Career Q&A| Health Care Accounting, Audit vs. Tax, CPA Journey & Accounting Jobs

Mba is more valuable than a masters in accounting taxes or auditing which one pays more and which will you advise her used more on thank you thank you thank you guys so much for 3 000 subscribers i cannot believe that we have 3 000 subscribers on this channel .

hey guys welcome back to my channel welcome back to another video if you are brand new here hey i am so happy you're here so in today's video i am going to be answering all of your questions i did post on my .

Community page a few weeks back a q a a career q a as i haven't done one in a while and you guys did ask me questions so that is what i'm going to be answering today so if you haven't yet make sure you go ahead and get your cup of coffee because this is going to be a coffee chat you .

Guys know we like to do coffee chats over here on this channel if you don't drink coffee get your tea get your wine water something go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already and let's get into the video so let's start with the very first question any advice for undergraduate accounting .

Students on how to get a well-paid job after graduation so i do have a video i'm gonna link it here and i'm gonna have a playlist in the description box as well where i do answer this question i've answered it before and yes as an undergrad student you need to make sure that you are participating in .

Activities at your university i know right now with the pandemic everything is crazy but pretty much things have shifted virtually so make sure you are looking on your school's website for any company virtual events that are occurring so that you can be able to get a job or internship especially if you're .

An accounting student trying to go the big four route pretty much for right now all the events are virtual and right now it is recruiting season so make sure you don't miss it i'm gonna make sure i try to have this video out in time but make sure you are actively participating in .

Spring recruiting season and then there's fall recruiting season that starts in august september october time frame so the next question that i have here i'm currently applying for as many internships as i can some have reached out now i'm having anxiety about interviews being a very .

Shy introverted person that i'm feeling like i'm going to mess up any advice on how to conduct myself at the interview so i do have a video on this as well i have a video answering um about how to prepare for an interview and i do have a blog post so make sure .

You check out my blog i'm gonna have the link to the blog post below pretty much for your interview i know even if you're an introvert it's going to be okay at the end of the day they want to gauge your personality and you also want to gauge the people interviewing you personality to see if .

It is a good fit both ways so i would highly highly suggest to just calm down don't be nervous it's going to be perfectly okay make sure you do your research on the company and make sure that this that this is exactly what you do want for the beginning of your career and for .

Your internship like don't be shy you don't need to know all the technical stuff in the internship phase you just need to be somebody who's willing to learn somebody who's willing to grow as well as somebody who's a good team player can you talk about the specific classes of your degree .

I do have a video on this as well i'm gonna link it where i explain to you guys i filmed it last year busy season where i pretty much explained to you guys every single class on my transcript that i took related towards my accounting degree and i guess i'll touch on my master's .

Degree quickly so for my master's degree i had to take 30 i had to take 36 credits and those credits consisted of me taking marketing business management i did take a couple of accounting courses so i took an auditing course i took uh accounting information systems .

I took a forensic accounting class i took uh managerial accounting um had to do economics i had to do statistics so and i forgot some of the other class but essentially i needed 36 credit hours for my master's degree and those are pretty much the classes that i took .

And because i did do an accounting concentration that's why a majority of my classes were accounting based healthcare accounting any opinions or info i do not have too much information on healthcare accounting but i do hear that it is a very good field i would highly suggest do your research .

And you could even be the person that starts a channel given advice on these topics if that hasn't been done yet i have audited the healthcare profession and i know that healthcare accounting or healthcare auditing is a big thing and it's something that's .

Going to be useful and be around for a while don't let anybody fool you so i would just say do some more research on it as unfortunately i do not have all the proper information on that but um it is important and i know like healthcare especially around the billing uh like the billing and billing .

Processes and trying to get the money uh from from patients who maybe not haven't paid or who may be having issues with insurance so yeah that's as much as i can tell you for healthcare i would be curious to know how healthcare accounting works especially because america's healthcare system is a .

Mess i imagine that hospitals must have an entire department full of accountants running around like chickens with their head cut off yeah so like i just previously mentioned i don't know too too much about healthcare accounting but um at least for me auditing healthcare clients and healthcare .

Companies it is a need i know that it's big especially with the different types of billing that they do and the different types of insurances so i think it's a a market or sector within accounting worth looking into how is it going being head of hr what are some of your daily .

Activities so um this is some good iced coffee i'm not an iced coffee fan but this is good so in case you are new to my channel and don't know too much about me i was a former public accountant and as of december of 2020 i did make a career .

Shift into non-for-profit and currently a non-for-profit i am a chief i'm the chief financial officer for my organization and i also currently oversee human resources and it's been fun definitely learning a lot definitely .

Learning a lot of rules a lot of regulations what you can do what you can't do having to learn how to deal with employees who have conflicts and kind of being the middleman and um i had to i helped uh write my first performance improvement plan uh for an employee so .

Like things like that i'm learning and it's really been fun and i just got a mentor for human resources which i'm going to start meeting with i'm going to start meeting with them regularly to just help me uh better human my human resources skills and i'm gonna see if i can find any classes .

That i could get some um just so i could get some some classes down for if i get a certification i might go that route but overall hr is definitely a beast um please respect everybody that you know from hr from now on because there's a lot that .

Goes into it beside them just processing your paperwork and paying you taxes or auditing which one pays more and which will you advise her used more on depending on the route that you go so if you're starting off at a big four i don't really think that there is a salary discrepancy .

Between if you go to tax route or the audit route i think they start entry level people around the same unless it's advisory um advisory which is consulting is a whole nother ballgame and that salary is completely separate in terms of in terms of what is more useful either .

Or is useful the only thing i can say with tax is if you start off your career in tax you could fall into a rabbit hole of all the jobs that you do is in tax even if you decide to leave your public accounting firm you might find a lot of tax jobs versus if you're an audit you have a .

Little bit more leeway this is just my opinion don't quote me on that you can ask other people who do tax um but either or is good yes babe come in hi are you okay um yeah so i in terms of one or the other i cannot tell you that .

I would suggest doing an internship if both if possible try to find a firm that you can do a rotational internship where you do uh part of your internship in tax impart and audit so that you can see which one works best for you how can we improve our technicals our technical i'm guessing technical skills .

Such as data analytics excel access outside of our company i am going to be doing a separate video on all of the like excel formulas or types of data analytics and softwares that you need to know to be successful in the accounting world but pretty much .

What you should be doing is when you are at home off hours or even now as a student i highly highly recommend taking accounting information systems as a class and taking management information systems as a class going through what are the just study excel if you go on .

Microsoft's website you can go through excel learn the basic formulas like learn how to do pivot tables learn how to do certain functions which i'm going to touch on in more detail in the video that i'm going to do there is a software called power bi that a lot of .

Firms and companies are now moving towards so maybe learning power bi it's like excel but on steroids learning about that and just studying different data analytic techniques so maybe looking for exercises online where they have a data um a data .

Sheet for you and then you organizing that data in some way shape or form so those are ways that i think that you can do in the immediate term to help increase your data analytics and your excel skills um read books on it watch videos and yeah and and make sure you subscribe so that you .

Don't miss that video when i do uh push it out to you guys i'm graduating with a bachelor's in sociology but want to get the one to go the accounting route can i do a master's in accounting or do i have to get another bachelor but in accounting things in advance um .

You can definitely get your master's in accounting but i'm not gonna lie to you you are coming in at a disadvantage because you have not taken any undergraduate accounting courses so a lot of the stuff especially when it comes to like some intermediate accounting stuff it is .

Going to be a foreign language to you so i highly recommend if you have at least a semester left or if you can or if you can take classes in the summer try to take an accounting at least an introduction to accounting class if you want to go that route so that way when you do go to grad school .

You are better prepared because it is going to be a little challenging for you but you're still going to be able to do it once you understand that you understand it and you'll be fine that is my best advice to you start doing accounting research now uh just so you can get more familiar .

With at least like basic level accounting like debits and credits journal entries teach uh t accounts what what what all makes up the balance sheet will all mix up the income statement stuff like that hi can you give any advice on steps to cpa journey also if you have met 150 credit requirements during undergrad .

Then a master's degree isn't necessary to obtain okay i think i understand that question so um advice on the cpa journey i do have videos on that as well so again i'm gonna link it below currently i'm still studying for my cpa and that's a whole nother thing on its own .

But essentially the journey is you complete your 150 credit hours then you're eligible to sit for the exam study for the exam sit when you get it you get it if you fail you just take the exam again until you pass essentially um so if you have met your 150 credit hours by undergrad .

You do not need to get your master's degree in accounting so many people do their master's degree in accounting because they usually graduate from undergrad with 120 credits and then you get the additional 30 credits from grad school but if you get it before undergrad um if you get it while in undergrad you .

Do you do not need to get the masters but i would suggest going for an mba or going for a master's in something else that can enhance your accounting skills um how do you know if you are getting a fair salary and how to negotiate so the only way that you're gonna know if you're getting a fair salary is for .

You to do research in the market so i suggest you go and just googling how much do accountants make in blah blah state wherever it is that you you live your state your city and do a comparison to that as to what it is that they are offering you in terms of salary .

Negotiation please let me know if you guys want me to provide you guys my salary negotiation template that i have i can release it for like a super super reduced price it's gonna be like five dollars for you guys to download off of my website if you need it um but i do have a salary negotiation template .

Which i've shared with a few people which has helped them a lot so in terms of negotiating your salary you need to be able to pretty much tell them as to okay i looked at the market this is what um the average is going for and these are the skills .

This is xyz skills that i am bringing to the table which is why i feel like i should get paid whatever amount it is that you're trying to go for is a corporate accounting job exhausting boring do you think people regret majoring in accounting .

Thank you so much so no a corporate accounting job is not boring i think it depends on who you are so you so there's the people who go into accounting thinking that they're going to go into accounting and they're going to make a lot of money and then they realize that okay public accounting route is not for them .

They just want to do a job that's nine to five that they can get and get out so the cons to doing the corporate accounting um straight out of college would be the fact that you don't learn as much as you do if you go the public accounting route however is it boring that's up to you .

That's up to your interpretation everybody's different um of course like the day-to-day tasks can get repetitive but that's with any career like sometimes things get repetitive but i don't think it's necessarily boring i just think that everyone is different like i'm currently i can say .

That i'm currently in corporate accounting and i love it but um that's because i have a public accounting background so i've seen i've seen the entire balance sheet i've seen the entire income statement so i see i've seen all of the different .

Aspects like how it fits into um the accounting and softwares and and and how like the manufacturing side feeds into accounting so i've kind of seen it all so i don't think it's boring um but you will just have to try to see if it works for you and if it does it does if it doesn't it doesn't .

The last question that i have here is hi nicole can you talk about the benefits of an mba i'm about to graduate with with a bba in accounting and i'm really interested in an mba i also need to get 150 credits so i think it will be a beneficial to get a master's .

So i personally again this is my own opinion my own experience do not quote me on anything but i do think that that a master's a mba is more valuable than a master's in accounting and i say this because an mba you're not only further enhancing on what you learned in .

A undergrad but you're learning about problem solving skills you're learning about how to how to manage um a company you're learning how to manage a lot of things and how to see how it's pretty much a big puzzle that comes together and seeing how a .

Company is run um or ran i don't know how to say in english but yeah so i highly i think that a master's in business administration is more effective and will take you further in your career progression than a master's in accounting because .

Then the master's in accounting the master's in accounting will literally just serve you for your cpa and that's it but you can get your 150 credit hours with the mba as well all you would have to do is of course maybe see if the school that you're going to has a concentration in .

Accounting or take some additional accounting courses since you are already in grad school you can take some of those masters in accounting classes anyway but i say a mba is going to take you further than just a master's in accounting so guys with that i hope you enjoyed me .

Answering some of your questions feel free to comment down some more questions that you have below do not forget to follow me on instagram it's corporately underscored nicole where i do give you guys career tips and you guys just get to see some more of my .

Day-to-day life make sure you guys are following me on my blog where i do give you guys a lot of career tips as well in more detail um for those of you guys who do like to read and if you haven't subscribed make sure you go ahead and subscribe to my channel i would love to have you here .

Thank you thank you thank you guys so much for 3 000 subscribers i cannot believe that we have 3 000 subscribers on this channel so we're gonna make some new goals of course and i'm going to take you guys along with me on this amazing journey thank you guys for your support for your love .

And comment any other questions that you want answered below don't forget to check out the description box because it's going to have a link to my accounting playlist some of the videos that i mentioned as well as some specific blog posts to help you all out so i love you guys and i will see .

You in my next video bye hey