The best first steps for every Newly Qualified Accountant in 2024!

It’s hard to know what your next steps should be after qualifying, especially when your life and career have been governed by so much studying for the last few years. It can make one of the most exciting times of your career into a time of confusion with all that it can bring:-

• Newly Qualified Accountants tend to get bombarded with messages from recruiters at this stage in their career.
• Most email subjects will be along the lines of 'Fantastic New Opportunity' (even though the sender doesn’t know anything about the recipient)
• LinkedIn, AI, and robotics have increased the volume of job approaches coming from a vast range of different recruiters.

The advice to every NQ has been the same for many years – it’s best to just work with one or two recruiters to advise you and guide you. The issue is how to find the best recruiter to speak to?

Step One – Ensure you are working with a recruiter who understands your market and has the right expert experience. Do they specialise in finance recruitment, and have they worked that particular market for a few years?

Step Two – Make sure your recruiter listens. Every recruiter can 'tell', but can they actively listen and respond to you? One idea to is to reply to any job approach with a note that asks a question:

"Thank you for contacting me about this opportunity. The most important things to me for my future are: (delete as applicable) Flexibility, Salary, Employer Values, Learning & Development, Flexible working, International opportunity. Would this opportunity offer me any of those things?’”

Step Three – Judge them on how they respond to you, and not on their initial approach.

Your Recruiter should be able to advise you on the strength of each opportunity in terms of your priorities, and also offer market comparisons for salaries, benefits, company culture, and long-term prospects.