First Case Study, Picking apart my Life

[Raj]

As you can tell from the title, this is the first time I'm making a case study, I'm going to include all the details I think are relevant but if you need more feel free to ask.

The most important thing I'd love to hear about is my diet as it's the thing I can most easily change and will have long term effects on me.

First though here is my financial situation

I am 22 years old, Single and live with my father for free thankfully.

I am currently being paid $13 an hour as a Security Guard, I haven't been doing this full time for a year yet and it's a job with a wildly varying schedule with some weeks being 20 hours and others being 60, and is pretty consistently night shifts.

But generally speaking I'm making around $1,000-2,000 a month, depending on how many hours I've been given.

I can't speak much on Taxes since this is my first year working Full Time and I've yet to fill it out.  I suspect I'll get a good chunk of what I was taxed back because of how much I paid off on my student debt.

I finished all of my classes for International Accounting and Finance in December 2016 with a student debt of $24.000.

I need to do 4 months of work as an Accountant in order to graduate and it can be paid or unpaid.

Regarding my student debt I had also been doing part time Security Guard Shifts the entire time I was in University so I'd build up some savings, and I had planned to do full time work soon.  So the moment after I finished all my course work I set it up so that $2,000 would automatically be put into my student debt each month.

As of today's post of December 22nd, 2017 the debt is now at $4,748.07

I know tax wise the smartest decision was to wait until I had a higher paying job, but I hate the idea of having a student debt and want it gone as soon as possible.

In addition I do have savings of my own

My Checking account is 11,944.19

I also have Investments of $10,394.85, which are TFSA Accounts which are invested in Index Accounts I opened at TD Bank.

Continuing from where I left off, from December to March I looked around for any Paid Accounting Job that was full time. 

I got several interviews but no job and on March I decided that I could continue applying to Paid Accounting Jobs while I was doing Full Time Security Work rather than Part Time.

I noticed in November while doing 50 hour weeks where I was doing an additional 25 hours of travel on the bus that it had been a month since I applied to any Accounting Jobs.

That's when I decided to start also applying to Unpaid Internships, I got some interviews and got some good advise in working on getting my QuickBooks Online Certification which is what I'll do during my time off.

Now I'll include the last 6 months worth of cost, although I'll leave out food and transportation as my father has chosen to pay for food and is willing to pay my Presto TTC Bill, although I bike whenever the distance is less than 10 KM.

My total cost for the last 6 months excluding food and transportation was $944.  If your interested the breakdown is below.

I pay my phone bill myself and it's $11.50 per month as I use a prepaid phone on the SpeakOut7Eleven Plan.

They charge $1.50 a month for 911 emergency calls and I bought a monthly 100MB which I use to call people (Fongo and WhatsApp), use Google Maps and need Data to sign into Work.

I technically haven't paid anything for my phone in the last sic months as there was a deal 9 months ago where if you paid $100 at once you got $125 added to the card, I did have to pay tax which brought it to $113.  I still have $30 more in there although I may put another $113 in as their 100 to 125 deal is expiring in January.

Still it has been 6 months so I've chosen to add $70 to the bill.

I am old enough that I can no longer be covered under dental insurance with my father and I haven't been full time long enough to get any Dental Insurance.

So I went to get a cleaning and X ray last week which cost $250 and I also need to go get a cavity filled which will likely cost another $100 although that's an estimation, curse my habit of not flossing enough.  I've started keeping some floss in my Uniform pockets so I'm more likely to remember.

Next is Amazon and Dollarama where I get a variety of goods and entertainment and I've spend $218 in the last 6 months
(25 + 45 + 27 + 2 + 13 + 40 + 40 + 26)

I also paid to get my blood work fully checked out for $40 to make sure nothing was wrong with my new diet of Paleo and wanted to see my Equifax score without having to send a letter and the free credit score websites had not spread to Canada yet which was another $35.

I paid $105 for my Driver's License as it was expiring and needed to renew it.

Paid $100 for a Chicken Pox injection. 

Finally is Shoppers Drug Mart where I get things like floss, toothpaste and Vaseline for dry lips which cost $26
(6 + 4 + 16)

So all together in the last 6 months my costs was $944 excluding food and transportation
(26 + 100 + 105 + 35 + 40 + 218 + 250 + 70 + 100)

Now I'll go into Food details, I'm lucky in that since I'm living with my father they are willing to pay my food bills for me as long as I don't go overboard.

If anyone has opinions on how to optimize my work situation or monetary situation I'd love to hear it, but I am already prioritizing finding an Accounting Job and my expenses are low. 

I'm mostly interested in finding out if my diet is as healthy as possible and on any tips you guys have for night shifts.

Because I do almost entirely night shifts I've been having some problems falling asleep recently, I'll just be lying in bed with my mind thinking on a variety of topics and I'll just lie their for the next few hours. 

This has happened a few times before and generally what happens is it will last for a few days up to a week and then I'll be sleeping sound again. 

I'm hoping it will get better soon as the new construction site I'm working at is only 2 hours away by Bus rather than 3.  So I'll only be commuting 4 hours instead of 6 hours, but I still have to actually travel their so I can see how long it takes. 

I'd also love some advise on how to fall asleep faster or to sleep better on the bus.

Next regarding what I eat.

For Breakfast I eat 2 eggs cooked in butter and a little bit of salt for Protein and Fat.

Then I cut up 18 Ounces or 1.125 pounds of Broccoli and include 6 Ounces or 0.375 pounds of Frozen Strawberry and then pour 4 cups of milk which is 16 Ounces or 1 pound of Milk and blend it all together.

This gives me 40 Ounces of a Strawberry and Broccoli Smoothie that I drink which concludes my breakfast of the day, and in case you were wondering why I used Ounces for the solids at first it was because I measure using the blender and then just run it through a converter using google to give the more understandable pounds.

For Lunch I'll cut up 2 Cucumbers and throw out the skin and eat 6 small tangerines or some other fruit like Frozen Strawberries.

Dinner is much more variable as I am usually not in charge of cooking and eat with the family.

Sometimes we'll eat Burritos and I'll have three, or we may have Beef Curry and I'll have a fair bit and add a little rice or my favorite we may have Fried Vegetables and Chicken with Soy Sauce.

When I am in charge of Dinner for myself I'll usually cook 3 more eggs and include 2 tomatoes and an onion which I cut up and add to the meal, or if I feel like a meatier option I'll barbecue some Chicken Kebab and eat it with some bread or I'll barbecue more traditional stuff like 4 Burgers or 4 Sausages.

Again I'd love some opinions on what I eat.

Also I just realized now that I'm rereading this post for the fourth time to tighten up the wording and see if any additional details are needed, I've been working on this post for over 3 hours now, so I'll just try not to edit it anymore until people start engaging.

Questions that are popping up:
Where are you currently in finding a job in Accounting?
I've recently been accepted by one of the firms I interviewed about an Unpaid Internship.

I've currently send them some forms to fill out and when I receive them, I'll forward them to my Co-Op Coordinator.

If she finds them acceptable I'll be doing the Unpaid Internship from January 15th – April 24th or January 22nd – May 1st.

It will be Monday to Friday, 9AM – 5PM.

I'll continue to do Security on the weekend to make some money.

Why do you care so much about your expenses when your income is so low?

I don't specifically, in fact this is the first time in months I sat down and calculated it all.

I just put it up their as reference in case anyone asked

Some people recommended I plug all of the information into QuickBooks or GnuCash, rather than using descriptions.

I'm using sample companies to learn in QuickBooks, and they are full with fake details.

I tried playing with exporting and importing but couldn't figure out how to use only my data.

So I'll try GnuCash next.

Why do you care so much about your student debt, you should be focused on graduating?

I don't care about the student debt specifically, or rather I'm keeping my job because I enjoy it and would be doing it with or without a debt assuming I'm not ready for retirement and don't have anything else ready to replace it.

Why are you mentioning food if you’re not interested in food expenses and why are they so cheap?

I actually like eggs and cucumbers which were specifically called out.

Or rather I like eggs as they are one of my favorite quick foods to cook that are healthy and Cucumbers are my favorite vegetable to be eaten by itself.

I'm mentioning food because I'm still in the process of tweaking my specific diet to best suit me and was hoping for some advice, especially since I may have overlooked everything.

If any other questions come up multiple times, I'll try to add it to the first post.

I'm also considering changing the first post in its entirety, since it's not focused on the topics I was originally interested in.

Some interesting stuff has been brought up overall though so I'll leave it for now.

[OkieM]

Do whatever it takes to get the four months of accounting experience and complete your degree. Does Canada have CPA’s? That can be important in the US.

I wouldn’t worry about anything except finishing and finding a job that uses your degree at this point.

[Raj]

Do whatever it takes to get the four months of accounting experience and complete your degree. Does Canada have CPA’s? That can be important in the US.

I wouldn’t worry about anything except finishing and finding a job that uses your degree at this point.

Canada does indeed have CPA's and it would be the next thing to work on after graduating and getting a few months of Accounting Experience.

When it comes to work I'm going to get my QuickBooks Online Certification which will help.  But I only got told to start working on it last week and unfortunately I was sick yesterday and spent most of my day off lying in bed trying to sleep.

I only have 4 shifts instead of 5 this week so I'll have two days off next week to practice and hopefully take and pass the test.

Still while my job front is mostly covered, I was curious on people's thoughts on my costs and more importantly my diet.

[unpolloloco]

Do whatever it takes to get the four months of accounting experience and complete your degree. Does Canada have CPA’s? That can be important in the US.

I wouldn’t worry about anything except finishing and finding a job that uses your degree at this point.

Canada does indeed have CPA's and it would be the next thing to work on after graduating and getting a few months of Accounting Experience.

When it comes to work I'm going to get my QuickBooks Online Certification which will help.  But I only got told to start working on it last week and unfortunately I was sick yesterday and spent most of my day off lying in bed trying to sleep.

I only have 4 shifts instead of 5 this week so I'll have two days off next week to practice and hopefully take and pass the test.

Still while my job front is mostly covered, I was curious on people's thoughts on my costs and more importantly my diet.

I think what OkieM was saying was that the most impactful thing you can do at this point to improve your finances is to get a job that uses your degree.  You'll double your pay (or more) once you graduate, so do whatever it takes graduate!!!  Even if that means spending more or earning less for a few months.

Your expenses are small enough that any further optimization isn't going to make a difference.  Consider spending more if it makes your life better (especially after you graduate) - just be mindful that any additional spending makes your life better.

[Laura33]

Do whatever it takes to get the four months of accounting experience and complete your degree. Does Canada have CPA’s? That can be important in the US.

I wouldn’t worry about anything except finishing and finding a job that uses your degree at this point.

Canada does indeed have CPA's and it would be the next thing to work on after graduating and getting a few months of Accounting Experience.

When it comes to work I'm going to get my QuickBooks Online Certification which will help.  But I only got told to start working on it last week and unfortunately I was sick yesterday and spent most of my day off lying in bed trying to sleep.

I only have 4 shifts instead of 5 this week so I'll have two days off next week to practice and hopefully take and pass the test.

Still while my job front is mostly covered, I was curious on people's thoughts on my costs and more importantly my diet.

I think what OkieM was saying was that the most impactful thing you can do at this point to improve your finances is to get a job that uses your degree.  You'll double your pay (or more) once you graduate, so do whatever it takes graduate!!!  Even if that means spending more or earning less for a few months.

Your expenses are small enough that any further optimization isn't going to make a difference.  Consider spending more if it makes your life better (especially after you graduate) - just be mindful that any additional spending makes your life better.

+1

I think I posted something similar perhaps 6 weeks ago when you first mentioned your situation, but it seems that nothing has really changed, other than putting a few applications in for unpaid accounting jobs.  So I'll be a little more direct:  you are being penny-wise, pound-foolish.  By far the highest return on your investment would be to get the accounting experience you need to get your degree.  Even if that means 4 months of free labor, getting a job that uses your degree will pay off every month thereafter -- much more than figuring out a way to save $5/month on eggs and cucumbers. 

You are still working huge hours with a huge commute at a job that effectively pays you $8-9/hr (pre-tax!) and leaves you no time or energy to do the things you need to do to get ahead (not to mention totally fucking with your sleep and your health).  And you are then choosing to spend the little free time you have flyspecking how you can improve your already-minimal spending.  That is completely self-defeating:  you are locking yourself into your current life and current job, because your current lifestyle does not allow you to do the things you need to do to break out of it. 

And you know what the worst part is?  The longer it takes you to finish up, get the degree, and get a job in your field, the less up-to-date your degree and skills will look; potential employers will start to wonder why it took you so long, and think that there must be something wrong with you (ability, work ethic, etc.).  And you'll be competing against new rafts of new graduates for the same jobs.

My advice:  move to minimum payments on the student loan.  Save up maybe $2-3K in cash -- whatever you need to cover your basic expenses/loan payments for @6 months or so.  Then quit the day job and use all of that extra time looking for the job that will give you the accounting experience you need to get the degree and move on with your life. 

Tl;dr:  the biggest thing holding you down is not your student loans.  It is your decision to put your professional life entirely on hold because of the student loans -- and then to spend what little free time you have fixated on extremely minor expenses, instead of devoting that time to getting the experience you need to be able to put that degree on your resume. 

[tinylittlemonkey]

Hello! I have some questions about your diet, as that seems important to you. Are you wanting to eat as cheaply as possible, as healthy as possible, or as cheaply and as healthy as possible? Are you able to heat up food when you are out (work/school/etc)? Also, do you have any restrictions?

[Adram]

I agree with the others above. The longer you stay in employment that doesn't progress you professionally as an accountant, the less chance you have of getting a start in that career.

I'm an accountant, and if I received a resume from someone who had 6 months working as a security guard I'd wonder what they were doing and where their focus was. If it was 12 months, I'd be thinking they were going to be a security guard for a considerable time to come.

Quit your job and put all your effort into completing your qualification, or you risk being left on the shelf.

[Raj]

First of all I'd just like to say that overall, I agree with many of the points all of you have made, and I would like to thank all of you for taking the time out of your day to try to give me advise, I appreciate it.

Here is my general comment to everyone, below I've included my replies to all of your specific comments as well, but I encourage you to read the whole thing.

For those of you wondering when I had the time to write all of this, I typed it all up on my laptop at work, where I have a lot of free time and am only lacking easy access to the internet.  I took some breaks while writing this, but I spent at least three hours writing all of this down.  I have to wonder how some people manage to get so much quality content out sometimes, especially on the stuff that makes you think.

Graduating from University is my number one goal currently, and I'm taking steps to both make myself more attractive to employers by picking up useful skills and by reaching out through calling every firm in the GTA area to check if there are any unreported job or volunteer opportunities.

I only recently started applying to volunteer jobs and calling and I did get more results from this strategy, but I was told that unless I get a certification in QuickBooks most small firms would not hire me as the majority of their business is in QuickBooks.

I was only told this last week, but from what I've looked into certification is not too difficult to achieve with ProAdvisor and should be something I can accomplish with a weekend or two of studying and practicing on the computer, especially since I'm reading the manual at work.

I would have done some more last weekend, but I got sick so I focused on sleeping and recovering.

Now that said the core of your arguments is that I'm not doing enough as I am currently and I need to devote 100% to applying to jobs.

I have multiple counter arguments to this

First I did try devoting myself 100% at the beginning from December to March and I tried things like going in person, or scouring the internet at all hours of the day and I simply didn't get results.  I got the most interviews from Online Jobs I applied to, but after an hour I exhausted most of the new jobs that had been posted on the internet, leaving me with a lot of free time.

Now over the months that I've been full time, I have done additional research and talked to several more Accountants, so I do have some activities which would benefit from free time that will help me get a job in Accounting.

The two activities that would benefit from free time are getting certified in QuickBooks and calling various firms myself but both of those things will take a few weekends.  At best I might want to take a week off and with Christmas coming I'll probably get that time without even asking, although it will only be useful for picking up new skills like QuickBooks.

Finally and this is the most important reason, I started getting more and more depressed at the constant rejection and lack of responses I received, and over time started spending less time looking for a job and more time lazing around home or playing video games.

I felt as if I was stuck which is why I tried turning to work.

It ended up working and I feel a lot better now, I also didn't realize it at the time but I was suffering burnout from University.

I started September 2013 and finished everything on December 2016.

To put this in perspective it is important to know some facts.

I finished all the courses for a bachelor degree which is 4 years or 8 semesters.

But in addition I also transferred from College where I started which meant I needed to do 2 additional semester, which totals 10 semesters.

I started in September 2013 and finished December 2016, I accomplished this by dedicating my summers to an additional semester each year.

By now I've managed to fully recover from burnout even with a very busy work schedule, because I enjoy my job and it offers me a lot of free time while I'm on site.

So unless I'm replacing Security with an actual Accounting job/volunteer work I'd rather not give it up.

I also requested a bit more time off and I have an additional day where I don't work now, which will give me more time to quickly pick up QuickBooks.

If I still find that I'm struggling to fit it all in my schedule I may request my schedule be reduced further.


Now I'll just address everyone specifically

I think what OkieM was saying was that the most impactful thing you can do at this point to improve your finances is to get a job that uses your degree.  You'll double your pay (or more) once you graduate, so do whatever it takes graduate!!!  Even if that means spending more or earning less for a few months.

Your expenses are small enough that any further optimization isn't going to make a difference.  Consider spending more if it makes your life better (especially after you graduate) - just be mindful that any additional spending makes your life better.

Even after graduating, finding a job is likely to be quite difficult if what my fellow graduates are saying is true.

Also I suspected that my expenses were low enough that I probably didn't need to worry about them that much, but I thought that I should post them before someone asked about them.

It's why I didn't really ask for help for my finances, I was just hoping people had some tricks for dealing with night shifts and was curious what people thought of my diet since I'm still tweaking it.

+1

You’re rather direct in what you have to say Laura and firstly I'd just like to say Thank You, more than anyone else in this thread your words forced me to think quite a bit even if I don't agree fully with what you said.

At first I was a little angry, but I forced myself to think on it for over an hour and I realized the anger came from defensiveness.

I'd been looking for a job for quite a while now and during the three months of looking full time, my self-confidence took a pretty bad hit and I wasn't in a very good place to begin with.

I was coming straight from University where I was pretty burned out after all.

I recovered a bit during the search but the pressure and worry looking for a job placed on me ensured I wasn't recovering very well.

Which is why I suspect I slowed down on applying for jobs when I was working full time from March to late October.

Now at the moment I'm fairly busy with security shifts now, on some weeks I was doing a mere 20 hours, add up travel time and it wasn't even 24 hours.

I should have taken advantage of that, and tried to reach out to more accountants for more specific advice.

But I didn't, probably because I wasn't ready yet.

But I like to think I'm a lot more ready now, especially since where when I started looking for a job a large part of me was dreading actually starting the job as I worried if I was ready for such a challenge.

Now after taking it easy for several months in Security, I still expect it to be a big challenge, but now I'm looking forward to challenging myself and growing.

Now I'll address the specific points you brought up one by one.

I think I posted something similar perhaps 6 weeks ago when you first mentioned your situation, but it seems that nothing has really changed, other than putting a few applications in for unpaid accounting jobs.

You’re partly right and you’re partly wrong.

I'm afraid I don't remember if it was your words specifically that got me to start applying to volunteer jobs or if it was a combination of posters or one in particular, but overall I was genuinely convinced and started applying to volunteer jobs.

It's then that I got an interview with an Accountant that made their own company and in addition spend 30 minutes giving me advice, mostly on the Skills University doesn't teach but is necessary to succeed in today’s Accounting field like QuickBooks.

So I plan on acquiring those skills and applying to more jobs using the phone technique as it's given me even more results than applying to jobs online.

So I'll be a little more direct:  you are being penny-wise, pound-foolish.  By far the highest return on your investment would be to get the accounting experience you need to get your degree.  Even if that means 4 months of free labor, getting a job that uses your degree will pay off every month thereafter -- much more than figuring out a way to save $5/month on eggs and cucumbers.

I addressed it above and I'll probably do so again in later quotes, but overall I agree with you.

Quick and important distinction though, I wasn't trying to save money on eggs and cucumbers.

They are literally just foods I like to cook and eat.  My food bill isn't even counted on there.

I included them simply because I was curious if anyone had any NUTRITIONAL advice, not cost advice.

You are still working huge hours with a huge commute at a job that effectively pays you $8-9/hr (pre-tax!) and leaves you no time or energy to do the things you need to do to get ahead (not to mention totally fucking with your sleep and your health).

I enjoy my job quite a bit, and $8-9 is still better than nothing especially since for the most part the only things being restricted is my ability to use the internet which is making it harder to use QuickBooks and only that.

The sleep part is harder to counter and it's literally my only objection on my job especially since I'm trying to take better care of my body.

But right now I can deal with the sleep part, although that may change as time goes on.

And you are then choosing to spend the little free time you have flyspecking how you can improve your already-minimal spending.  That is completely self-defeating:  you are locking yourself into your current life and current job, because your current lifestyle does not allow you to do the things you need to do to break out of it. 

Not really, this is the first time I actually properly examined my finances in the last few months.

I have set the credit card bill to automatically come out of my bank account and it's the same for my student debt.

I'm just generally self-conscious before I buy stuff which has worked out pretty well overall.

Although my Amazon/Dollarama bill did end up a bit higher than I thought it was, which shows I might want to look at my financial statements a bit more often.

And you know what the worst part is?  The longer it takes you to finish up, get the degree, and get a job in your field, the less up-to-date your degree and skills will look; potential employers will start to wonder why it took you so long, and think that there must be something wrong with you (ability, work ethic, etc.).  And you'll be competing against new rafts of new graduates for the same jobs.

This could eventually become a factor but because I busted so much ass on trying to graduate early it isn't noticeable yet.

I started Sept 2013 and am doing a four year bachelor degree.

In theory if I had started with University instead of College,* I would be graduating sometime in November 2017 assuming a normal schedule.

So not noticeable so far.

As for Direct skills, to be brutally honest not much of what University taught me has proven to be useful at all, so not much worry in the skills becoming actually out of date.

My most useful current marketable skill is in Excel because I heard in University that it might be useful on jobs so I taught myself with YouTube.

*which they won't know about because it's a waste of Resume space

My advice:  move to minimum payments on the student loan.  Save up maybe $2-3K in cash -- whatever you need to cover your basic expenses/loan payments for @6 months or so.  Then quit the day job and use all of that extra time looking for the job that will give you the accounting experience you need to get the degree and move on with your life. 

Tl;dr:  the biggest thing holding you down is not your student loans.  It is your decision to put your professional life entirely on hold because of the student loans -- and then to spend what little free time you have fixated on extremely minor expenses, instead of devoting that time to getting the experience you need to be able to put that degree on your resume.

I think this is one of biggest miscommunications on my part.

I may have to rewrite the beginning to make this clearer.

I do not do my job for Money first and foremost.

I have a job because I enjoy having a job, it's good for my self-esteem and gives me something to do when not applying to jobs which generally doesn't take too long.

My job is also inconsistent in hours and is sometimes quite long and other times quite short, I fully recovered during one of the longer waves which made it a bit hard to start pushing myself again, but I managed to get an interview and a goal which is a win in my books and proved my experiment of calling firms to be a good method. 

January is also the best time to utilize it in a wider scale according to a family friend who is an accountant which will give me some time to get certified as well.

My student debt is literally just the thing I want to put money in most, let’s pretend it had been 10,000 instead of 24,000

I would have fully paid it off in July, and I would then promptly started saving the money up and started research on if I should use Vanguard to invest it or Betterment and which was better for Canada.

So it literally wouldn't have meaningfully changed any of my actions. 

I could easily stop paying my student debt off as the minimum payment is only the interest, and with the amount of savings I have combined with living with my father and I could easily sustain myself for a year like this.

I repeat it was never about the student debt, I mentioned it only so people would understand that I wouldn't be putting more money into my investments just yet.

[Raj]

Hello! I have some questions about your diet, as that seems important to you. Are you wanting to eat as cheaply as possible, as healthy as possible, or as cheaply and as healthy as possible? Are you able to heat up food when you are out (work/school/etc)? Also, do you have any restrictions?

I want to eat as healthy as possible overall, although I'm not sure I'm ready to start going to farmers market for higher quality ingredients/food due to it being a bit far and I'm generally not the one to buy groceries.

My only real restriction is that I'm allergic to fish, salmon specifically.

But because of my bad experience with fish and lack of opportunities I avoid sea food in its entirety.

I'm afraid that I can't heat food up at work and often don't even have electricity depending on the site.

I almost always eat 2 cucumbers with the skin sliced up and chopped up for work and fruit of some kind for work lunch.

The fruit is generally either 6 small tangerines or a small container full of frozen strawberries.

So with that being said I'd love to hear alternative suggestions on what I eat, although a part of me wonders on if what I'm eating now is unhealthy in any way, especially since my father disapproves.

When I ask how he can't point to anything specifically but it does worry me a bit which is why I was hoping someone more experienced than I was could analyze the contents and tell me if I was missing something obvious.

As an example at first for breakfast I only ate/drank the smoothie* but ended up being a bit hungry afterwards which made it a bit difficult to go to sleep after a night shift.

I did some research and it turns out it's because although I was getting a ton of nutrients it's mostly fat and protein which help you feel full and is needed to help you digest something like a thick smoothie.

So I managed to fix that quickly with the addition of two eggs cooked in butter but I wonder if there are any other less obvious holes I made in my choice of diet.


*This is completely off topic but because of how early I wake up on the weekends and with how I often almost overfill the blender, I usually only blend it for 15 seconds or so which gets rid of the worst of it but leaves me with lots of little broccoli parts at the bottom.  Today I had an opportunity to blend it for a few minutes at high speed and I was really amazed at the different it made and how much better the smoothie was.  I'm going to be even sadder on the weekend when I have to revert to 15 seconds.

Curse my habit of always waking up early

I agree with the others above. The longer you stay in employment that doesn't progress you professionally as an accountant, the less chance you have of getting a start in that career.

I'm an accountant, and if I received a resume from someone who had 6 months working as a security guard I'd wonder what they were doing and where their focus was. If it was 12 months, I'd be thinking they were going to be a security guard for a considerable time to come.

Quit your job and put all your effort into completing your qualification, or you risk being left on the shelf.

Thank you for the post Adram, you bring up an interesting point I didn't consider.

It's not 6 or even 12 months of experience of Security on my resume.

It's August 2013 to Present, same with University which is September 2013 to Present as I haven't officially graduated yet.

The base assumption I would think would just be to assume Security is my part time job the same it was when I was actually in University. 

To be completely specific, I would have three different sections for Security all at the same place as during my busiest semester I quit Security to focus on University and when it got quiet I asked if I could be rehired.  Then there was when I switched to Full time.

If anyone asked I'd tell them, but it would be a waste of space on a Resume so I include it as one time, and it’s best not to specify if it's part time or full time according to a number of people I've talked to.

It also gives me some experience, but you’re saying it would be better not to include it in my resume?

From what I've heard more experience even in other fields is generally a good thing especially since there are always skills you can bring from other jobs no matter what they are.

Besides people change career paths quite often for a variety of reasons are you saying for those people it would be best to leave it off their resumes? Granted it's slightly different for me as I can say I was doing University during that period of time but those people who are doing Career changes can't lie and say they were doing something related to the field they are changing to during that time.

I think I'm getting a little off topic but it was interesting to hear from you.

[With This Herring]

And you know what the worst part is?  The longer it takes you to finish up, get the degree, and get a job in your field, the less up-to-date your degree and skills will look; potential employers will start to wonder why it took you so long, and think that there must be something wrong with you (ability, work ethic, etc.).  And you'll be competing against new rafts of new graduates for the same jobs.

This could eventually become a factor but because I busted so much ass on trying to graduate early it isn't noticeable yet.

I started Sept 2013 and am doing a four year bachelor degree.

In theory if I had started with University instead of College,* I would be graduating sometime in November 2017 assuming a normal schedule.

So not noticeable so far.

As for Direct skills, to be brutally honest not much of what University taught me has proven to be useful at all, so not much worry in the skills becoming actually out of date.

My most useful current marketable skill is in Excel because I heard in University that it might be useful on jobs so I taught myself with YouTube.

*which they won't know about because it's a waste of Resume space

That is not how this works.  Speaking as another accountant who graduated early, it doesn't matter what your predicted graduation date would have been, but what your actual end of classes was.  Every month you spend out of school without doing accounting work is a mark against you because you are not being exposed to any changes in tax, accounting, and auditing regulations.  Doing temp work in an office would be a little better than security work because then firms can look at you and say "Okay, we know this guy has already been exposed to office norms, and we have a reference from his data entry boss X that he isn't a slacker, behaves professionally, etc."

Excel is an excellent skill to have.  Teaching yourself with YouTube is great, but you won't really cement these skills until you have a lot of practice at a job.  Unless you will be working with a very small firm of accountants with minimal computer literacy, it is unlikely that people will find your Excel skills impressive until you have more practice.  They are definitely good to have, but be careful not to put anything like "Expert in Excel" on your resume.

Right now, a security guard job is not going to be good for you.  You will need to contact accounting firms and go on interviews during normal business hours.  If you get temp work in an office, that will expose you to office norms and let employers know that you can work in that kind of environment.

Right now, I would suggest that you:

• Leave the security job and find office work until you can get something in accounting (a temp agency would probably be your best bet and may even land you a little accounting work)
• Join your local society of young accountants and start going to networking events
• Follow all of Laura33's advice
• Read lots of advice on Ask A Manager on resumes and interviewing.  Once you have read the resume pieces on Ask A Manager, go to someone else (maybe your college career center) and have them look over your resume for grammar, spelling, and general quality.
• Organize your own finances a bit more, and consider keeping track of them with proper bookkeeping*.  Your first post is a little messy.  Accounting usually prefers tables rather than long narrative descriptions.

* Not that you could put it on a resume, but I think it would help you to keep track of your own finances in a program such as GnuCash, which uses proper debits and credits.  QB would work as well, if you already have a copy.  It will keep you accustomed to using bookkeeping software and it will encourage you to record those gifts from your father that are skewing your expenses.  You can credit an income account "Dad covering living expenses" and debit various accounts for "Rent" (FMV of a room rental in your area), "Groceries" (approximate your share of the food costs), "Utilities," etc.

[OkieM]

Given your attitude, why did you even post here? There are lots of other site’s forums specifically focused on nutrition. I wish you luck, but it might be easier to get a job if you rethink your mentality and focus on what you can do rather than excuses. Even graduating as an engineer, I found college to be a vacation like atmosphere compared to moving to industry. You’ve got to buck up unless your true aspirations are working in a completely thoughtless job and finding other people to subsidize your lifestyle.

[Raj]

Not quite sure how relevant this is as I have been accepted by one of the firms I interviewed at for a volunteer position.

But it's still not quite a guarantee as I have to fill out some forms and then send them to my Co-Op coordinator for confirmation.

I'm pretty confident that she'll accept but if she doesn't then it's back to the drawing board.

So I'm going to plan for the worst case and hope for the best, so for the response I'm giving back I'm under the assumption that I'll have to keep looking for a job after this.

Besides even in the best case scenario I'll start looking around February again for a paid job starting in May, so job tips are still relevant.

That is not how this works.  Speaking as another accountant who graduated early, it doesn't matter what your predicted graduation date would have been, but what your actual end of classes was. 

Can you clarify a bit more here, I'm afraid I don't fully understand.

Based off my Resume they will understand I am still in school and and will likely only use the base start time of Sept 2013 to gauge what semester I'm in if they care at all.

How would they know that I finished all my classes in December 2016?*

*To be 100% clear though this is me asking out of curiosity, I'm liable to bring it up in the interview myself as I hate the idea of lying or misinforming people.

Every month you spend out of school without doing accounting work is a mark against you because you are not being exposed to any changes in tax, accounting, and auditing regulations.  Doing temp work in an office would be a little better than security work because then firms can look at you and say "Okay, we know this guy has already been exposed to office norms, and we have a reference from his data entry boss X that he isn't a slacker, behaves professionally, etc.

First off I'd be willing to work in an office which exposed to me to any tax, accounting and auditing regulations for free as long as it made up the majority of my work.

But I'm not willing to work in an office where I'm barely exposed to any accounting work, for the same pay just because it would look a bit better on my resume.

Excel is an excellent skill to have.  Teaching yourself with YouTube is great, but you won't really cement these skills until you have a lot of practice at a job.  Unless you will be working with a very small firm of accountants with minimal computer literacy, it is unlikely that people will find your Excel skills impressive until you have more practice.  They are definitely good to have, but be careful not to put anything like "Expert in Excel" on your resume.

This is interesting advice, I can understand that they wouldn't be impressed by my Excel skills exactly but since it's not a skill taught at University, wouldn't it at least help me to stand out from many of my colleges?

In addition I've gone to several interviews, where they told me the thing that got me the interview were my Excel Skills.

Several even tested me on my Excel Skills on the spot and they told me that I did better than several other candidates.*  I didn't blow them away and I also didn't end up with a job, but I thought that at least keeping my Excel Skills on my Resume was the right choice to make.

*This could be misleading though as it's like I know the level of skill the competition had.  For all I know I was in the bottom half and was simply better than the worst of them.  Still I choose to take it as a compliment as they had positive body language and were smiling at me when they said it.

Right now, a security guard job is not going to be good for you.  You will need to contact accounting firms and go on interviews during normal business hours. 

I am indeed contacting firms at normal business hours, I make my calls between 9AM – 11AM after I get home from work and have had breakfast and before I go to Sleep.

Similarly the interviews I've done have all been done in the afternoon.  On those days I simply stayed up 24/7, if I was unlucky enough to be coming from a shift.

If you get temp work in an office, that will expose you to office norms and let employers know that you can work in that kind of environment.

Right now, I would suggest that you:

• Leave the security job and find office work until you can get something in accounting (a temp agency would probably be your best bet and may even land you a little accounting work)
• Join your local society of young accountants and start going to networking events
• Follow all of Laura33's advice
• Read lots of advice on Ask A Manager on resumes and interviewing.  Once you have read the resume pieces on Ask A Manager, go to someone else (maybe your college career center) and have them look over your resume for grammar, spelling, and general quality.

I am indeed reading articles on how to improve my resume and have also already exposed it to the MMM Community.

I've also changed it up a bit since then and updated it on the appropriate thread

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-someone-tell-me-what-they-think-of-my-resume/msg1756944/#msg1756944

I got some good advise and implemented most of it, although I was sadly unable to think of a good way to use more action words as my work isn't the most exciting.

As for networking I haven't been doing much of that lately, but it might be a good idea to check out any local events and attend them.

Finally as I mentioned above your running into an issue I'm not willing to budge in.

I'm not willing to switch to an office job unless it has actual skills* to teach me.  I'm not willing to switch solely because it would look better on a Resume.

*By that I mean skills like Excel, how to do a T4, inputting entries into QuickBooks or similar financial tools.  I'd like to think I have at least a basic understanding of how to work in an office from University and am not willing to get a job solely to advanced those skills.

• Organize your own finances a bit more, and consider keeping track of them with proper bookkeeping*.  Your first post is a little messy.  Accounting usually prefers tables rather than long narrative descriptions.

•   Not that you could put it on a resume, but I think it would help you to keep track of your own finances in a program such as GnuCash, which uses proper debits and credits.  QB would work as well, if you already have a copy.  It will keep you accustomed to using bookkeeping software and it will encourage you to record those gifts from your father that are skewing your expenses.

This is the first time I bothered calculating all my expenses in awhile.

But your right in that it's better to use some sort of Software to do so.

I'm using sample companies to learn in QuickBooks, and they are full with fake details.

I tried playing with exporting and importing but couldn't figure out how to use only my data.

So I'll try GnuCash next.

If I had done so I'm guessing I would have just imported a chart or graph of some kind illustrating my current expenses.

You can credit an income account "Dad covering living expenses" and debit various accounts for "Rent" (FMV of a room rental in your area), "Groceries" (approximate your share of the food costs), "Utilities," etc.

A fair point, calculating rent will be easy if I go for the average in my area and a bit harder if I look for something I'd actually be willing to rent, ideally with another person to split the rent.

Food similarly wouldn't be to difficult, although dinner would be more complicated as my Dad cooks for the entire family.

I'd have to try to percentage how much I eat out of the entire meal prepared and then put together the entire cost.

Might be easier to just plan out what I would cook for dinner and use that instead.

Not sure what I'd do for utilities, the basics that come to mind are Internet, Hydro, Electricity, Doing Laundry and Cooking with Gas.

Most of those would be covered by most apartments and I use the internet mostly for downloading a bunch of things and going over them later on my phone so I might not get internet for a bit after moving out.  I can just use the library's WiFi, Fast Food's WiFi or even the Subway's WiFi to download pages.

I still can't think of a way I'd be able to safely use my banking accounts online if I don't get my own internet though, so I'm still thinking on that one.  As even using a VPN I would never be willing to check financial information with anything that had ever connected to public WiFi.  Once you've connected to Public WiFi once your devise is no longer 100% safe unless you factory reset at a minimum and or are using a separately portioned off part of the system like switching from Windows to Linux.

[Raj]

Given your attitude, why did you even post here? There are lots of other site’s forums specifically focused on nutrition. I wish you luck, but it might be easier to get a job if you rethink your mentality and focus on what you can do rather than excuses. Even graduating as an engineer, I found college to be a vacation like atmosphere compared to moving to industry. You’ve got to buck up unless your true aspirations are working in a completely thoughtless job and finding other people to subsidize your lifestyle.

You have a fair point about trying to find out more about nutrition on another site.

But overall I don't think I regret posting, their are things I'm currently not willing to budge on but I've changed my mind on parts before.

I'm not sure if I'm wording this the right way to be honest as now it feels like I'm making it out as if you owe it to change my mind when you don't.

Still I feel as though quitting my job without anything else to replace it is a mistake, and I'm sorry if you feel that I'm being to stubborn.

I appreciate you trying to help and I try to always keep in mind that no matter what else, you guys are trying to keep my best interests in mind.

[Moustachienne]

Raj, where do you want to be in 5 years?  Career, living arrangement, relationships, health.  I think posters here, me included, suspect strongly that your current decisions are not leading you to where we think you want to go.  It would be helpful to see really clearly what your hopes and dreams are, both for us trying to comment as you've asked, and for you in weighing up the feedback.

I will say that having attending university in no way demonstrates to an employer that you understand office norms and can thrive in that environment. What you learn in working in an office is not quantifiable in the way you seem to think.  It's not about specific skills, although you should look for those too, it's about culture and soft skills.  Don't downplay the importance of this for your field.

And since I'm dishing out advice, self-taught Excel is a good start for you but worth very little on a resume.  Consider taking a short course, even a weekend course, in it so that you could show an actual credential.  Reasonable Proficiencyin the Office Suite is a base skill that all graduates should have and you need to demonstrate this through courses with independent evaluation, not just YouTube.

[Moustachienne]

I forgot to add that you're very young. 22?   It's a tough age of big life questions and very few (none?) of us had it all figured out at that age either.  Launching yourself after university is a real challenge in most fields!

Just try to set yourself up with positive momentum towards your best  guess best case future.  The details will keep changing. Just figure out the major outlines.  Write out a 5 year plan in broad strokes in just a few sentences.  Don't get stuck in the weeds.

Good luck!

[zee dot]

I'd like to think I have at least a basic understanding of how to work in an office from University and am not willing to get a job solely to advanced those skills.

This is so far from true that it's hard to believe you are being serious. 
Your first job is actually the point of getting those skills.  You will be low paid because you bring very little to the table and need a lot of training in the basics.
This is what a future employer is going to look for on your resume:

1. School/degree
2. Work history

That's it.  You will instantly be ruled out if you do not have any relevant work history.  Being a security guard is not relevant work history.

This is because they are going to be thinking about how much time they need to put in to your training.  The less training=the higher salary.  That is why people with more experience get more money even if they went to the same school as an applicant with less experience.  Right now you will require a lot of basic training.  Someone who has been working in an office while you've been a security guard does not need that basic training.  They would hit the ground at a slow walk while you would hit the ground crawling.

My suggestion is to find a job at a company that will let you list a set of skills that a future employer is going to seek: Your work history will reveal that you know Outlook, how to PDF a document, how to take instruction, how to ask for clarification, how to work independently, how to work in a group.  How to meet deadlines, how to cope when someone else misses a deadline, how to prioritize workloads, how to recognize and prepare for cyclical work.  How to establish working relationships with your counterparts at other firms/vendors.  Etc.  The stuff we all do at our first, low paying jobs.

My most useful current marketable skill is in Excel because I heard in University that it might be useful on jobs so I taught myself with YouTube.

You taught yourself Excel off YouTube...I'm skeptical. 
Really knowing how to use Excel is a skill...most ppl don't have it. 
I'd be surprised if you had Excel skills worth mentioning in an interview other than as "familiar with the Microsoft Office suite".   
This comes from experience: I thought I was an expert in excel until I started my current job. 
Setting print ranges, filters, drop downs--all BASIC expectations these days. 

Here is a formula example that is just a ho hum part of my day now:
=IF(GE19<0,"N/A",((GE19-AVERAGE(FT$4:GE$4))/GE21))

Not that you would be expected to do that on your first day at any job but the difference between knowing how to, say, "sum total" a group of cells does not make you proficient in Excel.  (Pro tip: it's alt= as a hotkey/shortcut.  not using hotkeys?  you're not using Excel right--you shouldn't need your mouse often.)  And that formula is the most basic example I could think of off the top of my head that you might possibly be able to recognize having done a YouTube tutorial.  (It's calculating the Sharpe Ratio off a line of monthly fund return data, FWIW.)

Can you write macros? 
Do you know what VBA stands for without looking it up?
Can you do a pivot table without help?
How about What If formulas?
VLOOKUP?

If you know these you should mention them specifically in an interview.  "I can do VLOOKUPS" means something.  "I am good in Excel" means nothing.  Even if the person interviewing doesn't use them they'll know you know what you are talking about.  When someone describes their Excel skills in the terms of filters, autoformatting, charts what they are really saying is that they have a basic understand of Excel. 

These are just the functions that come to mind that I would expect a PROFICIENT user to know cold.  Advanced techniques in financial modeling are a whole 'nother level.

Hope that context helps you understand what the other posters are saying.

Good luck!

[Raj]

Raj, where do you want to be in 5 years?  Career, living arrangement, relationships, health. 

I think posters here, me included, suspect strongly that your current decisions are not leading you to where we think you want to go.  It would be helpful to see really clearly what your hopes and dreams are, both for us trying to comment as you've asked, and for you in weighing up the feedback.

I hope to be living with a roommate, ideally it would be several of us renting a house.

It would, probably be outside of Ontario*, and for health I hope that by then I've finalized my nutritional plans and have a spot in the living space for a set of weights, which my roommates will hopefully also be interested in.

In addition regarding health I hope that I bike everywhere I need to go rather than relying on the bus in the majority of situations.

Next is relationships, I plan to be single but hopefully I'll have become at least friends** with several of my neighbors

Finally comes career, this is the one I'm most unsure about and have the weakest mental image of.

I think that by then I'd hopefully be doing an Accounting job that I enjoyed that also offered some form of advancement, ideally one that also came with a mid to high salary.

Or maybe by then I'll have learned Accounting wasn't for me but I took the skills I learned from it and transferred them to something else.

I'm honestly not as sure about career which does frighten me a little, but it also excites me a little as well.

Regardless I'm overall fairly optimistic about my future, and I'll do my best to make my future self thankful for the actions I've taken rather than regretting them.

*Not a specific goal per say, I don't mind staying in Toronto as I've never had any form of wanderlust.

But from what I've researched, Alberta seems to be the best place to be an Accountant in Canada for a rookie at the moment.

**Wasn't quite sure how to put friends, I changed the wording several times.  From friendly to close friends, but to clarify I hope that I'm close enough with at least one of the neighbors that I feel comfortable talking about almost anything and we can spend time together and enjoy it while having a compatible schedule.

I will say that having attending university in no way demonstrates to an employer that you understand office norms and can thrive in that environment. What you learn in working in an office is not quantifiable in the way you seem to think.  It's not about specific skills, although you should look for those too, it's about culture and soft skills.  Don't downplay the importance of this for your field.

In the end I haven't experienced office work and have only experienced University.

On the other hand you and several other posters have experienced both.

After thinking on this more I'll concede the point.

If you really think it would be beneficial for me to learn I'll put more thought into an becoming an office worker as I search for an Accounting related job.

I really hope it will be a moot point though as I'm filling out paperwork to become a volunteer at a Accounting firm after being accepted, now it's just a matter of waiting for Co-Op Approval.

And since I'm dishing out advice, self-taught Excel is a good start for you but worth very little on a resume.  Consider taking a short course, even a weekend course, in it so that you could show an actual credential.  Reasonable Proficiencyin the Office Suite is a base skill that all graduates should have and you need to demonstrate this through courses with independent evaluation, not just YouTube.

It's a fair point, the only official evaluation I ever had with actual scores was the test the Canada Revenue Agency gave me.

I easily got a 100, but it was only testing basic skills although I was surprised to hear several other candidates couldn't pass the test.

I briefly looked into it but I couldn't find any good courses for an Excel course.

But maybe I should look beyond Excel and look into an Office Suite Class as it would offer more and likely be easier to find a good one.

I forgot to add that you're very young. 22?   It's a tough age of big life questions and very few (none?) of us had it all figured out at that age either.  Launching yourself after university is a real challenge in most fields!

Just try to set yourself up with positive momentum towards your best  guess best case future.  The details will keep changing. Just figure out the major outlines.  Write out a 5 year plan in broad strokes in just a few sentences.  Don't get stuck in the weeds.

Good luck!

Thank you for your understanding, and I appreciate all the advise you gave, especially since while I've had most of my five year plan figured out, this is the first time I'm typing it down.

[Raj]

This is so far from true that it's hard to believe you are being serious. 

Ouch, I expected the two to have a fair few similarities.

But you've actually encountered both unlike me so I'll have to take your word in that the two are barely related at all.

It's a little disheartening to hear, but it does make it that much more important to actually experience it I suppose.

Your first job is actually the point of getting those skills.  You will be low paid because you bring very little to the table and need a lot of training in the basics.
This is what a future employer is going to look for on your resume:

1. School/degree
2. Work history

What about Volunteer experience?

And what about skills that have been certified?

Such as a QuickBooks Certification or an actual OfficeSuite course that I graduated from?

Both are things I'm looking into getting, but from what your saying they aren't as important?

That's it.  You will instantly be ruled out if you do not have any relevant work history.  Being a security guard is not relevant work history.

This is because they are going to be thinking about how much time they need to put in to your training.  The less training=the higher salary.  That is why people with more experience get more money even if they went to the same school as an applicant with less experience.  Right now you will require a lot of basic training.  Someone who has been working in an office while you've been a security guard does not need that basic training.  They would hit the ground at a slow walk while you would hit the ground crawling.

My suggestion is to find a job at a company that will let you list a set of skills that a future employer is going to seek: Your work history will reveal that you know Outlook, how to PDF a document, how to take instruction, how to ask for clarification, how to work independently, how to work in a group.  How to meet deadlines, how to cope when someone else misses a deadline, how to prioritize workloads, how to recognize and prepare for cyclical work.  How to establish working relationships with your counterparts at other firms/vendors.  Etc.  The stuff we all do at our first, low paying jobs.

You have a point although I at first didn't want to admit it.

But I admit that I expected I would learn all of that as an actual Accounting Clerk, especially since I'm only looking at the most basic Accounting Jobs which basically pay minimum wage.

You taught yourself Excel off YouTube...I'm skeptical. 

YouTube and excelexposure.com

It at least taught me the basics enough to have passed the minimum expected by employers who have been informed that I have Excel skill.

Really knowing how to use Excel is a skill...most ppl don't have it. 
I'd be surprised if you had Excel skills worth mentioning in an interview other than as "familiar with the Microsoft Office suite".   
This comes from experience: I thought I was an expert in excel until I started my current job. 
Setting print ranges, filters, drop downs--all BASIC expectations these days. 

Here is a formula example that is just a ho hum part of my day now:
=IF(GE19<0,"N/A",((GE19-AVERAGE(FT$4:GE$4))/GE21))

Not that you would be expected to do that on your first day at any job but the difference between knowing how to, say, "sum total" a group of cells does not make you proficient in Excel.  (Pro tip: it's alt= as a hotkey/shortcut.  not using hotkeys?  you're not using Excel right--you shouldn't need your mouse often.) 

I'm certainly no expert in Excel and here is a key example, while I could understand the formula it took me around 10 seconds to do and I do not use hotkeys while using Excel.

Probably because I've never had to input large batches of data in or had to do it with much speed.

Learning it focused on comprehension, and any test on Excel that I had in the workforce was quite generous offering at least 30 minutes to do several fairly simple tasks.

And that formula is the most basic example I could think of off the top of my head that you might possibly be able to recognize having done a YouTube tutorial.  (It's calculating the Sharpe Ratio off a line of monthly fund return data, FWIW.)

I actually didn't know what it was called, which might not hurt my actual skills but would certainly damage me trying to explain them.

Can you write macros? 
Do you know what VBA stands for without looking it up?

I've done some basic extremely basic macros, and I understand the concept.

But I suspect the moment I tried doing a more advanced macro, I would fail and likely need to do research before being able to do it.

I did not know what VBA stands for without looking it up, and I suspect that even after searching it up and knowing it is Visual Basic Applications, I will likely forget soon if I don't reinforce it in my memory.

Can you do a pivot table without help?
How about What If formulas?
VLOOKUP?

If you know these you should mention them specifically in an interview.  "I can do VLOOKUPS" means something.  "I am good in Excel" means nothing.

Yes I can do know how to do a pivot table without help and can do What If Formulas and VLookups.

This is what my Resume has to say about my Excel skills

•   Obtained advanced Excel skills and am able to create and use Pivot tables, Conditional formulas and V-look ups to analyze information and draw connections between data

  If you know these you should mention them specifically in an interview.  "I can do VLOOKUPS" means something.  "I am good in Excel" means nothing.  Even if the person interviewing doesn't use them they'll know you know what you are talking about.  When someone describes their Excel skills in the terms of filters, autoformatting, charts what they are really saying is that they have a basic understand of Excel

In interviews I have explained how I've used Pivot Tables, What IF Formulas and VLookups in the past and what data I collected from them.

I've never described it in terms of filters or auto-formatting before though.

These are just the functions that come to mind that I would expect a PROFICIENT user to know cold. 

Honestly as a whole I suspect I know VLookups, What If Formulas and Pivot Tables so well because they are the definitive basic tools for Excel.

So I watched quite a few videos on them, and practiced doing them myself.

But while at a surface level it would appear I have excel skills, I'm starting to suspect that I missed a lot of the theory at the very least and am guaranteed to have to learn on how to adapt my Excel skills to be a lot faster in an actual work force.

Advanced techniques in financial modeling are a whole 'nother level.

I'm definitely not their yet, I use the word advanced in my Resume mostly because it's self taught and because Career services recommended I change intermediate to advanced.

Career services said it wouldn't make a different in job interviews, but it might for automatic search engines.

In their defense they aren't wrong, and I've managed to satisfy managers who engaged me about my Excel Knowledge.

Hope that context helps you understand what the other posters are saying.

Good luck!

Thank you for taking the time to type all of this up in an attempt to help me.

I know the responses drain quite a bit of my time, and I imagine writing them takes just as much time if not more.

So I'd just like to say thank you again.

[ElleFiji]

Raj, I chose not to reply to your questions on an earlier thread.... but there is something missing in the story if your co-op coordinator can't help you get an internship. And you must start calling it a placement or an internship, not a volunteer work.

If the current application fails, then, while you are looking for a placement, it's best that you go to a temp agency, maybe accounttemps and look for an office job. College, or a degree based college program are not the same as an office. Learning to work in an office will boost your ability to find a placement, and later a job. Any job will pay equal to or more than your security work, because you're earning less than the future minimum wage.

Once you graduate, you will continue to not be an accountant. If you use the word accountant on your resume, you won't get jobs unless you are an accountant. So once you graduate, get a job through an accounting based temp agency while you get your CPA.

You are probably also facing discrimination from employers because you are from a college program, and they may not know it's value. Your cover letter should specify that once you graduate you will be eligible to prepare for the CPA exams. If I hear accountant, I expect a university program. The second you have a qualification, this stops mattering.

QuickBooks and office suite might help you get an accounts receivable job. The temp agency might also help you get them.

The further you get from school, with only low-end security jobs on your resume, the chances to escape drop.

The last cruel and ugly thing I'll say is....are you sure that you, personally, are ready to go for the CPA? I say this because you present with a general cluelessness, a lack of understanding of the term accountant and the career steps to get there, plus your school failed to find you a placement, effectively preview your graduation, plus when I went to college, the school was forced to pass us in academic courses, even if we were unsuitable for the profession, so they were subtly trying to find other ways to let students know they'd failed.

I'm sorry. I'm not usually this unkind.

[Raj]

Raj, I chose not to reply to your questions on an earlier thread.... but there is something missing in the story if your co-op coordinator can't help you get an internship. 

I don't think their is anything missing from my story, specifically.

But if your referring to my co-op coordinator, she might be able to help point out mistakes in my cover letter and resume but it's up to me to actually apply to the jobs.

If she comes across a job opportunity she emails it out to all of the IAF co-op students and invites them to apply to it.

I don't meet with her regularly or communicate with her, although I email her any time I get a job interview.

And you must start calling it a placement or an internship, not a volunteer work. 

I thought an internship still had to be paid.

But I just did a quick google search and the first article points out I'm wrong, and the difference between volunteering and interning is due to the purpose.

Considering I'm doing it to learn primarily it is indeed an internship.

I'll edit my main post and change it to internship as well.

If the current application fails, then, while you are looking for a placement, it's best that you go to a temp agency, maybe accounttemps and look for an office job. College, or a degree based college program are not the same as an office. Learning to work in an office will boost your ability to find a placement, and later a job. Any job will pay equal to or more than your security work, because you're earning less than the future minimum wage. 

This is nitpicking a bit and I recognize that, but wouldn't I get less hours?

Still the experience is more important at this point, and in the end it's clear I do need to learn how to work in an office.

So you've convinced me to go to a temp agency if this doesn't work.

It will probably cost some money, but at least I'll get some work out of it.

It looks like regardless of what happens I'll have to cut off my Security work to just weekends or cut it off entirely.

Once you graduate, you will continue to not be an accountant. If you use the word accountant on your resume, you won't get jobs unless you are an accountant.

I have not used the word Accountant anywhere in my Resume, the closest word is Accounting which mentions my bachelor degree and developing Accounting knowledge which is part of a sub bullet.

I'll attach my Current Resume to the front post as well.

I did admittedly think I could call myself an Accountant after I graduated, but it looks like I have to always specify IAF Graduate instead until I become a CPA.

So once you graduate, get a job through an accounting based temp agency while you get your CPA.

You are probably also facing discrimination from employers because you are from a college program, and they may not know it's value. Your cover letter should specify that once you graduate you will be eligible to prepare for the CPA exams. 

Before you mentioned it I wasn't looking into an accounting based temp agency, which was probably a mistake.

But I have already mentioned in all cover letters that I write that after I graduate I will start preparing for CPA.

If I hear accountant, I expect a university program. The second you have a qualification, this stops mattering.

That's a fair point, I already knew that but it always deserves reinforcing.

QuickBooks and office suite might help you get an accounts receivable job. The temp agency might also help you get them.

I suppose I'll just have to try to do both then.

The further you get from school, with only low-end security jobs on your resume, the chances to escape drop.

An important point that does deserve reinforcement.

If I don't find and continue on the path of an Accountant soon, going to University will just prove to be an even greater mistake.

So I''ll just have to do my best with the choices I've made.

The last cruel and ugly thing I'll say is....are you sure that you, personally, are ready to go for the CPA? I say this because you present with a general cluelessness, a lack of understanding of the term accountant and the career steps to get there, plus your school failed to find you a placement, effectively preview your graduation, plus when I went to college, the school was forced to pass us in academic courses, even if we were unsuitable for the profession, so they were subtly trying to find other ways to let students know they'd failed.

I'm sorry. I'm not usually this unkind.

No it's fine, reading that several times hurt.

But it's important to keep my current situation in mind.

I'll be honest and say that no I'm not sure I'm ready to go for CPA.

But it will all be for nothing if I don't at least try.

So I'll do my best, and if it turns out that my best isn't good enough.

Then I'll just have to find another field.

It'll be hard and it will mean admitting that the last several years of my life were effectively a waste of time when it comes to learning usable skills.

But in the end my goal is to become happy, and getting a job that I'm ill prepared for and don't enjoy doesn't sound like it would help that goal.

[With This Herring]

I hope the co-op works out for you! 

*snip*

That is not how this works.  Speaking as another accountant who graduated early, it doesn't matter what your predicted graduation date would have been, but what your actual end of classes was. 

Can you clarify a bit more here, I'm afraid I don't fully understand.

Based off my Resume they will understand I am still in school and and will likely only use the base start time of Sept 2013 to gauge what semester I'm in if they care at all.

How would they know that I finished all my classes in December 2016?*

*To be 100% clear though this is me asking out of curiosity, I'm liable to bring it up in the interview myself as I hate the idea of lying or misinforming people.

I would think this would come up at some point during the interview as part of a make-you-comfortable question ("What accounting courses are you taking currently?") or based on the interviewer's possible knowledge of your school's (province's?) graduation policies.  I would think the part where you are no longer actively taking classes would be important when they want you to work full-time.

Every month you spend out of school without doing accounting work is a mark against you because you are not being exposed to any changes in tax, accounting, and auditing regulations.  Doing temp work in an office would be a little better than security work because then firms can look at you and say "Okay, we know this guy has already been exposed to office norms, and we have a reference from his data entry boss X that he isn't a slacker, behaves professionally, etc.

First off I'd be willing to work in an office which exposed to me to any tax, accounting and auditing regulations for free as long as it made up the majority of my work.

But I'm not willing to work in an office where I'm barely exposed to any accounting work, for the same pay just because it would look a bit better on my resume.

Definitely don't turn down any opportunity to work in an office.  I know it seems silly, but having even non-accounting-work-based office exposure will help.

Excel is an excellent skill to have.  Teaching yourself with YouTube is great, but you won't really cement these skills until you have a lot of practice at a job.  Unless you will be working with a very small firm of accountants with minimal computer literacy, it is unlikely that people will find your Excel skills impressive until you have more practice.  They are definitely good to have, but be careful not to put anything like "Expert in Excel" on your resume.

This is interesting advice, I can understand that they wouldn't be impressed by my Excel skills exactly but since it's not a skill taught at University, wouldn't it at least help me to stand out from many of my colleges?

In addition I've gone to several interviews, where they told me the thing that got me the interview were my Excel Skills.

Several even tested me on my Excel Skills on the spot and they told me that I did better than several other candidates.*  I didn't blow them away and I also didn't end up with a job, but I thought that at least keeping my Excel Skills on my Resume was the right choice to make.

*This could be misleading though as it's like I know the level of skill the competition had.  For all I know I was in the bottom half and was simply better than the worst of them.  Still I choose to take it as a compliment as they had positive body language and were smiling at me when they said it.

This may be a US vs. Canada thing, or even a NYS vs. Toronto thing, but Excel was used generally in many of my business courses and heavily in my accounting and finance courses.  Being able to use the more common Excel functions and tools effectively was a baseline skill.  It's great that you can do that, but I didn't want you to make yourself look silly if you watched YouTube videos, marked yourself as "Advanced in Excel", and then couldn't make a Pivot Table.  I'm not saying you would necessarily have done that, but I have seen others seriously oversell their skills because they didn't know how limited their knowledge was.  Your interviewers' reactions sound good, but I wasn't there.

Right now, a security guard job is not going to be good for you.  You will need to contact accounting firms and go on interviews during normal business hours. 

I am indeed contacting firms at normal business hours, I make my calls between 9AM – 11AM after I get home from work and have had breakfast and before I go to Sleep.

Similarly the interviews I've done have all been done in the afternoon.  On those days I simply stayed up 24/7, if I was unlucky enough to be coming from a shift.

I'm glad you've been getting the timing to work, but I wonder if being overtired and interviewing during your normal sleep hours is hurting your interview responses.

If you get temp work in an office, that will expose you to office norms and let employers know that you can work in that kind of environment.

Right now, I would suggest that you:

• Leave the security job and find office work until you can get something in accounting (a temp agency would probably be your best bet and may even land you a little accounting work)
• Join your local society of young accountants and start going to networking events
• Follow all of Laura33's advice
• Read lots of advice on Ask A Manager on resumes and interviewing.  Once you have read the resume pieces on Ask A Manager, go to someone else (maybe your college career center) and have them look over your resume for grammar, spelling, and general quality.

I am indeed reading articles on how to improve my resume and have also already exposed it to the MMM Community.

I've also changed it up a bit since then and updated it on the appropriate thread

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/can-someone-tell-me-what-they-think-of-my-resume/msg1756944/#msg1756944

I got some good advise and implemented most of it, although I was sadly unable to think of a good way to use more action words as my work isn't the most exciting.

As for networking I haven't been doing much of that lately, but it might be a good idea to check out any local events and attend them.

Finally as I mentioned above your running into an issue I'm not willing to budge in.

I'm not willing to switch to an office job unless it has actual skills* to teach me.  I'm not willing to switch solely because it would look better on a Resume.

*By that I mean skills like Excel, how to do a T4, inputting entries into QuickBooks or similar financial tools.  I'd like to think I have at least a basic understanding of how to work in an office from University and am not willing to get a job solely to advanced those skills.

I think you are setting yourself up for problems in the long run by making this security work look like a career when you want an accounting job.  How fast are you on a ten-key inputting numbers?  I had a stint doing (mostly numbers) data entry, and it really sped up my ten-key typing, which helped me immensely at my first accounting job a few months later.  Obviously pure accounting is best, bookkeeping next, but please don't disdain other sorts of office work.

• Organize your own finances a bit more, and consider keeping track of them with proper bookkeeping*.  Your first post is a little messy.  Accounting usually prefers tables rather than long narrative descriptions.

•   Not that you could put it on a resume, but I think it would help you to keep track of your own finances in a program such as GnuCash, which uses proper debits and credits.  QB would work as well, if you already have a copy.  It will keep you accustomed to using bookkeeping software and it will encourage you to record those gifts from your father that are skewing your expenses.

This is the first time I bothered calculating all my expenses in awhile.

But your right in that it's better to use some sort of Software to do so.

I'm using sample companies to learn in QuickBooks, and they are full with fake details.

I tried playing with exporting and importing but couldn't figure out how to use only my data.

So I'll try GnuCash next.

If I had done so I'm guessing I would have just imported a chart or graph of some kind illustrating my current expenses.

You could probably have made a PDF from there or downloaded something to Excel, but this forum system requires specific markup (coding) to get things laid out in nice tables (this markup GC and QB won't do; you'd need to export to Excel and mark it up there).  If you have any familiarity with HTML tables, you will find it looks similar.  When you are editing a post, there is a little "Insert Table" button next to the pound sign/hash.

You can credit an income account "Dad covering living expenses" and debit various accounts for "Rent" (FMV of a room rental in your area), "Groceries" (approximate your share of the food costs), "Utilities," etc.

A fair point, calculating rent will be easy if I go for the average in my area and a bit harder if I look for something I'd actually be willing to rent, ideally with another person to split the rent.

Food similarly wouldn't be to difficult, although dinner would be more complicated as my Dad cooks for the entire family.

I'd have to try to percentage how much I eat out of the entire meal prepared and then put together the entire cost.

Might be easier to just plan out what I would cook for dinner and use that instead.

Not sure what I'd do for utilities, the basics that come to mind are Internet, Hydro, Electricity, Doing Laundry and Cooking with Gas.

Most of those would be covered by most apartments and I use the internet mostly for downloading a bunch of things and going over them later on my phone so I might not get internet for a bit after moving out.  I can just use the library's WiFi, Fast Food's WiFi or even the Subway's WiFi to download pages.

I still can't think of a way I'd be able to safely use my banking accounts online if I don't get my own internet though, so I'm still thinking on that one.  As even using a VPN I would never be willing to check financial information with anything that had ever connected to public WiFi.  Once you've connected to Public WiFi once your devise is no longer 100% safe unless you factory reset at a minimum and or are using a separately portioned off part of the system like switching from Windows to Linux.

It doesn't have to be perfect.  If you are one of four family members, taking 1/4 of an average grocery bill would be fine.  It's just a thought to give you a way to practice accounting software plus give you a very rough baseline of what a living wage might need to be for you if you move out in the future.


It looks like other posters are giving you similar advice, so I apologize for any rehashing above.

[Llewellyn2006]

I'm a believer that, certainly in the accounting field, tertiary education mainly teaches you how to pass the exams, and you'll actually learn how it all comes together once you are out in the workplace and putting things into practice. I'd second the advice to get an office job, any office job, as soon as possible. You will learn more skills that will be useful to an employer than you will have learned at university. That first job is just a stepping stone to better jobs where you will actually put your skills into practice.