Can I get some help in answering a question or two related to my future career prospects?
(would only ask that people in the US answer this question as I doubt it would be the same in other parts of the world)
So I'm about to earn my bachelor's in accounting from a school part of the MN colleges and universities system, Metropolitan State University. I had already earned my associate's in accounting from another tech school in MN also part of the mnscu system located in Red Wing. I am currently employed as a temp at a large manufacturer located here in the Twin Cities and I do manufacturing accounting for them. The job is a mix of creating reports that track any kind of measurement you can think of to doing inventory counts in SAP. There are additional duties that come up, usually when my boss thinks of something he would like to have me do in Excel. I've gained a lot of experience with vlookup and pivot tables to complement my abilities in Excel to the point when I landed this job. I'd call myself an expert Excel user. The reports that we create are a weekly flash report that the management down here in the plant uses to figure out where the payroll is at, where the accounts payables expenses are, and other things. Then there is a monthly package that we put together and send off to corporate monthly. It's pretty straight forward and the other members of the team (other managers - of quality, maintenance, etc.) help my boss and I by ensuring that we have the data they provide to drop into the pre made Excel spreadsheet.
I had also earned 2.5 years of accounts payable experience before landing my current position.
So now that you know where I'm at with education and experience, I'd like to point out that the current job I'm in is ending. Unfortunately, after accepting this temp to hire position in October and working in the job for 3 months, we received a corporate communications informing us that my position was being axed. So, when the position ends after what will be 4 months I'll be looking for work again.
I obviously have gained quite a bit by taking this job, but I'm afraid it may not be enough.
I've been able to take a look around at cost accounting and budget/financial analyst jobs and I feel that I'm still lacking too much to get another one of these kind of jobs.
I tend to see 1-5 years of experience and a BS or MBA required with a preference for CPA, but CPA not required. I'm also running into a lot of jobs that would love for the candidate to have, on top of Excel, exposure to database systems such as SQL server.
Any idea on what I should do now that I'm graduating in May and would like to continue to grow in my career as an analyst?
Another concern I have is that I'm 60k in college debt because of a previous degree, and being that I'm just now 31 years of age, I don't want to take on too much debt and not have it pan out, but at the same time I realize perhaps spending 5k on a CPA or however much an MBA costs could help me go from 45 (for sure) to 60? 70? As accountants/finance people we all know that I have to have a good return on my investment because I don't plan on working till I'm 95 to pay off all the debt.
Thanks.
(would only ask that people in the US answer this question as I doubt it would be the same in other parts of the world)
So I'm about to earn my bachelor's in accounting from a school part of the MN colleges and universities system, Metropolitan State University. I had already earned my associate's in accounting from another tech school in MN also part of the mnscu system located in Red Wing. I am currently employed as a temp at a large manufacturer located here in the Twin Cities and I do manufacturing accounting for them. The job is a mix of creating reports that track any kind of measurement you can think of to doing inventory counts in SAP. There are additional duties that come up, usually when my boss thinks of something he would like to have me do in Excel. I've gained a lot of experience with vlookup and pivot tables to complement my abilities in Excel to the point when I landed this job. I'd call myself an expert Excel user. The reports that we create are a weekly flash report that the management down here in the plant uses to figure out where the payroll is at, where the accounts payables expenses are, and other things. Then there is a monthly package that we put together and send off to corporate monthly. It's pretty straight forward and the other members of the team (other managers - of quality, maintenance, etc.) help my boss and I by ensuring that we have the data they provide to drop into the pre made Excel spreadsheet.
I had also earned 2.5 years of accounts payable experience before landing my current position.
So now that you know where I'm at with education and experience, I'd like to point out that the current job I'm in is ending. Unfortunately, after accepting this temp to hire position in October and working in the job for 3 months, we received a corporate communications informing us that my position was being axed. So, when the position ends after what will be 4 months I'll be looking for work again.
I obviously have gained quite a bit by taking this job, but I'm afraid it may not be enough.
I've been able to take a look around at cost accounting and budget/financial analyst jobs and I feel that I'm still lacking too much to get another one of these kind of jobs.
I tend to see 1-5 years of experience and a BS or MBA required with a preference for CPA, but CPA not required. I'm also running into a lot of jobs that would love for the candidate to have, on top of Excel, exposure to database systems such as SQL server.
Any idea on what I should do now that I'm graduating in May and would like to continue to grow in my career as an analyst?
Another concern I have is that I'm 60k in college debt because of a previous degree, and being that I'm just now 31 years of age, I don't want to take on too much debt and not have it pan out, but at the same time I realize perhaps spending 5k on a CPA or however much an MBA costs could help me go from 45 (for sure) to 60? 70? As accountants/finance people we all know that I have to have a good return on my investment because I don't plan on working till I'm 95 to pay off all the debt.
Thanks.
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