Top 15 Chartered Accountant Skills for Career Success

This post provides exhaustive information and a list of important charted accountant skills and qualities you should have to excel in their careers.

Please, read on:

Who is a Chartered Accountant?

A chartered account is a professional accountant who is hired to handle job(s) within the ambits of accountancy.

This means that a chartered accountant can perform any job as long as it is related to accountancy.

Top 15 Chartered Accountant Skills for Career Success

Here are important skills and qualities to have to be successful in your career as a charted accountant:

1. Good work ethics
2. Self-motivation
3. Integrity
4. Business acumen
5. IT skills
6. Organizational skills
7. Time management
8. Communication
9. Interpersonal skills
10. Analytical skills
11. Problem solving skills
12. Excellent mathematical skills
13. Teamwork
14. Good work ethics
15. Good knowledge of the field/industry.

1. Good work ethics

Chartered accountancy is a noble job. It is needful that you understand this.

It’s a job status envied by many but only few are privileged to find themselves in this field.

So, it is expedient that you render a good account of your profession.

Giving good account of your profession is possible mainly through good work ethics.

So know the work ethics associated with your profession and live by them.

As a good chartered accountant, your work ethics is paramount to anyone who will like to hire you for the services you render.

It should be noticeable and telling on your personality. This should keep you in a good light in the society.

2. Self-motivation

Motivation is always associated with success in any field, including accounting.

It is one factor that can keep you going and ensure that you maintain a steady trajectory in your job.

Motivation pushes you to aim for the top.

As a chartered accountant, the motivation you need is your potential to be a problem solver and an economic adviser to any firm.

It is something that should excite you and make you feel on top of the world.

If you are not feeling this way, it means you lack motivation to say the least.

When you are motivated in your role as a chartered accountant, you have the feeling that you can actually get to the pinnacle of your career in no time.

This is not to say that challenges won’t come, but if they come, keep your motivation alive.

3. Integrity

Since you are directly involved in financial issues, you have to be careful of your conduct.

You should be known for transparency and your ability to do your job without raising dusts or questions about your financial integrity.

Integrity is one thing you will need if at all you want to be trusted by anyone who may desire or demand your services.

Having integrity is not an option; it is something you need to have or make up your mind to work on if you don’t have it already, else you might find it difficult to succeed on the job.

You have to understand that building a lasting integrity is your ticket to the minds of potential clients or employers who may need your services.

A bad reputation in terms of monetary affairs will militate against your progress in your job.

4. Business acumen

As long as your job has a lot to do with financial affairs, business acumen should be your thing.

Being a chartered accountant requires that you make an effort to increase your business skills.

Having good accounting knowledge is not enough, you also need sufficient knowledge of how business works to be a great chartered accountant.

5. IT skills

Having good knowledge of the digital world is important for a chartered accountant.

The IT industry can only get better and anyone who desires to enhance their career must be ready to take advantage of the unlimited possibilities in the digital industry.

You need to improve your skills in the area of IT.

It can make a big impression on your career as a chartered accountant.

If you want to improve your worth and capacities in your field, you need to learn to use some software applications made available by developers in regards to your field.

As an accountant, you need to get acquainted with spreadsheet and statistical packages among others.

6. Organizational skills

Organizational skill is needed in your job and career as an administrative and managerial skill.

Simply put, it will help you in your quest to attain greater responsibilities in the future.

The ability to organize yourself and the activities you are expected to carryout is a plus to you in your job.

Organizing your job saves you stress, time, and the incidence of making mistakes in your job.

When you are organized, you are better placed to carry out your job effectively.

And as you know, you cannot be a good organizer if you are not good in forward thinking and strategic planning.

You will be doing yourself a great harm in your career if you do not take time to organize yourself and think of better ways to do what you know how to do best.

7. Time management

A chartered accountant must have excellent time management skills.

This is because every moment of their career counts and should be useful to them and anyone who needs their services.

As an accountant, you are not expected to handle tasks or jobs with laxity and procrastination.

Procrastination is the enemy of time management.

Procrastination is a sign of laziness and irresponsibility, as well as bad work ethics.

You have to be up and doing and ensure that you are able to complete tasks within the deadline attached to the jobs.

When you procrastinate on jobs, you pile pressure on yourself and put yourself in a situation where you are not able to meet up with targets given to you.

8. Communication

Communication plays an important role in your job which you may not know.

It is in your interest if you are a good communicator.

It is one of the things you can boast of which can boost your resume as well as your career.

It is a needful skill.

First is the oral aspect of communication.

This is also the most important aspect of communication you need to know because it is the most common form of communication.

It is an important quality anyone should have, including chartered accountants, for a successful career.

The next is the written form of communication.

Written communication is also important, especially considering that it is the more formal way of communication in a business setting.

So learning to communicate in written form is also an excellent skill to have as a chartered accountant.

9. Interpersonal skills

As a matter of fact, personal development is the best form of development that you can have as a person (chartered accountant).

It is the personal or interpersonal skills that you have that give you an edge over your peers in the workplace.

The skills and qualities directly related to your job description are important but not as important as the interpersonal skills which make a well-furnished career person.

This is because the interpersonal skills you have can help you establish a more balanced career even outside the workplace.

So interpersonal skills are not just skills directly related to your job, but they also enable you to relate with different people from different walks of life.

Remember that you don’t learn only from people in the same field with you, you can also learn from others from different fields.

10. Analytical skills

Excellent skills for analysis and analogy are important to have by a chartered accountant or anyone who has anything to do with the accounting field.

Accounting skill wouldn’t be complete if the accountant is not capable of doing proper analysis of transactions and documents.

In the light of this fact, it is expected that if you desire to be a renowned and well sought-after chartered accountant, your analytical skills should be something to reckon with.

It should be one of the very best in the field and shown in all that you do.

Analysis is part of your job and something you should learn to practice always.

Your analytical skills will definitely get better if you put in enough effort to do more of thinking than exaggeration and assumptions.

11. Problem solving skills

This comes as a result of well conducted analysis of problems. It is not a skill that stands alone.

It is hard to be a good analyst without being a good problem solver in your field.

This is because when you conduct analysis, you will be able to generate good ideas of what to do in resolving problems.

Every organization has its own problems associated with it, especially when it has to do with finances.

This is the essence of your job and the yardstick to be used to measure your level of success in that job.

So, you must anticipate problems in that field and take it upon yourself to get it sorted out.

Solving the problem of the financial affairs of the organization that has hired you is the desire of your employer.

It is at this point that your employer can determine whether you are important or not to the success of the organization.

12. Excellent mathematical skills

Working in any capacity that demands clarifications of transactions, especially financial issues has excellent mathematical skill as a basic skill to have.

Calculations and other operations are dependent on how good you are in mathematics to be able to arrive at accurate results.

So knowing this means that you should be ready to handle anything that has to do with mathematics in your job.

It is important for you to have excellent mathematical skills to avoid suffering unnecessary embarrassment resulting from giving wrong numerical postulations and other errors that emanate from poor calculations.

13. Teamwork

As a chartered account, you belong most probably to some associations that look after the affairs of people who are chartered accountants.

It is expected to belong to some of these bodies and do your best to help the association grow.

That is the first level of teamwork you should think of excelling in.

Also, in the workplace where you are hired, you should do your best to work well with other members of the organization as a way of fostering your job and also helping the organization grow.

You need to have lots of team spirit to work effectively with other people in your organization.

14. Good work ethics

Your job, just like other job descriptions, has some work ethics that anyone who is chartered accountant is expected to work with.

There are behaviors that should be seen in the workplace and some attitudes that should be the hallmark of anyone called a chartered account.

Understand that there are things you should not do in the workplace, especially if you have been intimated with the organization’s rules and regulations that guide the operation of every staff.

When you engage in any anti-organizational acts, you will paint the body you belong to in bad light and this will raise a lot of questions about your ability to do the job assigned to you.

15. Good knowledge of the field/industry

It is important that you understand the field you are in and what you need to have or do to succeed in it.

The nature of the industry goes a long way to determine what your approach to work should be and how you carry yourself.

When you learn about your industry, then you will be better placed to find your way in and out of the industry.

Chartered Accountant Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for the position of a chartered accountant, you can apply the skills and qualities discussed above in creating the Skills or Competence Section if you already have them.

By highlighting the above skills and qualities in your resume/CV, it becomes easier for the recruiter/employer to be convinced that you are the right chartered accountant they are looking for.

Conclusion

The need for the services of chartered accountants is on the increase and is bound to rise because of the increase in business organizations all over the world.

For a chartered accountant, there is need to combine the theory you know with the skills explained in this article.

These skills and qualities are what you need to excel and stay top of your career.