Back in 2007, two blokes and their pet dog set up a brewery in a factory unit in Fraserburgh and sold their beer at local markets from the back of a beaten up old van. Less then a decade later and Brewdog is sold in 55 countries and operates a chain of bars that stretches from Brazil to Japan.
This year Brewdog’s Neil Simpson won the Emerging Finance Director of the Year category in the Scottish Accountancy & Finance Awards 2015.
The moral of this story is not that good beer sells, although that’s very clearly the case, but that as an accountant you could find yourself working for some of Scotland’s most exciting businesses.
If you get in at the ground level then your professional skills could help steer your firm towards success.
s1jobs is full of vacancies for accountants at all levels and in a variety of situations so there’s room to follow your own path.
Choosing an independent route isn’t for everyone, but one accountant who shunned all approaches from the major Accountancy firms on graduation, and chose instead to work for a film company based in Glasgow, has never regretted her decision.
Catherine Simpson’s work takes her to places like the Cannes Film Festival and she says: “Lots of my friends choose to go down the ‘Big Four’ route and, although most of them have done very well, the idea never appealed to me.”
“I wanted to work for a business that was going places and that was doing really interesting things and that’s exactly what I’ve done.”
She started off as a part-timer in a junior role and now is Financial Director for the much larger organisation that the company has become in a relatively short space of time.
But even in the film industry it’s not all glamour.
Join an emerging business as their Accountant and you’ll probably have to roll up your sleeves and deal with the huge backlog of administration that’s been overlooked during the rush to market.
New research from the Cloud accounting specialists FreeAgent shows that more than 600,000 British micro-businesses admit to missing their tax return deadlines and a third to being overwhelmed by the burden and complexities of accounting.
For some of these one-man-bands, it will be enough for them to buy some smart software that prompts them to send out invoices on time.
However, others that are growing rapidly will need someone like you who is willing to take over the financial management of the company while they get on with the business of doing business.
Who knows, you may even end up at the Oscars!
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