ACCG315: 4 - Chartered Accountants

I chose to review the personal brands of two Chartered Accountants, David Boyar and Paul Meissner; who are the hosts of an accounting news podcast called ‘From the Trenches’. On their LinkedIn profiles they both label themselves with their job titles - David as a ‘CEO - Sequel CFO’ and Paul as a ‘Podcast presenter & Freedom Accountant’. They also mention their specialities as accountants, for instance David lists out: ‘financial mentoring, cashflow budgeting, monthly business insight reports, cloud integration’, and Paul concisely notes: ‘Taxation compliance and financial advice’. However, Paul goes further to display other factors of his personal brand. For example: his purpose as an accountant: ‘to bring the modern accounting practice to every firm in Australia’; his passion to turn the accounting industry on its head; and his differentiation of looking ‘beyond the standard client service to deliver real value to clients’.

Following Paul’s approach on personal brand, I’ve written down several factors that comprise my personal brand as a future graduate accountant.

• Purpose: To grow professionally and personally.

• Specialities: Knowledgeable in basic business-services accounting duties and accounting software from previous internship role.

• Passion: I have a passion for continuous learning and growing. I also have a genuine interest in Technology and Human Psychology.

• Differentiation: I take action. I’m a very curious person.

• My career dream: is to become a CFO in a company that I genuinely care about. I would love to wake up in the morning and be proud and passionate about what I’m doing.

• My career fear: is that I don’t have any fear. I think of everything as a learning experience, and I believe everything happens for a reason. Also, the truth always prevails and hard work always pays off.

• My role model: is Elon Musk. He knows how to give back to the world while exploring new things.

• My childhood dream: always changed. I was always open to try new things. And I think that is especially important now, because the world is changing and you can’t just be good at one thing in this century.

• What have I learned through networking? I want to meet more people and see bigger world.

• Summary: I am ambitious to climb up the corporate ladder in the accounting field and interact with diverse people.

As we have learned from the ACCG315 unit, accounting does not only encompass the technical skills but also heavily demands the soft skills. Hence, I believe my personal brand does cover my willingness to develop both technical and soft skills. However, it lacks relative work experience or achievements to prove that I am capable.

Therefore, before the graduation I will be more involved with the CPA student ambassador role to enhance my soft skills, and also to network with more professionals to get deeper insights into the accounting profession.

In Week 8, at the Career Boot Camp, I had a chance to speak to Lucy Kang, a senior finance manager at LEGO. She has opened my eyes on the real corporate world of accounting. I was surprised to hear how repetitive the works are in a big firm, and I’ve learned that after graduation I should first focus on ‘building the CV’.

I also had a conversation with Viana Lo, a senior managing accountant at Quiddity. This company was technology-based and I was very surprised to see such forward-thinking company. I always had an interest in technology and I was able to learn that accounting is already and continuing to be disrupted by technology in so many levels.