A Detailed Report on Finance Careers: Financial Analyst vs. Accountant

This report provides an overview of career options in finance, specifically focusing on the roles of financial analyst and accountant. It details the responsibilities, required skills, and potential career paths for each profession. The report highlights that financial analysts provide guidance on investment decisions, requiring analytical skills and knowledge of financial modeling, while accountants are responsible for maintaining financial accuracy and handling tasks from auditing to tax filing. The recommendation favors the accounting profession due to its versatility across industries and its focus on current financial status, contrasting with the financial analyst's focus on past performance and future recommendations. Ultimately, the choice depends on individual preferences for data accuracy versus financial forecasting.

Running head: CAREERS IN FINANCE
Careers in finance
Name of the student
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Table of Contents
Option of financial career with finance education.....................................................................2
Required skills to be successful in the positions........................................................................2
Recommendation........................................................................................................................3
Reference....................................................................................................................................5

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Option of financial career with finance education
1. Financial analyst
Financial analyst is the most popular role under the financial service industry. Finance
analyst provides guidance and advice to various companies regarding investment decisions. A
financial analyst can work both as senior as well as junior positions in the company and it
leads to various other career opportunities in the finance industry. The financial analyst can
work for investment firms, banks, investment banks, insurance companies and individual
companies. Main task associated with the financial analysts are preparing the action plan for
the purpose of future investment and preparing the data as per the company’s financial trends.
However, the financial analyst must have good knowledge of the software programs for
compiling all the required data (Pinho, Madaleno & Santos, 2013).
2. Accountant
Career in accounting provides the opportunity for working with almost all types of
industries. The compensation differs as per the education level, specializations and
certifications. Accountants are the integral part of the public, private and the non-profit
companies. The accountants can work in private as well as public sector, under the
government sector or under the small or large business sector or at the individual level. They
can do various tasks started from auditing to tax filling to financial planning and budgeting.
Accountants are more interested in exact and specific data regarding the daily operations,
taxes and financial accuracy (Edmonds et al., 2013).

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Required skills to be successful in the positions
In addition to the qualifications and knowledge of corporate finance the person must
have the below mentioned skills –
 In-depth knowledge of the company
 Analytical knowledge
 Must be able to construct the financial models
 Good understanding of economic and quantitative concepts
 Solid analytical skills
 Understanding and analytical knowledge of the company’s business (Brown, Wei &
Wermers, 2013).
Further, as the career in financial sector is rapidly growing and offers wide variety of
the career opportunities this field deals with various important market sectors and requires the
following skills –
 Good communication skills
 Professional responsibility
 Cognitive knowledge
 Practice and experience in the respective field (Simkin, Norman & Rose, 2014)
Recommendation
From the above analysis among the 2 career options the option of Accountant is
recommended. The most attractive feature of this career option is that the person can be work
as both junior as well as senior accountant. Further, the accountant can work in almost all the
sectors as all the companies require accountant to handle their finance related tasks. The
accountant is responsible for stating the current financial status of the company and on the

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contrary, the financial analyst only looks into the past performance of the company.
However, it depends on the personal choice that whether the person likes to gather data for
assuring accuracy or gathering data for making financial recommendations. If the person
likes to gather data for assuring accuracy he or shall chose the accounting profession. On the
contrary, if the person likes to gather data for making financial recommendations he or she
shall chose the financial analyst profession

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Reference
Brown, N. C., Wei, K. D., & Wermers, R. (2013). Analyst recommendations, mutual fund
herding, and overreaction in stock prices. Management Science, 60(1), 1-20.
Edmonds, T. P., McNair, F. M., Olds, P. R., & Milam, E. E. (2013). Fundamental financial
accounting concepts. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Pinho, C., Madaleno, M., & Santos, H. (2013). The Usefulness of Financial Analysts'
Reports: A Content Analysis. International Journal Of Management, 31(2), 631-648.
Simkin, M. G., Norman, C. S., & Rose, J. M. (2014). Core concepts of accounting
information systems. John Wiley & Sons.

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