Senior Accountant
The accounts of any organisation are its lifeblood, and are the basis for calculating its performance, risks and investment opportunities. That’s why larger businesses will have whole teams of accountants monitoring and measuring the finances, and paying and charging the various people they work with. Accountants come in a range of specialisms and levels of experience, and the senior accountant is someone who has shown impressive aptitude in their field.
Usually positioned just below management or executive accountants in a business’s finance department, senior accountant jobs are not normally managerial themselves, but often involve training and assistance to junior accountants and onboarders. They will, however, be a trusted voice for accountancy managers, who appreciate that the senior accountant’s understanding of a specific financial matter could well exceed their own.
The skills required
As the name suggests, senior accountants won’t be freshly qualified at CIMA, AAT, ACCA, AIA or ICAEW level, but they will have augmented one of these qualifications with several years’ experience and a proven track record working in a busy accountancy department.
You’ll need to be thoroughly comfortable dealing with clients and suppliers, and should have an in-depth understanding of the sector that the role occupies, as there can be large differences between the financial and legal requirements of various sectors. Senior accountant jobs are often seen as stepping stones to managerial positions, although a lot of accountants are perfectly happy simply dealing with the numbers for their whole careers.
Senior Accountant Jobs in Wakefield
Wakefield is a city just south of Leeds that comprises the five towns of Pontefract, Castleford, Normanton, Featherstone and Knottingley, as well as other minor towns. With a population of around 325,000, it’s a moderately sized city that is overshadowed by its northern neighbour and Sheffield, which is 20 miles (31 km) to the south. Wakefield is well connected by rail and road, with the M62 and the M1 passing by its north and west respectively.
The city and its constituent towns boomed during the Industrial Revolution when vast seams of coal were discovered beneath them. The area dug hundreds of mines and this remained the key industry in the area until the 1980s when they were closed down one by one. The last remaining one is Kellingley Colliery, located at Knottingley, just east of Pontefract.
The city remains industrial, however, although the days of heavy industry are largely gone. The city’s excellent communications and central location have made it an ideal place to site warehouses, factories and distribution centres, so Senior Accountant jobs regularly appear in the Wakefield area. There are also regeneration projects going on in the city designed to diversify and stimulate the economy, and this looks set to bring further growth to an area that has had to reinvent itself completely in thirty years.
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Looking for a senior accountant?
If your company needs someone in its accountancy department with real clout, and there don’t seem to be the opportunities internally, it could be time to draft in some top talent with the help of Cast UK. We recruit at senior, managerial and executive levels, and have a long list of senior accountants to pick from. Call us on 0333 121 3345 to speak with a consultant.
If you’ve been in the accountancy game long enough to be considered for a senior role (or are there already), Cast UK can put you in touch with businesses including accountancy firms who are looking for people like you. Please register with us by following the link below.
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