– Choose the most prospective job position for an outstanding accounting graduate
Situation: 情况：
Micheal是一位杰出的学生，即将在香港大学完成研究生会计教育，在下列公司担任职务：外部审计员在安永的香港办公室; 在中国主要地区的顶级金融机构之一的研究助理，在香港的顶级汽车制造公司的销售人员和在中国主要国家的外商投资银行的分析师。
Micheal’s preference has the following order as: salary > working environment> social recognition> travel percentage> working hours; External environment factors (as mentioned later in the paper)remain relatively same for the next four to five years
Choice: Research assistant in one of the top-tier financial institutes in main land China
For an accounting graduate student, the choice for a career path is important. This paper aims to analyze the career choice of accounting graduate student Micheal. Upon graduation, Micheal was offered the positions as external auditor in EY’s HongKong office (one of the big four accounting firms), research assistant in one of the top-tier financial institutes in main land China, sales staff in a top-ranking car manufacturing company in HongKong and analyst in foreign-invested investment banking in main land China. Micheal’s main concerns for career are salary and chances for further development. Thus, he chose to be a research assistant in the top-tier financial institute.
With regard to Micheal’s main concerns as well as the prospective in further development, this paper believes that Micheal made the right choice. The main reasons are that being a research assistant in a top-tier financial institute not only provide considerable salary to its employee but also provide the training that can expose its staff to broader career development.
The above point can be proved by a comparison of decisions based on long-term development prospective. For an entry-level position as external auditor in the big four in Hong Kong, the salary is not as high as other positions providing the long hours put into the work. Since the big four companies aim to maximize its profits to minimize its labor cost, they put the work for its employee to be high-pressure, long-hour and highly-demanded. However, a job seeker with several-year big four working experiences is considered prospective by HR as they are qualified for a wide range of high-level positions: financial manager, accounting manager, senior analyst in stock exchanges, consultant, financial analyst in corporate. Even with such prospective future development , big four employees are not paid decently as they deserve especially if one have gradate-level education. For sales staff in a top-ranking car manufacturing company, the future development is not as prospective as other positions. Since profit margin in a top-ranking car manufacturing company is considerably high especially if its manufactures are allocated in low-cost labor market oversea, sales staffs are generally receive attractive salary in the beginning. In addition, marketing is one of the major divisions of generating profit in car manufacturing companies, sales person also have a high bonus based on performances. However, since the main concern for sales staff is to develop and maintain customer relationships, they don’t have extra value added for staying in the position and thus have a limited further development: sales manager or customer manager. The reason for such a judgment is that the main value developed by sales person are interpersonal skills on which they depend to make a living. Thus, they
