Graduate attributes that boost your employability

Do you have a graduate (or even postgraduate) tax qualification? Are you looking to land a prestige tax, accounting or legal position?

To separate yourself from the pack of other candidates in the eyes of prospective employers, it pays to demonstrate the following four attributes.

5 ways to enhance your digital footprint

Your online profile can be a gateway to your career, so how can you use your digital presence to move swiftly into your next role? Here are five things you should know about your digital footprint.

A digital footprint is the trail of data that users leave on digital services. From websites to social media profiles, your digital footprint can be used to showcase your career – so make sure you know how to optimise it.

First ask yourself: how will people find me? Then follow it up with: what impression will they obtain from my digital presence?

1. Make your mark

Potential employers will almost certainly plug your name into a search engine, so make sure you have a digital presence in the first place. If you have a common name, try to distinguish yourself with your middle name or a creative tagline, e.g. ‘aspiring tax specialist’.

2. Leverage your presence

Having a digital presence can help you find networking opportunities as well as push your name into someone’s sights. A career-oriented social network like LinkedIn is excellent for showcasing your skills, education and experience in a professional manner and acts as a searchable résumé for when an employer is looking for someone just like you. Websites are now so accessible and cheap that you may also choose to build your own for this purpose.

3. Eliminate the bad and irrelevant

Growing up online has it benefits, but it also has some drawbacks. You need to be aware of all the not-so-good stuff that can pop up in a search, which may include everything from angst-ridden poetry from when you were 13 to websites where people may have posted rumours or insults about you. If you can’t delete or hide these, at least make sure the good things rank higher.

4. Curb questionable behaviour

Everyone acts differently at work compared to how they act around their friends. Online, this distinction is often blurry, so it’s good practice to behave as if future employers are watching. This is the same rule you should apply whether you are engaging with others on social media or commenting on blogs and news articles. This means no negative behaviour such as posting anything unnecessarily aggressive or defamatory in nature.

5. Be yourself

While you don’t want potential employers to stumble upon something embarrassing and get the wrong idea about you, having an immaculate digital footprint is also a little unnerving. Authenticity wins over ‘too good to be true’, so don’t be afraid to be human.

The web is a great tool used by employers to find and research potential employees. Make sure you’re on their radar and primed to give the right impression when they do.

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A to-do list for first-year tax students

In a competitive environment such as the tax and accounting industry, it’s never too soon to start laying the groundwork for your future career. Here are five things you should aim to get sorted during the first year of your university tax course.

Develop a good grasp of the tax system
You can't build a house without a firm foundation, and gaining a solid understanding of the Australian tax system as soon as possible is the first step to a great tax career. You can – and probably will – spend a lifetime learning all its intricacies, but you'll want to nail the basics early on. (You may find enrolling in The Tax Institute’s CTA1 Foundations taxation course an effective way to achieve this.)

In particular, get your head around GST
It's the aspect of the tax system you’ll encounter more often than any other and, as you’ll soon come to learn, there’s a lot more to it than just whacking 10 percent on top of the cost of many (but not all) goods and services.

Join The Tax Institute
This one should be a no-brainer. Aside from free access to the leading Taxation in Australia journal – which can make all those assignments much easier – you will find the support you need to not only get you through your studies but to set you up for a successful career in tax plus it’s FREE! Join up right now.

Set up an internship
There's no better way to acquire practical experience and make some useful connections than through an internship. Australia's Big Four firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst & Young – are the prestige destinations. All four have student programs, so bookmark these pages and visit them as often as you can:

• Deloitte
• Ernst & Young
• KPMG
• PwC

But don't limit your search to major (or even minor) accounting firms – companies in almost every industry have finance departments where you can pick up practical experience.

Attend at least one industry event
Getting your name out there at networking events is a perfect way to make contacts that will help you down the road. The Tax Institute has a calendar of key industry events that are listed by state so you can find one close to home and at different levels in your careers.  

Your first year at uni will be a remarkable period of personal and intellectual growth. By all means enjoy your new environment, but don’t forget to do the legwork that will set you up for a great career when you graduate.

Give yourself the edge with free Student Membership
If you are a tertiary education student, The Tax Institute can help you progress in your career journey.

Find out about Student Membership.

Vivian Wang’s life two years after graduating

I began my interest in the accounting industry through my Bachelor of Commerce in 2010 at the University of Western Australia majoring in Financial Accounting and Management Accounting with a Business Law minor. My passion for accounting picked up during the second year of my degree when I began working part-time at the R E Ledger. I was able to relate what I have learned on paper to real life situations, which was challenging yet interesting to me. I undertook an Honours year following my Bachelor degree at UWA and commenced full-time work at R E Ledger in 2014. I have completed my study with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2015 and am embarking on the CTA3 Advisory program with The Tax Institute in 2016.

My current role at R E Ledger is quite diverse. It varies from client meetings to tax research to preparation and review of financial statements and tax returns to supervising our junior and intermediate staff. I have had the opportunity to work closely with our director on ATO Tax Audits and company liquidations which were most fascinating.

I’ve had the opportunity to learn from and work with leading tax advisors while working on a diverse and fascinating group of clients, allowing me to gain valuable knowledge and skills on various aspects of our industry. Using these skills to help and work with clients to achieve their objectives is very rewarding for me. Another highlight would be finishing my CA study and achieving merit results for both Taxation and Financial Reporting.

I was encouraged by my mentor to join The Tax Institute to further enhance my tax skills. The Institute’s seminars and publications provide me with an excellent opportunity to enhance my tax knowledge and skills.  In addition, joining The Tax Institute provides great opportunities to meet other like-minded tax professionals.

Whether it is learning new knowledge or keeping up to date with changes within the industry, study in our profession never ends. Being proactive and never being afraid to ask questions are the key to gaining knowledge and experience. 

Want to expand your education, visit taxinstitute.com.au/education for further information.

What employers really want to hear when they ask about your weaknesses

For some graduates, it's the toughest question in an interview: what are your weaknesses? How should you answer? And what do potential employers really want to hear?

There was a time when saying you were a perfectionist or a workaholic were the only acceptable answers to the question of weakness. But unless you are a perfectionist or workaholic (and have supporting evidence), those answers are now considered insincere. We asked some employers in the tax sector to explain what they really want to learn when they ask this question.

Leave rehearsed answers at the door

James Fabijancic, tax graduate recruitment partner at Deloitte's Melbourne office, agrees that rehearsed answers don't cut it anymore.

“We don’t want applicants telling us their weakness is working too hard or being a perfectionist,” he says. “We want to hear real stories, and importantly how applicants are taking steps to overcome any weakness and make themselves better."

He says the process of working through challenges is more important than what those challenges are as Deloitte’s culture is “built on working towards outcomes to address clients’ problems”.

Provide solutions, not excuses

Rob Basker, tax partner at Deloitte's Sydney office, says the question is less about weakness and more about how the candidate handles any situation by meeting it with a solution.

“We approach our interviews as exercises in getting to know each other, and to ask questions about situations to test what an individual has done or would do if they were in certain situations,” says Basker. “This way we can see how he/she would approach the matter in question, from thought to finish, to see if they are innovative or if they would create a 'moment that mattered' for our clients and our team.”

Addressing weaknesses is key

Other employers, such as Grant Thornton, no longer ask the weakness question, preferring instead to focus on the skills that graduates do have and building on that through professional development.

KPMG, on the other hand, is more specific. They ask candidates about what steps they have taken to address criticism they have received in the course of their work or studies, and whether these steps have resulted in change.

“We would look for a mature response where the candidate would acknowledge the criticism and recognise that people take the effort and time to share feedback to help people improve,” says a KPMG spokesperson. “If a candidate acknowledged and agreed with the criticism, then seeking out opportunities to undertake similar tasks to demonstrate improved capability and addressing the criticism would reflect positively.

“If a candidate didn’t agree with the criticism received, then we would expect a candidate to undertake a process of validating the criticism with other people as opposed to discarding the criticism as unfounded. Ultimately, a response that reveals the candidate is committed to self-improvement and continued personal development through action would be a good response.”

Again, this suggests that a question of weakness is not about the specific trait you have, but how you handle an issue.


No matter what weaknesses you have, never fear – your self-awareness in the process of acknowledging it and your capacity for self-improvement in how you address it are what employers are really interested in.

Give yourself the edge with free Student Membership

If you are a tertiary education student, The Tax Institute can help you progress in your career journey.

Find out about Student Membership.

Job trends for tax graduates

At the turn of the financial year, the short-term trend for jobs is usually accountancy based. What are the long-term trends tax graduates should heed?

Mid-year is always a busy time for tax professionals as individuals and organisations work to sort out their tax affairs following the turn of the financial year. As a result, tax graduates looking for work will find that tax accountancy roles are plentiful, ranging from filing individual tax returns to assisting larger businesses by joining corporate tax teams.

 

Core strengths

 

According to the government’s Job Outlook website, job prospects for tax accountants are high, with this trend to continue for the next five years. In the same period, job prospects for finance managers and analysts have an above-average rating. These three core areas for tax graduates are healthy and can all provide stepping stones to more complex areas of the tax industry if desired.

 

The nature of each of these areas, however, is shifting. In accounting and financial management, the roles will be less about compliance and more about providing advisory services, taking a holistic view of a client’s financial position. The complexity surrounding superannuation and trust structures in particular will require a tax professional’s advice.

 

The effect of tax reform

 

Changes to the tax system will inform the trend for tax analysts. The ongoing saga with the carbon tax is one to watch as it will affect a number of organisations directly and may have indirect follow-on effects for other organisations.

 

Further into the future, comprehensive tax reform is another item on the agenda that tax graduates will need to follow. There are roles on both sides of reform in policy research, advisory and development at the Australian Tax Office and other stakeholder organisations, as well as post-reform roles educating clients and rolling out the changes.

 

Globalisation

 

Globalisation will continue to occur with both Australian organisations going global and international interests being directed here. There are many legal and financial implications that intersect with the tax sector, including inbound and outbound employment, business and trade.

 

Understanding different tax jurisdictions will be an advantage if you want to work for multinational organisations, import/export businesses or in the foreign investment sector. There are a number of advisory and compliance roles in these areas, as well as a requirement for business planning and tax-structuring skills.

 

Being across the tax implications of foreign workers earning an income in Australia and Australian workers being employed elsewhere will also be helpful. You may work with individuals or the employing organisation.

 

While there is a general demand for tax professionals in the foreseeable future, you can ready yourself for specialisation by taking a look at what’s happening at different levels in the sector and angling towards the niche that interests you.

 

 

Give yourself the edge with free Student Membership
If you are a tertiary education student, The Tax Institute can help you progress in your career journey.
Find out about Student Membership.