Accounting Careers:Types of accountants
Just as there are types of
accounting, there are also
types of accountants.While
there are many ways to
classify accountants, the
most common division is
between public and private
accountants.
Public accountants mainly deal with financial accounting (the preparation of financial statements for external parties such as investors). Private accountants deal with both financial and management accounting.
Career of accounting in which one Public or Private?
According to many college professors and career services counselors, most
college students interested in accounting should try to start their careers in
public accounting. This route carries a number of benefits, including higher
salaries, more interesting and diverse work, exposure to many different
industries and the ability to fulfill a requirement for certification
One senior manager at a Big Four firm captures the general opinion of the
majority of people we spoke with: “For someone just out of college, public
accounting is really the only way to go,” he says. “You gain experience and
get up the learning curve much more quickly. A public accountant will
perform three or four audits of entire companies in a year, whereas a private
accountant could be stuck monitoring cash ledgers – one account – for a year.
Even in the long term, there are benefits. You have more control over your
career progression. In private, you’ll often see highly productive and talented
individuals mired in their jobs or limited to lateral career moves because they
have to wait for the people above them to retire or otherwise leave the
company. Public accounting is much more of a meritocracy – you’ll advance
as fast and as high as you want to.”
However, public accounting life is not for everyone. Private accountants
generally don’t travel nearly as much as public accountants, and their work
schedules are much more stable – they rarely have to pack a briefcase and go
to a client at a moment’s notice. Private accountants also do not have to deal
with the chargeability issue (the pressure on public accountants to work on
billable projects as much of the time as possible). Finally, they are not
required to get their CPA and thus do not have to deal with the rigors of
fulfilling the grueling certification requirements
