Career opportunities for Chartered Accountants

There are plenty of exciting opportunities awaiting a fresh chartered accountant. While each career stream provides growth perspective, a careful selection of the career stream is important for meeting long-term personal aspirations and financial goals. The career selection should be done after analysis of personal strengths and improvement areas. The opportunities can be broadly classified into the following segments:

Professional services: A wide range of opportunities is available in the fields of attestation and audits, internal and management audits,business and corporate advisory, national and international taxation, etc. These opportunities can be exploited by joining the leading Indian audit and professional services firms. The merits of this option are high intellectual job content, diversity and continuing learning coupled with sustained financial growth. For the more entrepreneurial candidates, the option of practicing on their own in a specialised area can be considered.
Financeand accountsexecutives: With the high growth of the economy and increased reporting requirements, the need for finance and accounting executives is immense. Candidates can aspire to eventually occupy the position of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or director-finance. This provides stable career and financial growth and pro-active role in building the enterprise and shareholder value through IPOs, private placements, raising debt apart from establishing internal and financial controls.
Investmentbankingand fundmanagement: With the high growth in stock markets, careers in merchant banking, stock broking, business valuations, fund management, etc have unleashed unprecedented opportunities. This career option provides exciting financial rewards but is more volatile due to linkage with the stock markets.
Financial and business process outsourcing: This career option provides opportunities for dealing with international clients and good financial emoluments but may require working non-standard hours. The US slowdown and appreciating rupee may slow down the exponential growth hitherto experienced.

With a comprehensive academic grounding, practical on the job training, stringent evaluation parameters in examinations, a CA is reasonably well equipped to make the most of the above profitable opportunities.