It’s not enough just to think big – you need to take action to make it happen for your accounting career.
For the self-employed and small firm accountants alike, growing an accounting career can feel like an uphill battle. To be sure, scaling up your business is a challenge that requires a considerable investment of time, money, and other resources.
But a big part of growing your accounting career involves inflating your capacity. That means making yourself and your company seem bigger and more important than you are. Which is not to say that you should be trying to deceive anyone. But by thinking and acting big, or bigger, you’ll appear to others as a confident and flourishing professional. And with enough persistence and some luck, that could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Find your niche – then stick with it
Key to growing your accounting career is establishing a niche for yourself. Finding your unique place within the accounting industry will help you to brand yourself; you’ll avoid painting yourself with too broad a brush, ensuring that you run up against less competition.
Once you’ve figured out your unique angle, start leveraging it. Promote your brand like crazy through every possible channel.
But by thinking and acting big, or bigger, you’ll appear to others as a confident and flourishing professional.
Create an elaborate web presence
So you’re looking to grow your accounting career – but your business is strapped for resources. In such circumstances, it can be tough to justify splurging on any expense.
Still, developing a strategic, informative and aesthetically pleasing website shouldn’t be something you do on the cheap. Loosen the pursestrings and shell out for a professionally designed site, as well as communications experts who can aid you in generating content that will drive traffic to your site.
Last but not least, spend some time establishing a strong social media profile on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It might feel a little frivolous, but building a wide social networking presence is actually an incredibly smart use of your time and resources for the purposes of growing your accounting practice or career.
Loosen the pursestrings and shell out for a professionally designed site, as well as communications experts who can aid you in generating content that will drive traffic to your site.
Create multiple e-mail addresses
Companies with large teams tend to be perceived as more successful, competent, and reliable than smaller outfits. Even if you’re starting a solo accounting practice or are working at a very small firm, it can’t hurt to make your company look just a little bit larger than it actually is.
One subtle way to accomplish this is to create several e-mail aliases for your company, whose mail can be forwarded to a single comprehensive account. For example, you could have [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] all forwarding their mail to one address.
There’s nothing wrong with having a small or solo accounting practice; big things come in small packages, after all. But if you’re interested in building your business’ capacity and growing your accounting career, it never hurts to fake it till you make it and make yourself look as big and important as possible. Before you know it, you won’t have to feign being a bigshot – you’ll be one.
Let us know what you think! At Clarity Recruitment, we’re always interested in hearing from accounting and finance professionals like yourselves, who are ready for new, exciting opportunities that can take their careers to the next level. And be sure to follow us on Twitter (@clarityrecruits) and connect with us on Facebook for more great tips and advice!
