I’m an accountant, working on getting my CPA after being out of school for 10 years. This is only because a lot of unemployed CPA’s have flooded the job market recently, and they are willing to take jobs that I used to be able to get. I always knew that I could make more money if I had those three letters after my name. But I didn’t really care. Time has always been more valuable to me than money. Most of the CPA’s I worked with ended up getting promoted to higher level positions, which meant more of their time belonged to the company. That’s not how I roll. I didn’t want to be tied to a Blackberry or take my laptop with me when I went on vacation.
But last year, the CPA firms in the Raleigh area laid off a lot of their employees. It makes sense, because if you lose clients due to the economy, and there isn’t any new business to make up for the loss, you would have to lay off some of the staff that worked with those clients. It’s the same way for any service based company. Two other things that I know of have also caused a flood of CPA’s in Raleigh: 1. new people moving to the area, naively thinking they can find work, and 2. people who were laid off used their time on unemployment to get their CPA certification. Number 2 was not an option for me because my husband and I were both laid off for a while last year and could not risk getting into that kind of debt for a CPA review course ($2500 or more).
I suddenly realized last fall that if I’m going to get a job in Raleigh that has any potential for advancement, I need my CPA. I’ve worked for several Accounting Managers and Assistant Controllers in the past who did an excellent job of running their departments and they were not CPA’s. They were brilliant and a pleasure to work with.
I’ve also worked with CPA’s who were so bad at their jobs that clients refused to work with them. They were a joke. But, they passed the CPA exam. One of them told me how. He took the Becker CPA review course, and the final Becker exam happened to be almost identical to the real CPA exam he took the next week. So, he passed all four parts at once. Being a CPA does not mean you’re smart. It means you paid a lot of money to study for, and pass, a test. This is another reason why it wasn’t on my “to do” list until last year. Looking back on the many people I’ve worked with, some of my CPA colleagues were the least impressive. I’m the kind of person who likes to stand up for what’s right, even if it seems juvenile and unimportant to others. If I had been alive in the 1960’s I’m sure I would have gone to jail many times for picketing for or against whatever cause was important to me at the time. And to me, this whole CPA thing was something I sort of boycotted. I knew it wasn’t a measure of how smart I was, and I got plenty of jobs without it, so it wasn’t a priority to me.
If you haven’t known anybody who’s had to go through the long, arduous, expensive process of obtaining a CPA license, let me enlighten you. When I was in college, one of our professors broke the news to us about how hard it is. At one time, it was considered the hardest of all of the professional exams. Harder than the bar exam. Of course, lawyers will argue this point with you. I saw one lawyer on a message board post that the bar exam must be harder because the dumbest lawyer is smarter than the smartest CPA. Whatever. See what the AICPA has to say about it. We were told in college that the CPA’s made our exam hardest on purpose because they want it to be a very exclusive group. They have also changed the requirements so that you must have 150 credit hours to take the exam, equivalent to a master’s degree. It used to only require a bachelor’s degree. In recent years it has become a computerized exam, where you can take one part at a time. There are four parts of the exam. When I first took it in 2001 it was still a written test. It took two days worth of sitting in a civic center with a few hundred other people because it was only given twice a year. You had to get a 75% on two parts of the exam to pass them, but you also had to get a 50% on the other two parts to keep the parts you passed. In other words, if you got a 75, a 75, a 50, and a 49, you were considered as having failed the entire exam. If you got to keep your two parts, you had two years to pass the other two parts. I used to know someone who had passed and lost every single part of the exam at some point. He never became a CPA.
The CPA exam is now computerized. You can take one part at a time and you must get a 75% to pass. You have two years to pass the other three parts. A lot of people, especially those who took the written test in the past, think this makes it easy. Not true. It still has a 46% failure rate. And, the test becomes progressively harder depending on how well you do as you’re taking it. They have added subjects that were not on it before. It’s a huge investment of time and money to take and pass that exam. The written test used to cost about $112 if memory serves me correctly. Now, all four parts cost roughly $1200 in total. And that’s if you pass each part the first time.
The accounting job market sure has changed. When I lost my job in January 2009 I wasn’t worried about getting another one. I usually had my pick of jobs to choose from. But after going on more interviews than I can count, and usually being turned down because the company ended up hiring someone they already knew personally, I realized I had to do something. Another thing that happened was that I took a temp job in July of 2009. I was told at the very beginning that this job was well below my skill level, but that they still wanted someone with my experience. After about a month I started to feel suffocated. I work with people who have less experience than I do, but I’m the one doing all the grunt work. I started to get bored and very frustrated. I knew I needed more, and that I had sorely undervalued my skills and experience. I’ve had managers and co-workers tell me that in the past but I didn’t believe them until then.
So, I applied to take the CPA in the hopes of getting a higher level job. But, that was until about two months ago. That’s when I found out how many unemployed CPA’s are lurking around the area. And I started to realize that about 90% of the jobs posted online are starting to say “CPA required.” This includes the jobs that were in my pay range. Something employers in Raleigh had known for a while had finally started to hit me – these CPA’s are willing to work for less money. They’re willing to take low level jobs. In other words, the jobs that had always provided me security before were no longer available to me. “Staff Accountant” and “Senior Accountant” jobs that used to say nothing about certifications were now starting to require them. Nightmare.
Employers in the area are also interviewing more and more people. I’ve gone on probably 5 different interviews where I was one of 20 people being interviewed. If a company is so busy that they need to add another person, how do they find time to interview 20 people? That could take weeks. These employers are like kids in a candy store. They know they have the upper hand. They keep thinking they’re going to find someone better so they keep interviewing. And then, another trend I’ve seen is that they will end up re-writing the position and making it even more specific because they know they can get a long laundry list of requirements, based on the fact that they just had 20 to 25 interviews and they still think they can do better. So, they re-write the job, repost it, and start the interview process again.
What I’ve realized is that I need to become a CPA. Not only to get a management job, but to get any job at all. And forget the idea of getting something lower-level or outside of my career. I’ve tried. These days, you have to be exactly what the employer is looking for. They don’t want someone who will leave as soon as something better comes along. Which makes you wonder about these CPA’s people are hiring – if jobs start to come back, won’t they also end up leaving for something better? Probably. But I guess employers are gambling on the fact that it’s going to take a while for that to happen. And they’re probably right.
As I was studying for the exam a few weeks ago I remembered something. A CFO I used to work for used to encourage me to get a certification, but he told me to get a CMA (Certified Management Accountant), not a CPA (even though he was a CPA himself). He said if I wasn’t interested in working in public accounting, a CPA was worthless to me. Literally, it means Certified Public Accountant. I had worked in public accounting and hated it. Yesterday I spoke to someone to schedule a job interview. She asked me “why are you getting your CPA? Do you want to work in public accounting?” I told her no, I just need to be competitive so I can get a job. Seems like this company hasn’t caught CPA fever yet.
I wish employers would wake up and realize that “CPA” doesn’t mean “the best candidate.” I think maybe it’s just considered a way to weed out the competition. I’ve heard that postings on Career Builder can get 500 – 1000 resumes in one day. And the resumes are from people who are qualified for the job. So how does an employer deal with this? I guess they look for the CPA’s and go from there.
I’m not out of work because I’m a bad accountant. I’m excellent at my job. I have references that can attest to the quality of my work. Any employer would be fortunate to have me. I haven’t always thought this highly of myself. But it’s become apparent in some of the experiences I’ve had in the past two years. I’m able to work circles around my co-workers. I’ve improved processes for companies where I’m not even a permanent employee. But here I am – working as a temp, no sick time, no vacation time, really horrible health insurance. Underpaid. I’m praying that my huge investment of time and money will pay off when I have my CPA certification next year. Then maybe my resume will make it into the hands of someone who sees what a great employee I will be for their company.
-Suzy
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