What has happened over the last few days

I got caught in the fake job bullshit again, in that normally big recruitment agency firms like Reed or Man power rarely have fake jobs, but quite recently even they have been putting up fake jobs and just lying through their teeth. I was told by Reed Manchester that there would be a job at Cowgill Holloway in Manchester. But I know the HR person there, and know of a couple of people who have survived the chop. I phoned them up immediately after the call with the agent, no such vacancy existed. Same thing happened with CLB coopers.

Some recruitment firms are even worse in that they simply make up a name of an accountancy firm, they thing we are stupid or something? In that we can't search the ACCA or ACA or CIMA lists if these companies exist or not? Or even just go through Yell?.

I've always hated people who have given false hope to others as it would be better to have not given them hope in the first place.

Why I am seriously considering leaving accountancy

There has been a trend I can't find the link for about graduates working in non related professions to their degrees.

I did a BA accountancy a long time ago, or at least it feels a long time ago. In that many people ask why are you thinking of leaving accountancy?. It is a good career path, this confuses my parents when they visit my flat now and again to bring me a parcel of food or something. (I have a terrible diet of Ramen I think it is trading money for health but hey at 9p per meal it is unbeatable for calorific value). In that my parents are stuck in old thinking, they never considered the aspects of globalisation and thus outsourcing.


Ironically to an accountant or ex accountant (I repent) it makes an awful lot of sense to me. It is from the training which conflicts with my own values system. Although oddly enough I do still apply for jobs here not that this has done me much good lately.

Accounting/back office financial work makes a lot more sense to outsource to me. In a way I'm surprised it took this long to get going.. but it could really turn into an avalanche of job outsourcing over the next few years.

Many of these companies have thousands upon thousands of people doing reconciliations, payroll, routine accounting work, and all sorts of accounting type positions. Go to any city in Britain and there is office building after office building full of people doing these types of things.

Its all done on computer nowadays so it doesn't make much difference if it is done in Manchester or Hyderabad. The difference is in Hyderabad you can get a very bright hard working person who is thrilled to work for £1 an hour.



Though there is another deeper reason other than outsourcing, that is the ethic of accounting companies, in that I was exploited heavily during my training, non moving wages costs of everything going up meant I was getting year on year pay cuts. The crick is this in that once you qualify you setup on your own and then it is YOUR turn to exploit the juniors and PQs. (part qualified)

Hold on there a second if I didn't like being treated badly and had to live like a bum for years till I got the ACCA letters after my name. Then quite simply why would I want others to be treated the same way?.

On top of this you may stand and attempt to buck the trend, except that other firms with lower morals and ethics do go on and exploit juniors and PQs, and can therefore lower their prices on the savings. My experience in accountancy was that you shift the price up even a little bit and clients leave.

I think this is indicative of a greater ennui in the UK as a whole as we only seem to care about the bottom line.

Cadbury's closes are we shocked no, the UK's industries are bought up jobs are gone but do we care? not much, as long as we get some kind of bargain to hell with the long term consequences. This was shown when Woolworths folded, in that people who went to the closing down sales complained it wasn't cheap enough.

The most depressing thing is

The most depressing thing is about all this is the feeling of helplessness, next to this is probably the fact that people who are under or unemployed suffer a feeling of confirmation bias. In that being unemployed is a depressing experience motivation can only last so long before it starts to crumble horribly.

In that you may spend half an hour an hour perhaps longer adjusting your CV, then typing out and spell checking then either emailing it to sending it via post to the supposed employer. That is IF the job exists in the first place, when quite often it does not (agencies are particularly guilty of this).

In that you spend all that time applying for the job doing all of the above. However the potential employer can’t take the time out to send a simple no email back. Granted there are two problems with this in that if it is a postal application then it would require them to post something back. Although many people will attach email addresses to their CVs and covering letters as a method of being in touch in more ways than one.

Also that there may well be a huge number of applicants to the job meaning replying simply isn’t feasible as they have other things to be doing.

Such as money making activities. 3 Workplaces ago I remember Trevor who worked in payroll for both the company itself and for a stack of clients. He also did the HR work filtering the work applications for potential new hires.

However here is where the confirmation bias comes in, in that people are already low in morale and not being worth a few seconds of somebody’s time confirms that they are unwanted or un-needed leading to a greater loss of morale and makes it harder to motivate and apply for jobs in the first place.

Way back in 2004 I remember one of the firms I applied for, he took the time to write back to me stating that there were no vacancies and he was very sorry. He did however write some advice for me and give me some hints. I put those into action and got my very first accounting job (the pay cheque a photocopy is on my wall to this day). This encouraged me and made me feel better, I wonder what employers have to gain from lower morale?.

This is of course not inclusive of several nasty return letters I received more than once from potential employers. One particular one from Stockport sent back a lengthy reply giving a sentence by sentence point by point of my CV and covering letter knocking each and every point. She had nothing positive to say and seemed to revel in great delight at belittling me.

So I suppose not getting replies sometimes is a good thing.

Something is going on

I can't log onto my computer or email at work and my jobs assignment board does not go beyond January, I think I am about to be made redundant.

Confirmed

Yup those were boxes of P45s the fact that the delivery man had to go up and down the stairs multiple times gives me an indicator that there are bad times ahead. I'm worried to be honest in that I wonder when my P45 will arrive as our clients are doing so little trade we simply can't justify sending them large bills. Everybody is tightening their belts.

But in other news today I've been reducing payments on account for HMRC for quite a while, in that taxes paid on Jan and Jul 31st are determined by last year's results as an estimate. If they are above last years you have a balancing payment at 31st January. If you have too high an estimate or your turnover falls off a cliff you reduce the payments on account.

I've universally had to reduce payments on account for EVERY client I've worked on, I can look back and see trends of falling turn over for a given period of time. It all looks bad.

I feel terrible today

As I said I do accounts, lots of boring accounts. A certain company did very well due to a change in the law today. Essentially a change in the law meant that if your business property is empty with a ratable value of more than £15,000, even if it is empty the owner has to pay the business rates which are high. And thus what happens is that the company will make provisions to not pay such a tax. This is reminicent of the window taxes of by gone days where people would brick up their windows to avoid such a tax.

This company made a large amount for 2008/2009 and yet they are cutting staff anyway to increase profitability.

One of the staff let go today

One of our juniors was given the push today. Her job is being distributed between all of us. The company is doing OK, namely as we have access to the billing excel spreadsheet and we can see how much is billed and we each know how much everybody else earns.

For a small amount of saving and to scare us into working harder..... I hate accountancy, its so souless.

I did hear a definition that I liked though, Accountant or Auditor somebody who after the big battle has finished walks around and bayonettes the wounded, nice.