Introducing "Your First Accounting Job"

Here's a way to tell your story and inspire others.

In December of 2023 I was interviewed via email by Ryan Teague Beckwith for his new newsletter, “Your First Byline.” It is a kind of Proust questionnaire for journalists to help others understand how to break into the business and what to do once you are there.

My First Byline: An interview about my origins as a journalist

I have seen “Your First Byline” grow by leaps and bounds and I think the format is also a great way to document all the ways you can use an accounting education and experience.

So let’s see if you think so, too!

If you are interested in being profiled for “Your First Accounting Job”, all I need is for you to email me at TheDig@Substack.com with short answers to these questions:

1. What is your current job?

2. Did you major in accounting or come to it later? To CPA exam or not to CPA exam?

3. What was your first job using your accounting skills and education?

4. How did you get it?

5. What advice do you have for people considering majoring in accounting, considering whether to take the CPA exam, and considering how to use accounting education and skills?

I would love to see profiles from all possible careers — academia, government, industry, tax, public accounting, investigations, law and law enforcement, not-for-profit, internal audit, investing, and even journalism — who can inspire the next generation of accounting majors and CPA exam takers!

Here’s a little bit from something I wrote in January 2024 about the perceived accountant shortage. It explains how about how I ended up teaching and doing journalism after obtaining an accounting degree from Purdue University way back when:

I do not have particularly positive nostalgia for my study of accounting as an undergraduate. I found it boring then and the classes fraught with cliquishness that alienated this first generation college student. I was neither in the top 10% of my class nor a professors' pet so I was only granted an interview with one Big 4 firm and that firm quickly and soundly rejected me.

I do have very fond memories of my accomplishment in passing the CPA exam in two tries. That’s when anyone who passed could call themselves CPAs and it was a very proud moment for my parents, despite them not having any idea what it really meant in terms of a job. I was able to say I was a CPA based on what I learned in the 120-hour undergraduate degree, three years after going to work for Continental Illinois National Bank. This prominent money center bank had also provided me with an internship for three years during college and my above- average but not outstanding grades did not stand in the way of selection for its rotational training program for accounting, computer science, and general management graduates.

What happened to all the bank and industrial rotational training programs for undergraduate business majors, including accountants?

My post-training program placement in the bank was on the personal trust internal audit team then as a financial analyst to lawyers who helped local CEOs minimize taxes on stock option exercises the bank helped them fund and then invest. After I left the bank I used my degree as an accounting manager and then a controller in two industrial distribution companies. I savored the hands-on experience managing all of the accounting functions — general ledger, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and management reporting — for a public company and then a family-owned firm.

When I joined KPMG, ten years after graduating, it was in the state and local consulting business. I was hired to use my functional accounting experience, and management skills to implement proprietary accounting and reporting software in state and local governments. I became a very good project manager, enough so that I later worked in Latin America as the Director for JPMorgan's Y2K effort in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina.

I learned enough about how a professional services firm was managed at the P&L level that I was tasked with supporting the spin-off of consulting from audit for those same LatAm KPMG offices into BearingPoint.

That professional services business model experience led to a leadership position for the Manpower subsidiary that was responding to the business opportunity of Sarbanes-Oxley, and then to returning to Latin American with my own consulting firm, and then to PwC as a director in its "PwC the Client" firm-focused internal audit team.

It was at PwC, in 2005-2006, not long after the firms were forced to accept the independent regulation of the PCAOB, that my interest and aptitude for auditor independence issues and for the role of a firm's National Office grew.

I started the blog, retheauditors.com in October 2006 after leaving PwC and never looked back.

It was when I started writing about accounting and audit that I started to love accounting and audit.

What to do about the accountant shortage?

Send me your profiles!

© Francine McKenna, The Digging Company LLC, 2025