3 Standout Strategies for Senior Associates in Public Accounting
After years of working my way through a public accounting firm, I can confidently say that standing out from the crowd is not that easy at the associate and senior associate levels. In those first few years, everyone is still learning and there is always more work to be done, which can make it difficult to stick out as a hard worker based on hours and circumstances alone. However, there are other ways besides putting in an obscene number of hours to stand out as a senior associate. Today, I'm going to share with you three ways to be a standout senior associate in a public accounting firm based on my own personal experience.
Why Should I Want to be a Standout Senior Associate?
In many public accounting firms, part of the promotion and growth process involves taking on new responsibilities in your current role. While some firms can get this wrong (and severely impact the careers of employees in the process), I would like to hope that many firms get this right. In many cases, the more competent and prepared employees are given more opportunities to learn and grow, which leads to them having an easier time with raises and promotions. If you are able to properly manage yourself and your expectations, I strongly recommend putting in the extra effort to be a standout senior associate as it will accelerate your career like nothing else (even if you decide to take that knowledge and leave two years later). With that in mind, let's talk about the standout strategies.
Standout Strategy #1 - Be Good with Technology
Technology is becoming more integral as a component of public accounting every day. Between the frequent use of the Microsoft Office Suite, the ability to program and automate tasks, and specialized software for data visualization and firm operations, there is no shortage of applications to learn and master. In my experience, the senior-level professionals with some sort of specialized knowledge of technology are in high demand for jobs due to their ability to solve problems in different (and more efficient) ways. This does not mean that you need to take up programming to stand out (although it certainly won’t hurt), because most of the time, you just need to understand some intermediate skills and best practices that others are too impatient to learn. These can be things like formatting a word document with decimal tabs and fields, or using nested functions in Excel.
Standout Strategy #2 - Learn Technical and Complex Areas
Very often, one of the skills that clearly distinguishes a manager from a senior is technical ability. Being able to understand more complex accounting areas is critical to serving more sophisticated clients, and that understanding typically comes with experience and professional judgment. Examples of these areas include:
For Auditors and GAAP Consultants
ASC 606 - Revenue Recognition
ASC 842 - Leases
ASC 810 - Consolidation
ASC 805 - Business Combinations
ASC 740 - Income Taxes
For Tax Accountants
International Taxation
State and Local Taxation
Consolidated Returns
If you are able to make a start on these areas, write a technical memo about any of these areas, or independently handle everything on a client or two with respect to these areas, you will surely stick out at the senior associate level and be very valuable to your manager.
Standout Strategy #3 - Be a Good Delegator, Teacher, or Intern Buddy
As an experienced public accounting manager and university instructor, I can confidently say that teaching associates and interns requires a combination of time and the right skill set. Most of the time, managers in public accounting will not have both the time and the skills necessary to directly teach and oversee associates and interns. This could be because they don't have the personality or patience to deal with newer people, but most of the time it's because jobs need to get done and committing the time is simply not in the cards for them. This is where the standout senior comes in. Any senior that is willing to develop the skills to oversee and teach associates and interns is incredibly valuable to a busy manager. The firm and its managers want these lower level staff to have a good experience and be productive but it's not always easy for the managers to give them the time and attention they need by themselves. Being the point person for overseeing staff, delegating tasks, and answering questions will make you incredibly sought after by the busy managers.
Now that you're familiar with these three standout strategies, which one do you most align with? Picking any one of these strategies is a great way to stand out as a senior and as you continue to develop yourself, you can pick up some of the other ones as well. During my time as a senior associate, I started off focusing on supporting interns before moving on and gaining more technical skills. Along the way, I developed technology skills as I was working on more jobs. By the time I was promoted to manager, I was standing out in all three of the categories that I mentioned today, but I started out focusing on just one. So if you are a newly promoted senior, I encourage you to see which one of these areas fits you best and work on becoming a standout senior in that area like I know you can be!