My father, Patrick B by Adam B

The Interview: 

1. What is your job title?

Controller

 

2. What is your job description?

Responsible for month-end close, financial reporting, budgeting, treasury, insurance, and managing the annual external audit.

 

3. What are the duties and/or tasks you perform at your job?

Respond to emails and phone calls

Booking the month-end journal ledger entries

Reconciling balance sheet accounts

Review profit and loss statements

Approve payments to vendors and sign cheques

Review and amend policies and procedures

Book and attend meetings

 

4. What qualifications do you have for this job in the following areas:

a) training?

On-the-job training

 

b) education?

University education (Bachelor of Commerce degree) along with the CPA designation

 

c) experience?

Many years as an accountant and financial planning and analysis manager 

 

d) skills and attributes (personal qualities)?

Good with numbers, analytical, critical thinker, excellent communication skills, self-starter, project management/planning

 

5. What are some of the things you like about the job?

Interacting with ownership and upper management.

Provide valuable insights into the field and operations to help them achieve their annual budget.

 

6. What are some of the things you dislike about this job?

Long hours during the annual external audit as well as the sometimes large admin type of work that needs to be done to complete the work.

 

7. How do you think this job changing in the next 5 years or so?

Finance and Accounting professionals will need to play a more important role in the future to assist the business to become more competitive and profitable. Simply reporting the financial results every month will not suffice. Finance and Accounting professionals will need to extract insights from all the operational data collected daily to help guide the business toward higher sales and profit margins.

 

Student Reflections:

1. Give three reasons why you would like this job (be specific):

a)

One reason I would like this job is that I find I am the most productive in this kind of environment. This is because there is nothing to distract me and also everyone around me is working, so I am more likely to do work and not get distracted. I noticed when I did some of the school work that I needed to do, I found that when everyone around me was working and productive it made me focused and productive which was great to just sit down and just go through all of the work I needed to do.

b)

Another reason is that I work really well with numbers, hence doing well in math. I find that the best is when I get to do the technical work because it’s just how my brain works and I don’t think I would get tired of it too quickly. I always like doing math because I am great at it and it makes sense to me. I find that things that are technical make it pretty easy for me to figure out because it’s like my brain’s language is math and numbers.

c)

The last reason is there’s a wide range of jobs to choose from. I like this because when I get tired of the first job, then I could change to a similar one, or maybe a completely different one. Some, of the jobs, are probably done by higher-up employees, so over time, I can climb up the ranks. So hopefully I can climb up pretty fast so that I can change things once and a while and not do too much of the things that are brainless work and should be done by other people.

2. Give three reasons why you would not like this job (be specific):

a)

One reason I would not like this job is that there is a lot of repetition and if they don’t let me change the type of work that’s done, then I will get tired of it. The more I get tired, the more I hate doing the work. I just don’t think that I would like a job which almost never changes and would make me do the same thing almost every day.

b)

Another reason is that whenever there is an assignment due the next day and I haven’t finished it, sometimes it stresses me because I am a person that likes to hand in everything on time. I will go to bed later because I need to finish something, I am not someone to not care and hand it in late. For actual work assignments or jobs, I see myself stressing no less because it actually pays, so I would care about it way more.

c)

The last one is that learning never stops because there are almost infinite things that an accountant can learn. The reason that I wouldn’t like that is that I think that I might get tired of always learning it and I just think that I could do the work better if there were a lot of things to learn and not an infinite. The best things are when you can learn it and then refine the process and make things more efficient. For example, I liked the Rubik’s cube for a while, not anymore, but I liked it because it was simple for me to learn and I could just solve it faster and then that was it and I just repeat the process of trying to solve it faster.

3. Is this job for you? Why or why not?

I am going to say yes, that is because I find that my brain works really well with numbers, it’s just how I work. I worked at one of the desks that were available and liked the layout. I definitely had to get up once and a while, but that didn’t bother me. The type of work is accounting and that’s finalizing stuff and working with all types of different kinds of numbers, I was always a strong math student and still am, but that’s why I think that this job would suit me well. The only thing is that I don’t like doing lots of repetition, but that’s ok because accounting is not just one type of thing, it’s many, so I would be able to change once and a while and that way I would never get too bored because I would always be doing different jobs. I also do like coding, but I don’t like when there could be a problem/issue in your code and it’s so hard to find because it could literally be the lack single bracket or period, or too many. It just drives me absolutely crazy and I don’t like the sound of that type of job. The only way I think it would work without me going crazy is if I practice coding a lot and then get so good at it that I will almost never make stupid mistakes like that. That would take quite some time though and that’s why I think accounting would be better for me.

4. Explain the value of the TYKTW experience in relation to your ideas about your post-secondary (after high school) plans (education?, training?, travel?, work?).

the value of experience at TYKTW is pretty valuable because it shows you how everything works and it also shows you a potential job you could be doing for quite some time. I personally liked the fact that it was really cool because I could live a day in the life of an accountant and see what it’s like to have a desk with a whole setup. I think that the most valuable thing that I learned when I went to TYKTW is the fact that it really gets you to think about the future and how it’s really close by and there’s not much time left, so it really gets you to think about what job you want to do and then work and learn about that job. Personally, I think that I will think about my future more because of this experience I saw how my dad’s office was and I really thought to myself that it was sooner than I thought and I really thought of what I wanted to do in the near future. Overall I think that this experience should be done in all schools because it was like a wake-up call and I liked how it made me think about my future and I’m sure that other people would also like this experience, so that’s why I suggest every school to do this and every student to want to go to TYKTW day.

Pictures:

(sorry about the blinds)