance of this function in all organisations, whether for profit or not for profit. References Hoare, A &Corver, M 2010, 'The regional geography of new young graduate labour in the UK', Regional Studies, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 477-494, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost. James, K &Birt, J 2009, 'A real-world assessment task for postgraduate and distance students', Accounting Education, vol. 18, no. 4/5, pp. 527-530, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost. Krausz, J, Schiff, A, Schiff, J & Van Hise, J 2005, 'The impact of TOEFL scores on placement and performance of international students in the initial graduate accounting class', Accounting Education, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 103-111, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost. Monaghan, A 2011 ‘UK construction industry “won’t grow” until 2014,’ The Telegraph, vol. 24, October 2011, viewed, 27 November 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/8844560/UK-construction-industry-wont-grow-until-2014.html. 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