Difficulties for a newly qualified CA

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As and when a person gets CA final cleared, the person is full of excitement, relief, hope and obviously a little bit of confusion.

The first confusion is : Practice or Job?

Most of the students have a predetermined mind set for a particular option, still there are few  candidates who are confused to opt for practice or job. If you are one of the confused students, i suggest that you should work on your confidence and should know more about yourself. Its not a bad thing but it is an indication that somewhere you lack understanding of yourself and you need to work on it.

Practice is something that requires contacts, patience, struggle, ability to understand client's need, enough audit experience or somebody who is pre-established in the practice field to guide.
I am not going to talk much about practice as this area is out of my interests.

Second confusion is : Where to find and apply for jobs?
Most of the candidates dreams of good job and designation.
People say... "To find jobs these days is very difficult"
I don't think its correct, to 'find' jobs is easy, to get job is difficult.

Here is one thing that I have noticed, most of the companies on the 'job portals' asks for experience of at least 2-3 years with petty offerings (normally below 3 lakhs). On the otherside some companies picks up a newly qualified CA in normal package of  4-5 lakhs during campus placement.

I personally believe a candidate who has actually spent 3 years of articleship in auditing many kinds of client can never be a 'fresher'.But most of the companies on job portals does not even recognizes articleship as work experience.

'That is an irony associated with the profession'

Anyway every person who is newly qualified chartered accountant must consider the training part as work experience as an ordinary accountant with 3 years experience never goes through that situation, environment and knowledge enhancement. He/she must mention that actually 3 years of life were spent on gaining knowledge, experience, error finding, corrections & reporting on the work done by experienced accountants.

Now, before one searches for job, the points to be cleared are:
1. Industry ( manufacturing, hospitality, finance etc.)
2. Expected salary pm / annual package ( cost to company)
3. Location of work (home town/outside)
4. Self search or campus placement or both
5. Resumè (self made /not copied)

If you are searching jobs in particular industry prepare a list of companies in that industry and then search websites of each company for jobs. Generally, current openings are available in ' Career' tab on home page of company's website. This is best way to search for desired job. For example for IT industry open Wipro / Infosys etc., in case of hotels search for careers in Taj group, Leela hotels, oberoi etc.
You can also rely on campus placement but do not completely depend on it.

Online portal that can be searched are:
Naukri.com
Indeed.co.in
Also you must have an updated profile on LinkedIn and you should follow the companies you want to get associated with.

Another thing one should keep in mind is that either you can keep close to your small home town or to money. The companies are not paying much in small cities/ non metro cities like Indore, Bhopal, Jaipur etc.
Even I have a seen some companies offering just 3 lakhs in industrial city like Pune. If you want good salary (approx 5 Lacs and above) you have to go to New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad etc.

Yes, there are some exceptions but those are few in number and thats why they are exceptions.