tax preparer Career Path | See the Career Paths People Really Take

accountant

business owner

payroll clerk

clerk

pastor

parking enforcement officer

accounting associate

laboratory manager

marketing intern

Accountants oversee the management and reporting of financial data of an organization focusing on the accuracy of the financial statements in accordance with accepted accounting principles. Accountants are tasked with preparing, examining and analyzing a company's financial records to ensure all financial obligations are properly reported.

Accounting can expose you to unique businesses. Learn about the busy season and what a CPA license can do for you.

<h2><strong>Accounting Jobs</strong></h2><p>I'm an accountant for a family office. I started my career in public accounting. It does offer you a way to learn about different businesses and how they're run, which I thought was great at the start of my career.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Interesting Experiences</strong></h2><p>I've had to do an inventory count in a gigantic warehouse freezer and dress for sub-zero temperatures. I had to do an audit for a learning center with river otters.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Public Accounting Workload</strong></h2><p>Public accounting does have a busy season or multiple busy seasons. Usually from late January, early February to mid April, you will probably have to work longer hours, I'd say about 50 to 60 hours a week or six days a week. Most firms do offer overtime pay, so it is, they do make it worth your while when you're logging in the extra hours.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>Accounting Requirements</strong></h2><p>Most public accounting firms want their accountants to pursue a CPA license. The CPA exams are a series of exams that are fairly difficult. They do require studying, so that's another thing to consider. So usually on top of&nbsp; your workload and the hours that you're logging in at work, you'll have to think about when you're going to study for this exam.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2><strong>More Opportunity</strong></h2><p>Once you do get licensed, I do believe it does open a lot of doors. You could go to a private firm or work for a company depending on your interests and your experience.</p><p><br></p>

Accounting associates support the accountant and accounting department by performing accounts activities, including processing and recording transactions, preparing reports and budgets, generating purchase orders, managing expense reports and reimbursements, communications with clients, handling bookkeeping, feeding records in the accounting system and ensuring all financial records are up-to-date. They also assist senior management in reporting and management of the company's finances and auditing.

The Business Owner operates their own companies. Their role is creating a business plan, arranging finances, hiring staff, reviewing sales, and developing marketing strategies.  Their responsibilities are overseeing daily activities, identifying business opportunities, establishing prices of goods and services, maintaining a clean and orderly store, resolving customer complaints, and compiling and maintaining records and bookkeeping.

Do you like working with your hands and pushing yourself? Check out what it's like to be a Painter and Independent Contractor. See what it takes to be your own boss, and if this role suits your lifestyle and skill set.

<h2 dir="ltr">What I do:</h2>
<p dir="ltr">I'm an independent contractor and I work in construction. I do both residential and commercial painting and that leads into both interior and exterior repaints and new construction. I don't have any employees, it's just me sometimes I sub out work.&nbsp;</p>
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<h2 dir="ltr">Career Skills:</h2>
<p dir="ltr">You have to be healthy, you know, there's a lot of times when you're up on a ladder, you push yourself to your limits a lot, you can work out that there's a lot of roof work sometimes. That having a willingness to learn new things is huge if you're not learning something new every day, you're doing it wrong.&nbsp;</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Job Challenges:&nbsp;</h2>
<p dir="ltr">You really do push yourself to the limits a lot but I really like that challenge personally. That's one aspect that I really enjoy about my job is that I'm working with my hands and I'm physically pushing myself every day.&nbsp;</p>
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<h2 dir="ltr">Work Life Balance:</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Sometimes my work to life balance is pretty sporadic. Most of the time there's not much life balance if you would. When you are working alone and you're on a kind of a larger project it comes time to get that done and you're going to work the weekends, you're going to work late, when you're outside, you're in the sun all day, you're going to come home tired and you're not going to want to do anything, at least for me that's that's the case.&nbsp;</p>
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<h2 dir="ltr">Tips for Starting Your Own Business:</h2>
<p dir="ltr">Be determined, have goals and plans and work towards them every single day. Find good construction companies to get in with and they're gonna help you throughout your entire career.</p>

The Clerk performs clerical and administrative duties for a company.  Their role is answering the telephone, typing documents, liaising with clients, maintaining filing, database systems and inventories, and welcoming clients.  Their responsibilities are to transcribe, record, fax and file documents, communicate with clients and employees, operate office equipment like  photocopiers and fax machines, respond to queries or complaints, sort and forward incoming mail and emails, prepare and send outgoing mail, prepare meeting rooms, and disseminate information to office staff.

If you are just starting out or looking to switch careers, working in an office environment may be your ticket. Can you communicate effectively and enjoy people? Advancement opportunities may be in your future.

<h2>Office / Administrative Support Education</h2><p>Technically you don't need a degree to get into this field. This is a great career for anybody just getting started or anybody who has been in another career and wants a good career change. A degree can definitely help you in this career especially if the position is asking for management and this will help you especially if you want to supervise or if the position allows you to supervise others.</p><p><br></p><h2>Skills</h2><p>It takes just somebody who is <strong>willing to learn</strong> who's a good <strong>people person </strong>and somebody who just really likes to <strong>help others</strong>. Being able to <strong>adapt</strong> is a very important skill in this position. Your company that you'd be maybe working with may change their needs. <strong>Technology </strong>is always changing to be able to adapt and to <strong>grow</strong> with that is very important depending on your company. Strong <strong>excel skills</strong>. Being able to have strong <strong>communication skills</strong> is going to be key to be able to work with and communicate with your managers, your customers, internal and external.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Role Pro</h2><p>One big pro of this is you can work in an in-person setting, hybrid or remote.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Role Advancement</h2><p>In my current company that I work for I started as an admin assistant and I developed this position to be more of a management position. I've taken that to managing people and now actually taking over onboarding and doing more HR role, payroll.</p><p><br></p><h2>Role Challenges</h2><p>A Con can be that you can be working under a lot of pressure with a lot of competing demands especially if the company has a lot of internal and external customers. This career is definitely customer service related so if you don't like working with people I do not recommend it.</p><p><br></p>

A Lab Manager serves patients by providing medical laboratory diagnostics and therapeutic information, goods and services.  Their role is developing and executing analytical procedures, evaluating laboratory information, consulting with pathologists, and reporting results.  Their responsibilities are to develop operation, quality and troubleshooting procedures, ensure staff compliance, certify instrument performance, arrange equipment replacement, service and repair, maintain medical lab supply records by checking stock to determine inventory levels, implement new programs, tests, methods, instrumentation and procedures by investigating alternatives, develop and perform parallel testing, monitor improvements, follow up on work results, and contribute to teamwork by achieving related results as needed.

A Marketing Intern is an aspiring marketing professional at the beginning of their career. They assist in the management of marketing operations under the supervision of a marketing manager.

Discover what it's like to build a rewarding career in marketing. From internships to agency work and in-house roles, learn valuable tips on networking, evolving with industry trends, and staying customer-focused for long-term success.

<h2>How I Got Into Marketing</h2><p>I've been in marketing probably about 15, 20 years. And I always knew I wanted to go into marketing and advertising. I'd seen a show that had a woman who was a successful ad exec. And I just thought it was so cool how she was able to come up with these campaigns and these creative ideas. And there's always something new that she was working on. So that was kind of I guess, my initial inspiration. And because I knew I always wanted to go into marketing at a young age, I chose a college that had a good program for that. So I majored in communications and I minored in marketing.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Tips for Getting Started in Marketing</h2><p>One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you is as soon as you start college—I mean, if you can do it while you're taking classes, great. If not, load up on internships during the summer. That's just the best way to get kind of real-world experience and figure out which area in marketing or which topic of whatever you're looking at, you want to go in further.</p><p>I had an internship in sports marketing, which I thought would be really cool. Then I realized, hey, that's not really what I want to do. But yeah, had multiple internships and learned a ton that way. Also started to create my network, and creating your network in marketing or sales or a lot of different professions is really important as soon as you start. And so people you meet, even in early parts of your career, can still be ones that stay with you for a long time, either just people that you can bounce ideas off of or you can ask when you're looking for a new job, that kind of stuff.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Working at an Agency</h2><p>One of my internships turned into a full-time job when I graduated, and it was at an ad agency. If you can, working in an agency where you can, whether it's a consulting agency, an advertising agency, anything like that, where you have access to a lot of different markets and types of customers and companies is really valuable at a young age. You typically work really hard at agencies when it's time for, you're launching a campaign or about to launch a new project or something. I mean, the hours get pretty grueling, can work on weekends and late into the nights to get things done, but it's also pretty glamorous. You get to do some cool stuff.</p><p>So I got to work with spirits and beverages, consumer goods, technology, nonprofits, when I was there for about six years, and that was really cool.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Working In House</h2><p>I realized that I really liked technology. So when I was ready to make a change, I went in-house, meaning I went to work for a marketing team that was inside the company. And while that marketing team will still use different agencies or partners for certain things, you're the one, really the expert on the company, the product, the business, to build some things on your own as well.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>What Marketing is Like</h2><p>Typically it's a 40, maybe 50-hour week, it's Monday through Friday most of the time, but when you're in marketing, you also get to go see the customers sometimes. And especially if you're in events marketing or communications or products, you often support trade shows and conferences and things like that. So I've been pretty lucky. I mean, those can be long nights. I mean, super fun stuff. You get to go travel different places and typically fun events you're putting on, things you might not have access to on your own budget, but you do to get in front of customers, to build relationships and that kind of stuff.</p><p>So I've gotten to go to several different countries, lots of different states, and yeah, I've really had some fun times, but you put in the work and that's important. And if you want to move up, you've got to keep learning, keep doing what needs to get done. People aren't gonna just see that you clocked in and clocked out. They want to see that you've got the job done. So you do what it takes to get the job done.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Key Marketing Skills</h2><p>In marketing, it's changing a lot. I mean, everybody hears about AI, generative AI. And so there's some roles and some things that are gonna change and get a lot easier to turn things around and create content, but you want to make sure that we're creating good content. And in marketing, you have to be really passionate about the customer and always thinking about from the customer's point of view.</p><p>So whether you're doing customer marketing and trying to cross-sell or upsell to other products or capabilities, or you're doing events marketing or product marketing or whatever, you really need to understand what is that customer thinking throughout that process. And so getting that information from your peers, working with your team to create that customer point of view and understanding how they feel across the customer journey is really key part.</p><p>And then figuring out how to use the latest tools, whether that's AI or different data that you can get and triangulate, that's kind of one of the key things in marketing, understanding your customer and knowing how to use data and using that data to track back and kind of inform what you're gonna do next and validate what you've been doing is actually working. So you can't be successful in marketing unless you know how to use data to validate for sure.</p><p>There's a lot of paths you can take when you're in one type of department within marketing. Doesn't mean you have to stay there. You can always go into other parts. So be curious, ask questions, work your network, and you'll have a fun, long career.</p><p><br></p>

The Parking Enforcement Officer writes and issues citations or warnings to owners of vehicles for parking traffic regulations.  Their role is to enforce parking rules and regulations.  Their responsibilities are to complete a daily log of citations and warnings issued, checks assigned areas for damaged, missing or malfunctioning equipment, and completes necessary forms in order to place a boot on a vehicle or have the vehicle towed.

A Pastor is a leader who provides direction to a religious organization.  Their role is leading worship services, and overseeing the planning and implementation of religious education and programs in discipleship and ministry training.  Their responsibilities are coordinating staff in the execution of the church’s purpose, defining strategic goals and vision, monitoring the spiritual pulse of the congregation through review and accountability, and ensuring staffing, facilities and programs are effectively aligned to meet strategic goals.

A payroll clerk is responsible for managing the payroll and employee benefit records of a company. Responsibilities may include calculating wages, preparing paychecks or direct deposits, filing taxes, maintaining records of employees' hours worked and vacation time used, tracking deductions for health insurance or union dues, processing new hire paperwork, responding to inquiries about wages and benefits from employees and other stakeholders. The role also involves ensuring compliance with applicable laws governing wages, overtime calculation methods and leave policies.

A Tax Preparer is a qualified professional who helps clients file their income tax returns.  Their role is to meet with clients during the tax preparation process to complete all tax forms, review financial records, and ensure that completed forms follow legislation and regulations.  Their responsibilities are setting up meetings with clients, advising clients about the tax preparation process, preparing and submitting tax returns for clients, handling communication from clients and tax authorities, providing future tax planning to clients, auditing all tax forms for completeness and accuracy, securing repeat business and expanding the client base, signing income tax returns on behalf of individual and business clients, and analyzing tax data submitted by the client to maximize the outcome for the client.

Tax Preparer Career Path

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