Need some help and advice - employment

[Kiyalily]

Dear all,

I have been out of work for over a year now due to childcare and family commitments. Now that my daughter has started nursery at a local primary school, I am now ready to get back to work. I have been applying for both full time and part time jobs for the past couple of weeks without success. I am a fully qualified accountant with over ten years of all around accounting experience mainly in the charity sector.

I am very desparate to get a part-time/flexible hours job with a company that is family friendly and wondered if anyone would be kind enough to help me with this.

Thanks

Kiyalily

[Pickle]

Have you thought about working for yourself? I'm a CA, and work from home while my youngest is at school nursery in the mornings.

Good luck!

[nunheadmum]

The charity sector is pretty good for part-time finance jobs. Often they can't afford a full time post but need the expertise. I am getting lots of approaches from agencies at the moment so maybe there are a lot of people on the market.

I would advise looking at the online sites - Charity Job, Third Sector. See which agencies advertise the charity finance roles and approach them. Look also at Charity Finance Group (www.cfg.org.uk) who have a jobs page. Timewise are also good for part-time roles, often including charity roles.

If you get an interview I can't stress enough doing your homework on the charity. It's not enough any more to say finance is finance regardless of the organisation - which it is. But there will be other candidates out there who know more about the specific organisation. Try to see what differentiates the organisation from others in the field. What's their key stats that they're trying to change. If you can, try to show how you can link finance beyond the bounds of the finance department - what do you understand about fundraising, donor reporting, HR, IT etc.

Good finance folk who know their stuff and can go beyond bean counting can be hard to find. Try to strike the balance between showing them how great you are while being open to learn about them.

Hope that's some help. There are roles out there.

[Kiyalily]

Thanks Pickle. That is an area I am exploring at the moment. Coming from a Charity background and never worked for an accountancy firm before, I will need a bit of exposure in this field. I have already approached a couple of ED accountancy firms but sadly they don't have a vacancy. I am even willing to be employed for a minimum wage for up to 25 hours per week to get the experience and the expertise as this is an area am very keen to get into.

nunheadmum - thank you so much for your valuable advise. I am looking at the online sites and gets email daily on the latest vacancies. The only site I have not looked at is the CFG website which I will be looking. Good and valuable advise regarding doing my homework about the specific organisation. I will certainly do that.

Thank you both for your time.

[standswithfist]

the timewisejob site is very good site and has accountancy vacancies

[Pickle]

Ah, yes it will help you if you've got a bit of CA firm experience behind you. My experience is that there are a lot of small businesses looking for "freelance" accountancy support, so with experience of small business accounting it's quite easy to build up a decent client base.

Keep approaching local firms, I'm sure something will come up.

Goodrich school are currently advertising for a finance administrator, 21 hours a week I think. Might be worth looking into?

P x

[bawdy-nan]

I'd totally recommend Pickle's idea of working for yourself. Almost every charity / arts organisation I have ever worked for has needed part-time accountancy / bookkeeping freelancers. Also, given the massive rise in self-employment recently there's got to be a need there too. Might be worth exploring and setting up a simple web-page, sending out some emails etc ....

Good luck