3 Tips to Land The Jump: Accounting to FP&A

So, you’re staring at your two year mark at a Big 4 or you’re in the accounting group of a business already.  You aren’t weighing different exit options, you know what you want.  The Financial Planning and Analysis group gets the interesting high visibility projects, works with the business lines, gets the face time with executives.  You want in, but there’s a problem.  Where do you even start?  How do you make that jump?  How do you stand out as more than just another CPA looking for a way out of the accounting rat race?

I’ll level with you, as someone who’s thumbed through countless resumes and interviewed plenty of analysts, that CPA starts as a handicap.

Why?

You think like an accountant.

Don’t roll your eyes at me, I’m trying to tell you what you’re up against. Right or wrong, the accountants who’ve come before you have left FP&A with this generalization: You’re staunch by the rules paint by numbers score keepers.  When you hear peers or others talk about getting pigeon-holed or being branded a “tax accountant” as an obstacle to moving over to FP&A, this is what they’re really talking about.

In FP&A, beyond the necessary technical skills like Excel, SQL, Essbase etc, the most important is the ability to think creatively in the absence of certainty.  Whether that’s in the construction of forecasting models, development of reporting or in the guidance of difficult decisions in the business its the one skill that is critical, but hard to gauge on a resume, and even harder to broadcast on one.

Here’s a few tips to get you started…

1. Target a specific industry.  Fundamentally, the tasks that FP&A performs are pretty similar across different industries. But where they differ is where you can shine.  Every industry has its own jargon, business model, culture, drivers and even regulatory issues.  The good news is that by now you’ve had decent exposure to several, and can tailor your resume, cover letter and interview discussions around that knowledge. Walking in speaking the same language levels the field for you, you’re in the know.  From a technical perspective, illustrating your specific industry knowledge shows you didn’t just zombie your way through audits, that you actually learned something and can apply it. It also shows you care (or pretend to enough) about the industry you’re looking to get into.  Bottom line, if your resume and interview read like you’re just shotgunning for any analyst role anywhere no one is going to get super excited about you.

2. Get in on a project with FP&A.  Whether its the Client’s or your own internal group, working alongside FP&A on a project gets you experience, networking and an interview/resume story.  Do a great job and you become the Go-To accountant for when things get hairy, I’ve even seen FP&A internally recruit that Go-To.  How though?  The most direct way is by finding a pain point and offering to fix it.  Remember all those subject matter expert interviews and documentation? Gold mine. But, don’t go after “accounting” problems like offering to clean up their chart of accounts or realign cost center hierarchies.  What then?  This is where you’ve got to flex those creative problem solving skills.  Hearing complaints or off hand comments about what a pain the accounting system is to do research in?  Offer to help get accounting data into a database that’s easy to manipulate and use.  Notice thatT&E spend starting to get out of control? Offer to help develop a tracker for where the expenses are coming from and who is approving them.  Maybe even roll it into a project that reevaluates the spend approval levels of different positions.  The list goes on, just listen for the key pain word, “I wish we could…”  Make that wish come true and show that you’re a different kind of accountant.  Yes, if you’re at a Client this may be extra curricular, see the next item to make it part of your job.

3. Be vocal!  Get involved! I guess that’s two things, but the point is don’t settle for being the invisible nameless associate in the audit room.  Yes, I’m talking about networking.  An example is probably more helpful than an explanation.  Years ago at another company I was in the FP&A group and ran the reporting and model for an important statistic in mortgage, the portfolio retention rate (not important for this discussion).  What is important is that I would have groups of three auditors in my cube once a quarter asking questions and documenting the process…and that’s all they did.  Then one quarter one of them starts asking more questions than he needs, he’s curious (everyone loves when someone is genuinely interested in what they do), so I end up sending him a couple other models, we talk about them, he gets it and makes a huge impression.  Two years later when I jump ship myself, I find out he’s in the accounting department of the company I just joined (he wanted FP&A).  Not content in accounting, he gets an offer for an advisory position back at a Big 4.  I have never tried to hard sell someone more into joining my team as I did that guy.  He didn’t, but I’d hire him into FP&A in a second.

The overall theme here is gaining the exposure to what FP&A does and messaging through your resume and interviews that you’ve done the work before, just in a differently geared position.  Show that you’re more than just a debit/credit stereotype and set yourself up for the jump.