Hard work pays off. CA is definitely one of the most difficult courses of the country with intense competition, but once you crack the examinations and add ‘CA’ as a prefix to your name, it opens up a pool of career opportunities in front of you, not limiting to any one domain. No company or entity can work without the involvement and the guidance of a CA. In fact, the government work too will collapse without the skills of a CA. The skill set and personality of the individual decides his/her income. From joining a consulting firm to entrepreneurship and education, opportunities are immense.
We have already discussed about the CA course and syllabus in our previous blogs. Visit the following links to go through it –
How to become a CA? – https://rkginstitute.com/a-guide-to-ca-course-part-1/
CA Detailed Syllabus – https://rkginstitute.com/a-guide-to-ca-course-2/
This blog will discuss in detail about the career prospects in Chartered Accountancy.
- ICAI Campus Placements
ICAI, the institute that conducts the examinations and designates candidates as CA, also conducts bi-annual campus placement drives, where PSUs and private companies participate to hire fresh CAs. The highest salary offered in the campus drive till date was ₹34.5 LPA by Bharti Airtel. In 2021, the highest package was ₹22.3 LPA and the average was ₹8 LPA, which is commendable. Reputed companies and PSUs like Deloitte, EY, Indian Oil Corporation, etc regularly participate in ICAI campus placements.
So, you can consider placements if you are a newly designated CA.
- Independent Practice
You can practice Chartered Accountancy independently (i.e., not in someone else’s firm). This means that you will be handling clients, giving them financial advice, filing IT returns, advising on insurance, auditing or any other field of expertise all by yourself. You may establish your own consulting firm, either alone or with a partner.
Practicing CA have some benefits over working in firms. You can choose your clients, provide services in accordance with your expertise area and be more independent in work life than being in a job. However, this path requires more patience, smart work and entrepreneurship qualities. You need to have funds and confidence before taking up this path. Areas like KPO (Knowledge Processes Outsourcing) and forensic accounting are new emerging sectors for CA practice, the traditional ones being audit expertise, financial reporting, insurance advisory, etc.
The income prospects for this path ranges between 4-10 LPA, gradually increasing with increase in years of experience.
- CA Consulting Firm
You can also join as an employee in a consulting firm. A consulting firm provides expert advises and services to its clients for a fee. Deloitte, Ernest & Young, SS Kothari Mehta & Co., are some of the leading firms providing professional services.
The average salary here goes around 8-9 LPA and the highest salary often touches 15-16 LPA.
- Business Organisations/Companies
A CA may be employed in Business Organisations to handle their financial work. Some of the important designations here are as follows:
- Cost accountant
- Chief finance officer (CFO)
- Accountant
- Taxation advisor
- Financial Advisor
In general, a CA is required to prepare financial statements, advise on taxation and budgeting, conduct audits, etc in a business organisation.
- Entrepreneurship
Since a Chartered Accountant is very well acquainted with business laws, taxation and other technicalities, entrepreneurship is a very good path to consider. Non – CAs might take a lot of time to understand the things and details of business, something which a CA is already trained with. Of course, this needs lots of patience, time and leadership qualities, once established it can definitely boom up.
We have seen much more CAs in the past few years going for entrepreneurship against jobs. CA Parag Gupta is one of the reputed ones in this context.
Apart from monetary benefit it provides, it also transforms you from a ‘job seeker’ to ‘job provider’, something which is of extreme importance for the development of our country.
- Education
Since the CA course in itself is said to be very challenging, and since a designated CA has already cleared all the levels of the examination, he/she may go in education sector to guide the upcoming generations of chartered accountants.
With the world shifting to digital mode, education sector has witnessed some benefits in terms of student capacity in a class and quality of education. A CA may harness these benefits by teaching quality content to his students in online, offline or both modes.
RKG Institute, established by CA Parag Gupta is one of the best examples of successful working and quality impartment of education to the upcoming generation of chartered Accountants in India.
We hope that this blog helped you to get a rough idea about the career prospects after pursuing CA. Stay tuned for the upcoming blogs.
Thank you for reading.
