Should I study the ACCA – Please advice

From your OT ID I presume that your age is around 29. I am not sure why you are jobless. By this age I think you should have been working at least in any junior position. I suggest that you must find a job in accounting or the branch of accounting or finance that you think suits you by not giving more importance on remuneration. Spending more time on job hunting may be good idea, but what I think would be more appropriate is to identify the weaknesses that prevent you from landing on a job.

As far as your low confidence on clearing ACCA is concerned, I think it is equally important that you have to find some ways to lift your confidence belief in your abilities. I don’t understand why you must take about 10 years (in your words it is going to be more than 10 years, which is not permitted by ACCA, for you complete ACCA) to complete ACCA. It is a wrong notion you can complete ACCA as quick a even within 1 1/2 years. However studying along side a full time job , in my experience , I think one can complete ACCA in 4 years time. In that case you will be just 33 years, and not 50 years.

Hypothetically,even if you complete ACCA at the age of 50, the qualification would only be rewarding in terms of money and position, if you are working all these years in a finance and accounting role.

I am 46 years old working full time in a relevant role for the last 25 years and expected to complete my remaining 3 exams in December-13.

Hardwork and commitment would see you through and I wish you all the best!

To answer your question in one word, yes I expect and that is practically the scenario. Let me explain:-

If one is qualified at any age, with rich and insightful experience behind him, there is no reason why one organisation should not consider him/her for a role that they can offer to a post qualification experienced candidate. Yes I do agree that there are candidates who might have not exposed to the complex areas of finance and accounting simply because employers have reserved those roles only for professionally qualified accountants. The remedy to this situation is candidates must work early stages of their careers in small and medium sized companies, which I believe, will enable them to get exposed to almost all areas of finance, accounting and even business management, which theoretically one will learn in their ACCA studies. Having done this, the CV of such a candidate would reflect what he is capable of and the final hurdle is to impress upon the employer about his/her exposure to the task/job practically that the ACCA studies reinforced .

For eg. in my case, I have prepared project reports (financial projections and calculation of IRR etc,) even before I started my ACCA studies. The ACCA studies only helped me reinforce my knowledge and other areas that need to be considered while preparing such reports. My last position was VP (Finance) and would apply for VP and above upto CFO after qualification.

There are companies that prescribe post qualification experience, which I believe has little meaning and has an element of discrimination in it. How on earth these companies have the right to decide that the one who has post qualification experience will be more efficient and dynamic than the one who has pre qualification experience and or one would learn practically better post qualification than pre-qualification. It is absurd and has no ground I believe. In best of my knowledge most of these companies will entertain application from pre-qualification experienced candidates also and depending upon their ability that match with the role on offer one can secure the job irrespective of the post – pre qualification syndrome.

I just made a guesstimate going by your open tuition ID which states GEEK84- I thought 84 stands for your year of birth. Normally people create IDs linked to their year of birth. By the by what this 84 stand for??

Thanks

First I am not in UK, But India.

Secondly I have a post graduate university degree in commerce, (which covers accounting finance and taxation, though not comprehensively as in a course) which I believe is reasonably adequate any candidate to start a career in accounting and finance. However in India and in many parts of the world unless you are a CA, many employers would not take you seriously and will not even consider to call you for an interview.

During my tenure as accountant in many organisations I have seen old people without any formal qualifications holding the post of chief accountant and so on, and I worked under them. Trust me, they were very good at their job.Those were the times when manual books of account were maintained, where at the end of the year trial balance is drawn which will run into some times hundreds of pages. I belong to this era and had the privilege of working closely with the transformation to computerisation in many companies. In fact I started my career in accounting role at the age of 16, when my father asked me to join a construction company in south India, while I was studying for B.com (Graduate course in commerce).

I believe money and position is essentially a by product of job well done. I decided to become a CA, so be it and started pursuing ACCA since 2007. When I cleared first 2 Professional level exams in last june, for me, it was time to take some wise decisions in order to see I am through the course without taking any more time, as the age was fast catching up and I found my retention skills were declining. When I am convinced that it is now or never I took the decision of leaving the job, which was in fact was the major reason, while there were other reasons as well.

I also hold a director position with my travel company and partner in a restaurant which runs by my wife. Although small in size, with these businesses I can afford to be jobless for some time.

I am planning to work abroad after my ACCA for 10 years and would come back and settle in India to help my wife for the businesses.