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GRS News

10 Jan 2008
Career tips for aspiring taxation specialists

If you want to reach the top of any industry, it is crucial to understand your choices. Tax is no exception. At every stage of your career, you need to make sure you opt for a route which suits your personality and plays to your skills. Someone who is in control of their life – knows their goals and how they aim to achieve them – will appear more confident, and therefore more competent, to prospective employers.Some recruiters insist Big 4 experience is virtually a CV necessity nowadays. Well, it's clearly an advantage, but the upper echelons of the tax food chain are not the preserve of the Big 4 trained professionals. It can make career progression easier, but you can get to the top if you don’t get in to one of the Big 4. Competition for jobs at these firms is fierce but if you succeed in getting your qualification there, you should ideally stay for another three of four years after that. Employers will have a preference towards candidates that have done their time as a tax manager and then a top end manager. But not everyone wants to start their careers in a big company – some people are suited to a larger, more corporate environment, but many are not. Even candidates who have started their careers at one of the Big 4, often opt to move to smaller companies after a couple of years because they can offer a better work life balance and greater responsibility earlier on in a career.Wherever you start out your career, there are ways to maximise your appeal to future employers. You should choose your specialisms wisely. Like any professional service, from assurance to consulting, there are some areas of tax that are more popular than others. Focusing on areas where there are skills shortages will obviously make you more employable in the future. Certain sectors are suffering from a shortage of good individuals and two of these are Real Estate and Financial Services. M&A and Financial Services specialists are also scarce. There are professional services firms in London feverishly trying to hire hundreds of Financial Services tax professionals at the moment.Once you’ve gained some experience, you may choose to leave practice altogether. Different types of people suit industry and practice. In general, industry jobs are less pressurised and you get to see tax issues through from beginning to end. You will be deeply involved in the nitty-gritty of the work - but you’ll need an excellent technical background to do the job properly. If you decide to leave for industry you should weigh up the pros and cons of joining a company with a UK HQ or a foreign firm with offices in the UK. You want be gaining high-level tax experience - tax planning from beginning to end. If you join the UK outpost of a big US firm you may end up getting only a small piece of the action. And if you think you’ve made the wrong decision, our research suggests you have as little as three years to move back. You might find it hard to convince some professional services firms if you’ve been out of practice for more than three years.Of course, not everyone wants to break from practice. A clear benefit of staying in a professional services setting is that you have a clear career path laid out in front of you. At senior manager level you will be funnelled towards becoming a Director. It certainly makes financial sense to stay on board, too. Although your bonuses may not be as large as they would be in industry, the higher the level you reach, the greater base salary hikes.But in practice you’ll need to be happy to deal with pressure. You will not see tax issues all the way through from conception to completion - you will only be doing pieces of your clients’ work. Perhaps counter-intuitively, technical brilliance is probably less important in practice. There is plenty of technical support available if you need it – and you can always pick up Tolley’s if you get stuck. But there is a bigger difference between the qualities required of industry candidates and practice candidates. It’s the character trait in shortest supply in the whole of tax, but it is vital if you want to make it to the top in practice. You need to be a good business developer; now, that sales streak - which wasn’t quite so important ten years ago - is everything.To be a good business developer you’ll need to network. Arrange monthly parties or drinks after work and invite people who you would like to be better acquainted with. The majority of the time, you'll be invited to their parties and you'll network with key people more. At the beginning of your career do this inside your profession. As you progress, network in your clients’ sectors. Reading your clients’ trade press is as vital to you as indulging in the tax press. Becoming an expert in their world will make you a more credible asset to them, and by default, your employer Whatever route you choose to take to the top, you’ll need to be a good communicator. Get hold of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. Learn to use his ‘weapons of influence’ (Reciprocation, Commitment & Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, and Scarcity) to your advantage. But lastly, whether you choose practice or industry the importance of doing something you enjoy cannot be overstated. As the old adage says: find a job you love and never work again. Sarah Ottley, Consultant, GRS Tax