*update*: Alan Tsang is now a Senior Staff Accountant (CA) at Ernst & Young LLP.
Alan Tsang has been employed with Ernst & Young LLP since graduation and is now a Senior Staff Accountant in the Assurance Advisory Business Services Division.
“Having spent the last two years in professional auditing, I have recently moved into risk advisory services. The biggest challenge I found in the first couple years was the juggling of work life with the need to study for my professional examinations. Organization, planning and time management are key characteristics one learns to pick up when facing the need to work and study at the same time,” says Alan, who started as a Staff Accountant at Ernst & Young before being promoted to an Intermediate Staff Accountant.
“Having to juggle a full-time job and go through one of the most rigorous examination process in the world requires patience. Communication is also a key skill in auditing as you are constantly interacting with clients in a daily basis.”
A former member of the student council at UTM, Alan continued to be involved with organizations as a member of the Ernst & Young Peoples Committee.
“The committee organizes social events for the firm and provides communications and other supports to the group,” says Alan. The commerce student society at UTM provided Alan with the support and information he needed to evaluate different career paths available to Commerce graduates.
“The commerce society held events for all fields and put on recruiting events for all professions. This helped to provide students with a way to speak directly to professionals in the field and learn about each profession.”
If he could have done anything differently, Alan says he would have attended more of the commerce society’s events during his first year or two of university.
“This would have provided me with more knowledge during my early years to better evaluate all my options instead of following the crowd and going for my CA. The CA profession is a tough path that starts with finding a firm that will hire you over the large number of students pursuing the same path. Each firm only takes a set number of people each year, leaving the remaining population with no other way to pursue their CA as they need an accredited firm to work for,” says Alan.
“My advice would be to get involved with all the events that student council holds. These events let students get to know the recruiters and firms directly, adding a face to the resume. Start attending all events early in your university years. This allows you to get to know each profession and members of each firm and company. Each recruiting year, firms receive thousands of resumes and only spend an average of 30 seconds on each resume. Attending as many social events as possible gives the recruiter a chance to get to know you as a person and not just what’s on paper.”