Careers

[eMsta]

I have been thinking of changing career for a while now - going from an accountant role to more of an analyst role. Just wondering if anyone here is working in the financial/business analyst field - and what path they took to getting there (i.e experience etc). As I have an IT and accounting background, and now doing my CPA - it should be ok in the education department, however its the experience i am wondering about. A lot of these jobs ask for SAP and VBA - both of which i dont have experience - but woudl be good if someone can give me some pointers into how i can get my foot in the door.

Thanks all!

[wanzi]

I have been thinking of changing career for a while now - going from an accountant role to more of an analyst role. Just wondering if anyone here is working in the financial/business analyst field - and what path they took to getting there (i.e experience etc). As I have an IT and accounting background, and now doing my CPA - it should be ok in the education department, however its the experience i am wondering about. A lot of these jobs ask for SAP and VBA - both of which i dont have experience - but woudl be good if someone can give me some pointers into how i can get my foot in the door.

Thanks all!

hey mate, im looking at getting into the IT industry and all my mates who already work in there say that an analyst job or junior project manager job is fairly easy to get once u have a bit of experience. so far they recommend i do some time on the service desk to learn the ropes and usually after a year or two u can move up. one of my mates was on helpdesk for a year n a bit and it now a junior project manager. i guess it also depends on how keen u make urself out to be to ur managers. if ur not far outta uni then u may still be able to do the grad program? ive been outta uni for a year but im not too interested in finding work yet, im happy im my office admin role.

run thru the jobs on seek and u will find a lot of those city based jobs want experienced people. there are the occasional ones who will give u a chance. another factor that got some of my mates jobs is bullshitting. if ur good at lying outta ur ass then u will get a job.

best of luck to ya mate

[R31Nismoid]

Business Analysts from all my experience never have a clue, fresh outta uni, no real world logic to use... so they are not all that useful.

I end up basically spoon feeding the information across.

So it should be an easy role to land if you can carry yourself well in an interview IMO as most roles if you are analysing the business largely depend on you knowing it to be able to do anything so there is in house training/info provided. As long as you understand the key concepts of how to pick things apart, present the information etc etc.

Also largely depends on the company more than anything else. Larger it is, more chance you have of being able to land some sort of job and then move around/about because of it.

eg: where i am, its only 1500 people, so no chance you will go from Service Desk to a Jnr PM in 18 months, you'd be looking at 4-5 years as there is little chance of progression in that particular tree.

But that is not to say it can happen in the building next door with a different company.

I've actually turned back many people simply because of too much experience, and yes you can have too much as being too knowledge filled can lead to you being bored in some roles depending on the nature of them etc etc.

So it goes both ways.

No idea on finance though, i can only talk from an IT/Business analyst side which is all i've been involved in.

[eMsta]

thanks for the replies - am seriously considering this now after going to a management/analyst presentation yesterday for cpa - was soo much more interesting than doing just numbers day in day out.

[DaVEyBoii]

sorry to jump in like this, what kind of experiences or requirements do you need for service desk work ? or what part/departments do you need basic knowledge in to get started

[R31Nismoid]

Nothing IMO.

basic PC knowledge, thats about it. Seems that is all the people my place hires knows.

[West]

We should have a sticky section for job relates, for members to help each other out..............

[inark]

We are looking for people at the moment too... nothing in the business role, pure service desk with the look to move them out into our other fields (Networking, SAP, Database, Data warehouse, Web Applications, Automation, Scheduling etc...) start off is contract work, 12 months, but those good enough would probably progress in less then that. Pays pretty reasonable too... probably around 55-60k mark through either IBM or sub contracting through Man Power. Does involve rotating roster though as we service the global service desk and have to cover Europe, Latin America and Asia and every country and region in between.

I work for Philip Morris Intl. as a Technical Analyst, Service Desk Team Leader.

Would have to have at least a few years background in IT in a help or service desk, newbies with quals in SAP, DB etc would be prefered as thats what we are looking to move people into permanently. We are an ITIL based company so ITIL training would also be a plus

[R31Nismoid]

55-60 for service desk ain't bad at all, especially with room to move.

my place should pay attention and take note lol.

lol @ ITIL - the whole idea of it does make me laugh. some good merits but some of the things needed for certification of a business are ridiculous.

I did my course and passed, but by god its not easy

[inark]

yeah its pretty good... especially with all the OT available, when i was contracting i would pull in on average 70k a year. Plus you get a week off every month (after working a weekend shift of 24 hours) plus 4 weeks anual and 10 days sick.

having worked for the company for over 5 years and not doing the actual course until this year i found it reasonably easy... except the fact that i basically had to forget how our company works because its "best practice"... not how our company runs.

the foundations to me are common sense and i found it amazing that someone actually makes millions and millions of dollars for something that isnt even a standard and is basically just "this is how you could do it if you wanted it run how we think would be ideal".

yeah the pays not bad considering how easy the work is... when i say service desk i use the term losely. We have already moved 3 members out into the business as perms into good roles, one in sap, one in service management and another in quality. The VP basically told us he wants 15 people to move out of the department and into the business over the next 2 years. Might even be supplying the business in our other locations in Buenos Aries and Lausanne... see how it goes.

[R31Nismoid]

having worked for the company for over 5 years and not doing the actual course until this year i found it reasonably easy... except the fact that i basically had to forget how our company works because its "best practice"... not how our company runs.

LOL Same for me

That was the hardest part, had to forget the last 8years... wasn't easy

the foundations to me are common sense and i found it amazing that someone actually makes millions and millions of dollars for something that isnt even a standard and is basically just "this is how you could do it if you wanted it run how we think would be ideal".

Ye, that is something i couldnt work out either because the 3 day course for the first cert thing was UBER expensive for what it was.

Someone somewhere is a nice big fat cat

[dmac_25]

Go get the EFI uni course i did and come tuning with me

[_Ryan_]

Figured I would bump this over starting a new thread,

Where have people done an ITIL V3 course in Melb?

thx,

Ryan

[paulr33]

ITIL is good foundations and some people miss the fundamentals, partciulary managers etc

i started at dialup tech support

the only way to start in IT as at the bottom usually

[Bozz]

yep

[_Ryan_]

Figured I would bump this over starting a new thread,

Where have people done an ITIL V3 course in Melb?

thx,

Ryan

ITIL is good foundations and some people miss the fundamentals, partciulary managers etc

i started at dialup tech support

the only way to start in IT as at the bottom usually

What role are you in?

I decided to do a trainee-ship to try and get better foundations and avoid the Service Desk, I'm starting in an Level 2 support role on a traineeship program(half way through). Figured time to start doing some extra certs.

Any recommended places to do the ITIL cert are welcomed.

[paulr33]

traineeship is a good way if you can find an oppourtuntiy for sure

my role at the moment is manager of 20 network engineers

[emts]

i started at dialup tech support

the only way to start in IT as at the bottom usually

strange never thought I would hear you recommend starting in dial-up support!!!

but I agree with Paul here, I work for a well known IT company as well, and we hire from the telco helpdesk regularly..

IT skills are easy to teach, people skills much less...

[paulr33]

emts is right, that was how everyone got into the industry back then

me and emts started at the same company and both moved onto bigger better things