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Your Hire Date is Delayed, Now What?

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

Waiting.jpgInspired by recent events which I shall not get into here because of CPA Wrangler/client privilege, I figured now might be the time to do a quick “how to survive if you thought you were starting with the Big 87654 but suddenly won’t be until 3 quarters from now” refresher. Here you thought you got a sweet gig and now it’s all about making it until your delayed start date.
First and foremost, you’ve got your parents. They might have even put you through school. Your Dad may have called me at the CPA Factory asking if he could put your CPA Review course on his credit card (awww what a nice guy). Maybe they aren’t totally disappointed in you yet and haven’t lost their savings to Alan Greenspan’s bubble fixation. Whatever the situation, you should know by now that this is the first place to tap for extra cash, not your couch.
More, after the jump


Secondly, maybe the Universe is trying to tell you something. Is this really what you want to do with your life? Public accounting? Really? No one’s saying you’ve got to have a spiritual awakening or anything but maybe this is the time to evaluate the direction your life is trying to take. If nothing else, take it as a sign that you could use a Sabbatical.
Let’s not forget that you should be employable somewhere else. So instead of sitting around on the Xbox 360 eating ramen until you show up all pretty and polished for your first day at the Big 87654, go shop your shiny ass to other firms who might have the cash to cover your paycheck. If you’re looking for an easy way to meet the experience requirement and get your CPA and are lucky enough to have a trust fund, you’re totally fine sitting around pwning 12 year olds at Halo. But if you actually want to be an accountant for the rest of your life, go out there and sell yourself to a smaller firm who might appreciate your skills, not leave you waiting like a bad Craigslist blind date.
The last thing to keep in mind here is that sometimes it really is not you but me. Firms are scrambling to keep the quality staff they have and replenish the stock that are moving out of public accounting; take advantage of this. As we pointed out here on Going Concern already, don’t trip on the recruiters, they might be out of a job in a few months. It’s a bloodbath out there so slap on your gloves and try not to get any on your nice blue tie.
And if things get really bad, you can always froth lattes at the local coffee shop for the next few months. Give me a discount on my quad black eyes and I’ll tell you what *I feel* might be on the FAR exam next window *cough*
Hang in there, kids!

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Five Ways To Stick To Your CPA Exam Plan During the Holidays

If you’re like most of us, you’ve been half checked out since Thanksgiving [Ed. note: like you don’t even know] and are most likely spending your December gorging yourself on cookies and getting tipsy at holiday parties. But if you’re also studying for the CPA exam, it’s critical to stick to your schedule or else you’ll end up in February wondering why you haven’t studying at all for the exam you scheduled months ago. Here are five quick and dirty ways to stick to your plan.


Turn people down Yes, we know it sucks to have to say “no” but the big key to getting through the exam is being disciplined, which sometimes means saying you’ve got to stay home and study when friends and family are begging you to come out and play. Keep your commitments to a minimum and only do the holiday activities you’ve absolutely have to without being disowned by your family. If you must attend a wild company party, make sure you don’t turn a day of partying into a week of recovering.

Take your CPA review materials with you If you’re traveling out of state to see family, it’s important to bring your review materials with you so you can keep studying while you’re sitting around hearing about your Uncle John’s aches and pains and/or third wife. Bonus: studying is a great excuse to get out of awkward family interactions and shoveling snow so break out the books and show them just how disciplined and determined you are. We guarantee it will inspire oohs and ahhs at the table and hopefully keep you on track to pass next window.

Stick to your schedule If you’ve taken our advice so far (we swear we’re qualified to dispense said advice), you already have a rock-solid study schedule that accounts for every hour of every day and has studying penciled in between work and sleep whenever you can sneak it. Don’t allow the holidays to invalidate that schedule, simply reschedule some areas accordingly. If you blow off entire chunks of your schedule to sip cider and make gingerbread houses with the nieces and nephews, you’re that much more likely to keep blowing it off come January. Adjust your schedule if you have to but be sure to stick to it!

Turn your social aversion into a study tool If you’re like most people – especially accountants – you can’t stand awkward social interactions. Since you’re studying for a professional examination with a reputation for being all-consuming, you’ve got an out when it comes to lame social activities like tree-trimming, caroling, and/or volunteering down at the homeless shelter. Screw all that, leverage your CPA exam misery to your benefit and use it as an out. It’s either that or recruit the homeless guys to help you blast through flashcard drills while you’re handing out Christmas Day turkey at the shelter.

Use days off to study… MORE! Yes I said it. You might have half days or PTO to cash in or the post holiday-party day after to lay around at home and recover but instead of taking a holiday, try squeezing in a little more study time so you’re that much more ready come next year.

And lastly, though this isn’t exactly a tip, ENJOY YOURSELF. You’ve earned a nice little break so take advantage of it, just don’t blow your entire plan in the process!

>75: Seriously. Enough with the “Am I Outdated?”

Thumbnail image for ben bankes at the NYC marathon.jpgEditor’s note: Welcome to a special Wednesday edition of >75, our weekly post on questions that you have related to the CPA Exam. Send your questions to tips@goingconcern.com and we’ll do our best to answer as many of them as possible. You can see all of the JDA’s posts for GC here and all our posts related to the CPA Exam here.
Enough with this question, I’m going to start emailing students this article directly.
First of all, if you don’t send me questions, I can’t answer them. No question is too stupid, trust me, I’ve been in CPA Review for almost 3 years. They don’t tell you kids shit about the exam in college, better to ask than listen to some guy you work with (he’s wrong 87% of the time – or so I have calculated from professional experience via our students). So send them in. I’ll try to be nice and at least sort of useful.


That being said, I keep getting the question at work about materials. 2010 materials. Updates to 2009 materials. Being the most up-to-date in the cubicle farm. I got it, your brain is programmed to think December 31st equals a whole new year. How many of you are getting married this 31st, btw? Happy Anniversary to my boss – the CPA – and his wife on that fine day that you CPAs love so much. Deductions, bitch.
As previously disclosed, the AICPA Board of Examiners doesn’t want you to know they’re cheap. Those difficulty-weighted questions cost a whole shit ton of money to pop in that exam (speaking of which, any IFRS experts out there willing to contribute their time to screwing with CPA exam candidates? Prestige! Honor! No money though.) and the BoE likes questions that have a little more, erm, staying power. Those guys’ “creativity” keeps me in a job so I can’t really elaborate, you get the point.
That means you’ve got a 6 month window to work with from the time pronouncements are announced and when they actually start appearing on the exam. They might appear earlier as pre-test (not counted toward your score and about 15% of exam content) but unless specifically noted – as in SFAS 141(r) – pronouncements trickle into the exam slowly and on a delay.
When new exam content does appear (as it does twice a year, inevitably), it tends to be introduced slowly. Think about it – the only test run those questions got was pre-test, and you were not expected to know that information anyway. How can they gather intelligence from candidates’ collective knowledge of things they don’t know? Seems bizarre to me but whatever, can’t question the wisdom of the AICPA.
Except in the case of the Feed the Pig campaign.

Happy Last CPA Exam Testing Day of Q3 2010!

So we heard that some but not that many of you received your scores from this window, if so congrats (we hope) and do let us know how you did. For those of you stuck in Wave 2, um, sorry about that and here’s to hoping you get your 74 before the final window of 2010 gets too filled up to schedule before the dreaded CBT-e changes take effect January 1, 2011 in case you need a retake.

Remember, Q4 2010 could be the most difficult to schedule CPA exam testing window of all time so if you are in Wave 2 and want to take another stab at it before 2011 after you get a failing score towards the end of September, you better be sure to get your reapplication in for a new NTS as soon as you get your score. Be prepared to select an alternate Prometric location or date and time that you didn’t really want as it’s going to be rough getting in for some of you.


Of course, there are those of you in remote areas or CPA dead zones that may have no problems at all but for our little future CPAs in places like Texas, Illinois, California and New York (i.e. exceptionally large numbers of CPA exam candidates testing at any given time) be open to changing your dates or location if need be and don’t flip out if you can’t schedule where or when you want.

If you are testing today on this final testing day of Q3 2010 we’d love to hear what you’re taking. Jr Deputy Accountant’s unofficial poll of CPA exam candidates (really I’ve just been asking candidates I’ve talked to lately and not even taking a tally; sue me) reveals that a large number of you are actually going after BEC either today or before the end of the year to avoid written communication in 2011. That’s a bit of a shock, I assumed most of you would try to tackle FAR before IFRS hits but hey, whatever floats your boat. For those of you who pass BEC this year, you also have the advantage of getting a BEC exam with less economics and IT to worry about, not to mention no essays.

And if you don’t pass? Remember, there’s always next window, CBT-e or not and hopefully we have already calmed your fears surrounding the 2011 changes. It’s a little more to memorize with international standards thrown in the mix but you were already going to have to memorize a metric shit ton of information anyway so what are a few more standards going to hurt?

Good luck to all of you and don’t forget to get in your last minute CPA exam questions before it all changes in a few short months!