My career began in IT. After becoming disillusioned with that, I spent a few years in my 30s working in various junior accounting & management accounting roles. I passed the first level of the CIMA qualification. I had a desire to continue progressing and become qualified, but following an unexpected period of unemployment I eventually took an IT job out of desperation to resume working. It's now been 3.5 years since I last worked in a management accounting role. But I still have a desire to work in finance and recently have been wondering if there is a way to combine the two interests. I have considered systems accounting but there (correct me if I am wrong) doesn't seem to be very many vacancies and any that do exist seem to require a level of experience that will be difficult for a non qualifed, non experienced person to break into. I'd be grateful for any advice. In case it's relevant: I'm 42 year old male, living in England.
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Are you interested in completing the CIMA qualification?
You can study for and take the exams independently of an employer.
In order to become fully qualified you would need a period of practical experience as well, however.
I guess what you are talking about could be described as 'Fintech' -
What is your current employer like - can you move sideways?
Thanks. I would be happy to get stuck into CIMA again though I wouldn't want to restart the journey without some confidence that my switching from IT > Finance > IT and back again to finance isn't going to kill off my career prospects.
Unfortunately, there is no chance of a move sideways in my current firm but I'm ready to move on if I have to.
That's an interesting suggestion - I'll have to look a bit more into what is required and how I might be able to break into that field.
Have you been involved in systems implementation? It always helps to have techies that understand accounting basics.
If you mean accountancy software systems, unfortunately no - PS Financials was installed prior to me joining. Despite volunteering, I haven't had the chance to do any routine admin with the software as the finance manager is quite tech savvy and has been able to manage by himself (so far!).
"A role in IT" could be anything from printer repair to artificial intelligence modelling, it's a bit vague.
Are you in software? Hardware? Support? Programming? Development? What skills have you got?
Primarily a support role in a Microsoft environment - a mixture of on-prem and cloud sytems.
