Understanding oneself is a critical aspect for one to succeed in life. Self-understanding involves a keen analysis of one’s interests, capabilities, skills, learning capabilities and motivating factors among others. As such, these are some of the factors that will drive an individual towards a career path. In most cases, many individuals do not understand the difference between a job and a career. A job is something that one does to earn money but the individual has no long term desires to be in that job. Basically, one is engaged in a job because they have to but not because they want to be doing in the next ten years. On the other hand, a career is a series of interconnected opportunities that build the skills set of an individual. In other words, a career involves a network of opportunities and experiences that will fuel one’s professional life for years to come (Alboher, 2013).
I have always dreamt of having a prestigious career in one of the leading financial services firms. The dream was shaped by the people that I interacted early in life. Although I never understood what they did in the office, I marveled at the kind of life that they were living. It seemed important. As such, I set my mind that one day I will be like them. Later on in life, I discovered that they did totally different jobs despite them working for the same organizations or similar organization. Therefore, I had to choose which of paths to follow since the skill set required might be different.
Since my teenage years, till the time I joined college, I had been researching on career paths and the necessary training that will enable the realization of my career. Also, incorporating advice from tutors and my childhood role models, I was aware that my career path should match my abilities and desires in life. Otherwise, I will have a good job which I am not truly interested (Alboher, 2013). Using this search criterion, I stumble across the world of finance. At the beginning, it did not interest me since it appeared to lead me to number crunching. I desired a career that would allow me to utilize my social skills such as negotiation. Therefore, this path did not trigger my interest at first. However, after much consultation with my childhood role models, I realized that it was not all numbers. As a matter of fact, it was one field that blended the social skills and specialized training in numbers.
Upon joining college, although I was sure that I wanted to pursue a line in finance, I was no sure which line of finance to pursue. Finance has many specialization areas namely corporate finance, public finance, corporate finance, financial economics, financial mathematics, experimental finance, behavioral finance and intangible asset finance among others (Kumar, 2010). In most cases, I had never heard of any of these complicated terms. As such, I set to discover what they were in order to identify the most suitable line to pursue. The most striking area that matched my interest was corporate finance. Corporate finance is the area of finance that focuses on organization capital structure and sources of funds and explores ways in which managers can increase the value of shareholders by efficiently allocating resources. The process comes with other embedded responsibilities such as risk management, investment management, debt management and inventory management among others (Kumar, 2010).
As I undertook the research, I realized that not only can the course lead to a career in finance but also in financial auditing since it incorporated a large number of accounting and auditing lessons. An auditor is an individual that examines the books of a reporting entity to ensure that the financial statements extracted from these books are a true and fair representation of the organization financial position. Therefore, the auditor assists in safeguarding the public from manipulation that can be perpetrated from the misstatement of facts by the reporting entities. However, in order to have the capability to fully investigate irregularities that may be identified in the books of accounts, I narrowed my focus to forensic auditing where I will have the required skills to unearth fraudulent activities thus consolidating my role as a financial auditor. Therefore, with such skills, I was confident that I will live up to the society trust expectation where the society believes that auditors will always ensure that the information that is presented by the reporting entity is correct to the best of their knowledge. The belief shows that auditors hold a position of trust in a society. As such, upon this realization, I was certain that this was the right career path for me.
Having identified the right path for my future, all that was required is acquiring the necessary skills. Adherence technical instruction was one way amassing the required knowledge. Technical instructions refer to a detailed process through which the instructor gives the learner instruction on how to advance a set of skill or techniques (Wildman, 2014). In this case, the skills to be advanced are financial auditing skills. The advancement of these skills will involve the active study of all the subjects in the program in order to have all the required skills needed to perform the task of a financial auditor. Technical instruction will span throughout the entire period that the learner will be in college. As a result, it means that the subjects will have varied technical instructions that are structured in a manner that the learner will be impacted with all the skills needed by the end of the course to function as a financial auditor.
References
Kumar, V. (2010, May 2). Fields of Finance | Accounting Education. Retrieved February 13, 2016, from http://www.svtuition.org/2010/05/fields-of-finance.html
Alboher, M. (2013). The encore career handbook: How to make a living and a difference in the second half of life. New York: Workman Pub.
Wildman, J. (2014, March 06). Technical instructions. Retrieved February 13, 2016, from https://prezi.com/azicipi3wmop/technical-instructions/
