What's your job about?
Hood Sweeney is a mid-size firm, which provides accounting, business advisory, financial planning, performance coaching, finance, and technology services to clients. My current role is within the health and small business accounting team. As an undergraduate, my main tasks include the preparation of tax returns, business activity and financial statements. The work is very diverse, and I am always learning something new with support from managers and other team members.
What's your background?
I have lived in Adelaide my whole life, and after finishing year 12 I started studying Business (Management) at UniSA. In my first year, I completed an accounting subject and didn’t really know what to expect as accounting was never offered as a subject at my school. During this subject, I really enjoyed the processes, theory and maths involved, and decided to pick up a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) as a double degree.
Throughout high school and university, I worked numerous casual jobs in retail and hospitality. This helped me gain many skills, including working effectively in a team, time management and interpersonal communication which are all vital to my role at Hood Sweeney. In my second year at university, I also completed a semester exchange in London, which was an invaluable experience and I would recommend it to anyone as it allows you to go and see the world whilst ‘studying’.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
As an undergraduate, I learn something new every day. University is very different to work, and I find it interesting to see how the concepts/ theories fit into real-world applications. This has extended my knowledge, especially as the work becomes progressively more challenging. Every day I am also working on something slightly different, which ensures that my job is never boring and the time in the day absolutely flies. The managers and directors are also super helpful, I am always encouraged to ask questions and my peers are never too busy to stop and lend a hand.
What are the limitations of your job?
As with all jobs, there are some tasks that may be tedious or time-consuming, however, there is also a lot of interesting work and so much to learn. From my observations, to succeed in this profession you must be accountable for your own work and have good time management, problem-solving and interpersonal skills.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...