Essay: Accounting Graduates' Employment In Australia

What enterprise skills do you need to succeed in your Accounting career? Even if you aren’t sure where to take your degree qualification, this task should help.

Identify three employment opportunities that fit with your future status as a Accounting graduate student. They can be formally advertised roles for different positions or the same role with different employers aligned with your areas of study.

 To structure your inquiry, you should:

• Introduce the advertisements and explain why you have chosen them
  
  
• Analyse each advertisement and identify the enterprise skills that are required for each one – look at the description and the selection criteria if they are available. Link to the relevant enterprise skills from the eight identified by the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) in their report The New Basics (2017).How important are enterprise skills in the context of the advertisement? How are they applied in the context of each job?
  
  
• Write a summary of the commonalities across all three advertisements, highlighting the enterprise skills most valued in the advertisements you analysed. Identify what evidence you would need to gather to demonstrate them in practice .
  
  
• Select three learning experience from those available in the ePortfolio. Choose each one to help you to develop three of the enterprise skills that you identified as necessary for your future career. Nominate all of the learning experience you are engaging with, following the instructions in the ePortfolio. This is especially important for on-campus activities which will run on specific dates.

Qualifications and Enterprise Skills Required for Employment Opportunities

There are many different employment opportunities that are available for graduate accountant student and this is evidenced by various advertisements available in Australia. To show various opportunities available for accountant graduate students, there are three advertisements chosen from the job advertisement website called SEEK Limited (AU) (www.seek.com). These three advertisements for the position of two Assistant Accountant from different companies and different advertainments and Accounting & Finance Graduate.  There are a number of reasons why I have chosen the three advertisements. Firstly, the first advertisement is about Accounting & and Finance Graduate position where the only qualification required for the position is the enterprise skills as opposed to experience. Secondly, the second advertisement about Account Assistant is also important for graduate students since though technical skills are required but not as important as enterprise skills. Thirdly, the last position is also an Assistant Accountant and I chose these advertisements due to the minimum requirement based on enterprise skills as opposed to academic qualifications.

First advertisement seeking accounting to fill the position of Accounting and Finance Graduate and require a degree in commerce with accounting or finance qualifications. The advertisement seeks graduate that will be working on Finance Business improvement, performance reporting, financial analysis and compliance, technical & management accounting. Some of the enterprise skills include innovation skills, resilient, learning agile, ability to tackle problems, result driven, is confident and optimistic, motivate or influential and value diversity. The selection criteria are based on enterprise skill that the graduate poses in addition to being graduate with a degree in accounting or finance major. The advertisement shows some similarities to the enterprise skills listed in the Young Australians (FYA) in their report The New Basics (2017). Some of the identical skills include problem-solving, innovative, and financial literacy. These enterprise skills are important as they form the basis or the selection criteria for the position being advertised. According to the advertisement, those candidates for the position will be selected based on the enterprise skill that they show. The enterprise skills have been applied to design the selection criteria for graduates that fill the position being advertised.

The second advertisement is looking for degree graduate with accounting or business to fill the position of Assistant Accountant at Achitectus company. Some of the enterprise skills required include self-motivated, ability to work autonomously in a team environment, effective communication skills, ability to work in an environment with competing priorities. In addition, the company is also looking for those graduates that are experienced in digital financial systems such as ERP and accounting software. The advertisement posted a newly created position for those candidates that have the listed skills. There are many similarities between the enterprise skills that are required for the position and those provided in the Young Australians (FYA). These enterprise skills include digital literacy especially financial systems, communication skills, and creativity are similar to those listed in FYA. In this advertisement, enterprise skills are important as they form part of qualification for the position advertised. Enterprise skill has been applied to design some requirement for the position, for instance, teamwork form part of the company description so as to show the company value teamwork. Moreover, creativity has also been used as part of the designing technique of the company.

Descriptions of Three Advertisements for Accounting Graduate Students

The third advertisement is about accounting opportunity at Hays Accountancy & Finance to fill the position of Assistant Accountant. The advertainment brings simplicity in the qualification that is required for the position and most of the emphasis is based on the enterprise skills. Some of the enterprise skill that is required for the position include intermediate Excel knowledge, communication, and interpersonal skills, ability to work autonomously and time management, accuracy and organizational skills.  Some of the similar enterprise skills to those part of the FYA include communication skills and presentation skills. In the advertisement, enterprise skills are important since these skills form part of the requirement for the job opportunity. The enterprise skills have been applied to describe the professional qualification that matches the position that is being advertised. There are minimal academic qualifications that are required for the graduate student to get the opportunity except for CPA study completion or continues studying CPA. Moreover, enterprise skills that are listed within the FYA such as communication skills and personal presentation skills are the main point of qualification. Though prior experience in accounting is also required, there is minimal evidence that this important for the position as no period of experience is specified.

There are some commonalities that can be identified in the three advertisements and these are based on the similarities in enterprise skill requirement. In the three advertisements, enterprise skills form part of the professional qualifications for the position. Secondly, all the three advertisements similarities in terms of the requirement for the position and these include enterprise skills and educational background. Thirdly, in all the three advertainments personal skills form the central part of qualification more than social skills. This implies that personal career development is important for future employability of graduate student.

There is some enterprise skill that is valuable in three advertisements and these include communication skills, literacy skills, teamwork and can work autonomously. The three advertisements present communication skill as enterprise skills required in different ways. Learning and literacy skill is also an important requirement for all the three advertisements though used differently. For instance, in the second advertisement literacy in digital and educational skills are important .

There is some evidence that is required to demonstrate these enterprise skills in practice and these include the ability to communicate and work with others, personal organization, creativity, and innovation. Firstly, the ability to communicate with others in terms of written, spoken or interpersonal communications skills are important to show these enterprise skills. Secondly, a personal organization in terms of time management, presentation, and personal initiatives will show that I can work autonomously with other people.

The three-learning experience that is important for the development of enterprise skills are digital literacy, communication skills, and financial literacy. Firstly, digital literacy is currently one of the most commonly required enterprise skills since there are many companies that are using the digital system for managing financial systems.  Secondly, communication forms the most common enterprise skill that is used to select graduates for an employment opportunity. Thirdly, financial literacy is the basic educational qualification for accountant graduate student to fit the employment.

References

 Tyler, C., “The role of non-cognitive and cognitive skills in accounting for the intergenerational transmission of ‘top job’ status: Working paper number 16-03”, London: Department of Quantitative Social Science, UCL IOE (2016).

FYA, “Report card 2015: How young people are faring in the transition from school to work”. FYA. Melbourne, (2015b). Available at: www.fya.org.au/howyoungpeoplearefaring

Athayde, R., “Impact: 50 Years of Young Enterprise”. Young Enterprise: Oxford (2012).  Available at: https://www.youngenterprise.org.uk/resources/50th/50thBook.pdf

 Kahn L, McNeil B, Patrick R, Sellick V, Thompson K & Walsh L., “Developing Skills for Life and Work: Accelerating Social and Emotional Learning Across South Australia”. Young Foundation report with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation and the Foundation for Young Australians, (2012). Available at: https://youngfoundation.org/publications/developing-skills-for-life-and-workaccelerating-social-and-emotional-learning-across-south-australia/

Development Economics, “The Value of Soft Skills to the UK economy”, (2015). Available at https://backingsoftskills.co.uk/The%20Value%20of%20Soft%20Skills%20to%20the%20UK%20Economy.pdf

 FYA, “New Work Order: Ensuring young Australians have skills and experience for jobs of the future, not the past”. FYA: Melbourne, (2015a).

 FYA, “Renewing Australia’s Promise: Will young Australian’s be better off than their parents?” FYA Melbourne (2014).

-YE (Foundation for Enterprise – Young Enterprise), “Impact of Entrepreneurship Education in Denmark – 2011”. FFE-YE: Denmark (2012).

 Long, R., and Foster, D., “Financial and enterprise education in schools – Briefing Paper 06156”, London: House of Commons Library (2016).