Career advice required

Hi all,

I want a career advice. I just gave my CA final exams. It was my third attempt & none of my groups are cleared from my earlier 2 attempts. I gave examinations of Group- II only in May-15 attempt.

During my articleship period, I used to go on audits only and had no exposure to income tax matters. Since I am not sure whether I’ll be able to land a job or not after I clear my final examinations, I joined a CA firm through acquaintance. Here I am not an employee but more of an article as I came here to get the knowledge of Income Tax matters but since the day I joined the firm I am getting only limited work as there are other articles too. Most of the day, I just sit around waiting to get some work. I regularly ask my boss for some work but he gives me work only when I have wasted whole day and I ask him to go home and in the end, without any work, I have to sit till 7:30-8 pm.

I tried to study during the free time but was not very comfortable.

Kindly tell me what should I do? Should I keep on working here to learn some work or should I take up a job. There are competition exams also for which I can prepare but I am not sure whether I’ll get any fruitful results by studying for them for to the max 1 month. I don’t want to sit at my home and just wait for the results.

Dear Pulkit

I appreciate your eagerness of learning even after completion of your alticleship too. But let me share with you that it is not necessary that only a CA Firm can give the knowledge you want like Taxation matters in your case. You can join a company as an Accounts and Finance Executive but make sure that they are ready to give you the exams leave for appearing in CA Final exams. You are already spending time in this firm more than required by the corporates i.e. 7.30pm to 8.00 pm even without having assignments for learning purpose.

When you join a corporate then it is up to you how much workload you can handle because everyone in the corporate want to get the work done from others even you can invole in other dept too, like if you join as an Accounts executive than you may involve in tax matters too.

Normally, TDS, service tax and VAT/Sales tax come under the perview of Accounting in the corporate. However, in large companies they have defferent dept. After joining the company you may seek transfer in the other dept according to your choice.

Also, different challenges during the execution of work in the corporate will give you confidence to handle the similar situation next time.

Try to give a qualitative study time of at least 4 hours each day apart of exam leaves to get well prepared for the upcoming CA Final Grp 1 exams.

Hope your 2nd group result would be positive for which wish you all the very best..

I also appeared for the 2nd group this time. In Nov - 2014 I appeared for the first time for both Group but loose 2nd group. However, I prepared fully with self study without any single coaching along with my articleship with Noida based CA firm 'Shiv Om & Co.'

Hope it will help you.

With you all the best..