Firstly, congratulations on accomplishing your biggest milestone and becoming a qualified chartered accountant.

The purpose of this article is to help you get a direction as to where to go from the day you see “PASS” across the screen. You can start by prefixing the golden letters CA before your name. Secondly, you should apply for membership (you can follow the step-by-step process here).

Now, let’s get into the direction hunting, shall we?

The first thing you must understand is, by becoming a chartered accountant you can either be a job seeker or a job giver. You can either seek for employment in various industries or you can start a practice of your own.

Job seeker

The possibilities here are limitless. There is not even a single industry which does not require a CA, so be it the manufacturing or service sector you can land a job of your interest. You can pursue your career in the following areas in an industry of your choice. The list is simply illustrative and not exhaustive:

1.       Tax auditing

2.       Internal auditing

3.       Forensic auditing

4.       Accounting

5.       Finance

6.       Bookkeeping

7.       Preparer of Financial Statements

8.       Advisory

9.       Teaching

10.   Statutory audit in an audit firm

With the increasing reach of globalization, a lot of MNCs are coming to India thereby increasing the scope of employment. Some of the job titles occupied by CAs in such MNCs are finance manager, accounts manager and other advisory posts which can later convert to top management positions such as directors, CFO, CEO etc.

Let’s look at some of these areas in detail –

Teaching – Teaching can either be a full-time profession or a part time passion. There are qualified chartered accountants who are full time professors either in an educational institute or university. There is also an option of starting your own educational institution as a business.

Statutory auditor in a big audit firm – You can start by becoming an employee in the audit firm of your choice and build your way into becoming a manager, director and finally a partner.

Other fields: As mentioned above, you can work as an advisory, consultant, accountant, tax auditor, internal auditor, accountant etc in leading MNCs. (You can learn more on how to land such jobs below)

Job giver

By having your own practice, you can build your own firm thereby generating employment for others in the industry. Doing practice as an individual or sole proprietor is possible yet not highly practical due to the limited networking opportunities and clientele. Hence, chartered accountants often get into partnerships with other professionals to start their own practice. With time, patience, and quality work you can become a successful chartered accountant running their own firm.

How to get started

Now that we know a variety of options awaiting you, we need to learn how to achieve them. As long as teaching and practice is concerned, the key is to network well, provide quality work and be at the top of your game when it comes to interacting with existing and prospective clients.

Let’s deep dive into landing jobs in the industry.

a.       Campus placements: Your first go-to place should be the campus placements organized by ICAI. ICAI acts as an intermediary channel between organisations and newly qualified chartered accountants. For this, you need to register yourself in the campus placement portal of ICAI. (You can follow the step-by-step process here)         

b.       LinkedIn: Students often don’t realize the potential of having and maintaining an impressive linkedin account. LinkedIn can provide you with limitless opportunities when it comes to seeking the right employment opportunity. Hence, it is very crucial to maintain good connections on the platform and reaching out to potential employment firms.

c.       Networking: You can get in touch with the right hirers by referrals and for that, you need to network and seek for the opportunities from the ocean of people working in different fields.        

These are some of the tips we at ArivuPro had to offer and ofcourse you can always get in touch with us personally for more guidance. Good luck to all your future endeavors!