^ That’s Canada my friend. Getting a designation was the difference between endless application rejection and having a constant bombardment of recruitment for me. For whatever reason, its kind of a make or break up here in the corporate world. CA or CFA charter carry the day. Others are a tier below. You’ll likely have to fight it out until you earn one. Honestly though, get your foot in the door of a corporate finance team and work your ass off. Even if it is a crap job (don’t do AP, but anything else) its your ticket. Those with capability and drive do well in corporate because most people don’t have either.
I just looked at Vancouver postings to see if there was anything I could recommend you apply to… Yeah… You’ll probably need to move.
even though I’ve only recently started my career, I can sense exactly what you mean. Once one’s foot is in the floor at a company, is there any merit to a CFA, CPA, CMA, etc, or does advancement all boil down to working and performing well at work in your opinion?
Too true. Online applications don’t work if you don’t have a designation, from personal experience.
Its a Canada thing. Just the way it is.
In Canada you will generally find you have a ceiling in finance without a designation. The only people I’ve seen break this ceiling are former bankers. Reality is here the vast majority of controllers, treasurers, strategy leaders, etc are Chartered Accountants. If you aren’t one of the club, you’re out. They seem to respect the CFA charter for some reason as well though. In the USA, my experience with folks there tells a different story.
Unfortunately today undergrad degrees are a dime a dozen and you need to stand out in order to even land an entry level role. I would see how your CGA courses get transferred into the CPA program and which courses you need to complete as part of the PREP. I think the Accounting desingation is much more versitle than CFA and will likely open more doors for you now than the CFA. I think you could have your transcripts reviewed by CPA for free, although your undergrad school may charge a fee to have a transcript sent directly to CPA for review.
Where I was working in FP&A (Fortune 100 company), it was:
Analyst ($60-$70k) - 2 years rotational program, then:
Senior Analyst ($75k-$85k) - 2 more years in internal audit or a standard FP&A role, promoted to:
Manager ($90k-$120k) - 3 years in another rotational management program, then guaranteed:
Director ($125k plus)
That was the fast track path we were on, but outside of that, most people I saw that were VP were relatively young and had advanced quickly, because they were really good at what they did. CFO told us to plan on “leap-frogging” people and to not worry about typical advancement.
Typing that I sometimes wonder why I left, but FP&A was boring to me and the whole moving around all the time with a family did not appeal to me.