AAT What you need to know

AAT What you need to know by Michael Cheary Interested in a career in accountancy? Start with AAT…Whether you’re looking to take the next step up in a current  accounting role,  or you’re just interested in  becoming an Accountant and don’t have any previous experience, an AAT qualification could be the perfect way to kick-start your career.Not sure what your options are? We spoke to Kaplan Financial, one of the UK’s leading providers of accountancy qualifications, for a quick rundown of everything you need to know about AAT:What is AAT?AAT stands for the Association of Accounting Technicians. It’s the UK’s leading professional membership body for accounting staff, and has over 150,000 members in over 90 countries worldwide.AAT is sponsored by four of the UK’s leading chartered accountancy bodies â€" CIPFA, ICAEW, CIMA and ICAS.What are the different AAT levels?There are four main levels of AAT qualification. These range from the introductory AAT Access Level 1 course, through to the m ore advanced Level 4 diploma.Here’s a quick rundown of the different AAT qualifications:AAT Access (Level 1) â€"  Basic introduction to accounting and finance skills. A short course, and the first step to becoming an AAT member. Once you have gained the AAT Access qualification, you have opened the door to a huge variety of accounting jobs. No pre-requisites, although candidates must be 16 and over.AAT Level 2 â€"  The foundation stage of AAT, this course introduces essential accounting skills and principles such as the double entry system, trial balances and credit control. No requirement to complete Level 1 in order to take this qualification.AAT Level 3 â€"  The intermediate stage of AAT, Level 3 builds on the theory learn at the previous stage, but places more of a focus on specific accounting tasks, including the formal preparation of accounts. Once completed you will be awarded the AAT Diploma in Accounting.AAT Level 4 â€"  The final and most advanced stage of AAT, Level 4 t eaches key skills such as budget preparation, monitoring financial performance and drafting financial statements. Once completed you will automatically become an AAT affiliate member, validating your advanced skills in accountancy.View all AAT courses nowWhy do I need AAT?The AAT Accounting Qualification is greatly respected in the financial industry, and is designed to give students all the practical skills they need to build a career in finance.AAT qualifications are globally recognised, and are generally considered prerequisites for several accountancy positions. They can be studied regardless of age, experience or previous qualifications, so are perfect for anyone seriously considering a career in the accounting sector.What’s more, employers including the NHS, HMV and Procter and Gamble have all successfully used AAT qualifications to help their employees develop their accounting skills, cementing AAT’s position as industry-leaders when it comes to accountancy.How much can I earn once AAT qualified?This will vary depending on individual employer, location, certification and job title. As a general guideline, once Level 1 or Level 2 qualified you could be earning somewhere in the region of £20,000 as a starting salary (as an Accounts Clerk, for example).However, progressing through the levels will allow you to take the next step in your accounting career, which could see you move on to positions such as Purchase or Sales Ledger Supervisor, or Accounts Manager.For these positions, you’ll be much more likely to command salaries above £30,000, even rising to the £50,000 mark for the most experienced.What methods of learning AAT are there?All AAT qualifications offer flexible and varied options when it comes to methods of study.You can either choose to take them full-time or part-time, and online from your own home or within a classroom.Kaplan, for example, offer both OnDemand and Distance Learning options â€" meaning you can study wherever, and whenev er you want.How long will it take to get AAT qualified?As the courses are self-paced, this will largely be up to you.As a general guideline, each level should take somewhere between six months and a year to complete (although this may be significantly less if you’re already working within the accountancy industry).With Kaplan’s OnDemand service you’ll even be able to access the course at times that suit you â€" using tutor-led videos, that you can fit within your own unique timetable.Advantages of becoming AAT qualifiedSome key advantages of becoming AAT qualified include:A nationally and internationally recognised qualificationA pathway for career development, training and progressionBeing in demand by employers in both the public and private sector, with many employers considering AAT qualifications as essentialGreater confidence in your own skills and abilitiesAccess to, and the support of, a professional body within the accountancy sectorWhy study with Kaplan Financial? Wh atever study method or course you’re interested in, Kaplan have something for you.Not only are they one of the UKs most respected course providers, offering industry leading training in accounting and business expertise, they also provide a wide range of different types of learning â€" including classroom, distance and online learning.Other benefits of studying with Kaplan Financial include:Exceptional pass rates across all of their coursesInterest free payment plansPrices inclusive of exams and study materialsIndustry leading support â€" whether online, or in classWorld recognised qualifications, and endorsements from some of the UKs biggest businesses (including all of the top 10 accounting firms)Find out moreReady to start studying? Find an AAT course with Kaplan today.Kaplan Financial are the UK leader in financial, accountancy and business training. Their mission is to help individuals achieve their goals and realise their potential.Find a job What Where Search JobsSign up for more Career AdviceSign up for moreCareer Advice Please enter a valid email addressmessage hereBy clicking Submit you agree to the

Use a Grant Writing-Resume Example to Create a Good Grant Writing Sample

Use a Grant Writing-Resume Example to Create a Good Grant Writing SampleIf you are like many business owners today, you may be looking for a good grant writing resume example. Many small business owners want to know what a grant writer can do to help them get a job with such an offer. For that reason, we're going to show you a simple yet effective way to construct a grant proposal.How much time and effort is needed to complete a grant? This is a question that most business owners will ask themselves time again. Often times, they may also be under the impression that they have to take on the entire project on their own. However, this isn't the case. In fact, if you take the time to search for grants, you'll find that there are numerous grants available for business owners.You should use your grant writer's expertise to create a unique and personal grant proposal. Make sure that your words are as personal as possible. Include stories of personal achievements and even quirky anecdotes. Make sure that you're able to present yourself in a positive light.The grant writer should create a resume and cover letter which you can use as a guide for your project. It's a good idea to make a few copies so that you can review them before you send them off. This will give you a better idea of what kind of writing you should be doing. In addition, this will give you a better idea of what's expected from you as well.Are you looking to start your own business or are you already established? If you're a first-time grant writer, it may be a good idea to create a grant sample using a grant provider's template. This can make the process easier. While a newbie can get a grant, the success rate is much lower.There are plenty of grant writers who are available for hire. You'll find hundreds of different professionals for hire on the internet. However, many of these professional service providers offer payment by the hour. As a result, you may be able to get some money as soon as you subm it your grant proposal.Before hiring a writer, consider their track record. Make sure that they are familiar with several different types of grants as well as government agencies. Additionally, check out the various different online writing communities. It's a good idea to use a writer who is passionate about writing as a career.Using this grant writing resume example, you can ensure that you get a good response from any application. You should always follow the proper guidelines when creating a grant proposal. A writing resume example can prove to be very helpful in helping you do just that.

5 Common Social Media Mistakes that Candidates Make

5 Common Social Media Mistakes that Candidates Make Looking for a job in London nowadays is more akin to playing a game of “Frogger” than simply sending your CV to a vacancy. There are obstacles you must navigate before you even start applying for a job these days. Most job-seekers have more than one social account with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn being the main ones. In today’s era you should EXPECT a future employer to do their research on you by looking at your profile on all social sites. These are sometimes done pre-first interview and certainly done pre-offer. Why? Because future employers want to know as much as possible about the person they are employing. Will you fit in to the company’s culture? Are you likely to give a good impression to Clients? Are you reliable? Do you have any skeletons in your closet? So make sure you are careful with how you portray yourself online. Please read on for 5 of the biggest no-no’s! 1) Compromising pictures Yes, we all have a life outside of work, but photos of nudity, the taking of illegal substances or legal substances in vast quantities could give off the wrong impression of your extra-curricular activities. 2) Avoid appearing over opinionated Employers tend to see it as a positive if potential employees have a view on a certain topic. However, they can easily be put off if they perceive those views to be too radical and/or opinionated. One of the reasons many employers put job seekers through psychometric testing is to try and assimilate how you will fit in to the company culture, react to management and to your peers. It is fair to deduce therefore that they will make a judgement call (rightly or wrongly) on anything they see as potentially divisive in your online profiles. 3) Discriminatory Behaviour Following on from the last point, be careful not to condone anything that can be perceived as discriminatory either, in your posts, or by liking the posts/images/videos of others. Most companies have Equality and Diversity policies in place so will not want to hire anyone who could conflict with this. 4) Inviting people you have just interviewed with to your social profiles This is a big no-no and you would be surprised how often this happens. Interviewers want to see the “true you” and therefore should make you feel at ease at the start and/or end of an interview. They are being friendly but the majority of time are not trying to befriend you. Just because you have hit it off with your interview doesn’t meant that you should feel comfortable enough to invite them to be a friend on one of your social profiles. More often than not this will have a negative effect as you will be perceived to have crossed an unwritten boundary. 5) Don’t “slag” off your Boss or ex work colleagues It is all too easy to write something negative about a current or previous workplace, but please understand that a future employer will think that if you can write that about another company, then surely you can write the same thing about their company. If you are posting negatively about work, then do so constructively. A recent example is an employee of a company who was “friends” with the social profiles of a number of her colleagues. When she posted some disparaging comments about them and the business, she lost those friends and the goodwill of that business quickly. In short, whatever your privacy settings are, understand that your social profiles can and will be reviewed. There is a debate to be had on whether Employers should actually be allowed to make hiring decisions based on an individual’s profile. As individuals share more and more of their private information online, this debate is only going to get stronger. It seems to me that the PA recruitment market is one so intertwined that even a PAs privacy settings are not deterring the mole like instincts of the enquiring employer! Author:  David Morel  is Managing Director of  Tiger Recruitment, specialising in Secretarial and PA Jobs. Image: Pablo

How to get a better sense of who you are

How to get a better sense of who you are Im great at remaking myself. Ive been a  pro-volleyball player, a serial entrepreneur, a stay-at-home mom. Ive modeled nude and Ive stood as a spokesperson for education reform. The hardest part about being able to remake myself so often is that Im never sure who I am. The other day my son said, Mom, whats your name right now? I said Penelope. I knew that was the right answer, because everyone in my life calls me Penelope. But its not my legal name. Adrienne is still my legal name. So sometimes, I get into trouble, and he sees it. Like the time we checked into a hotel and I had no ID for the name Penelope so I told the hotel clerk to look me up on Wikipedia. My son stood next to me the whole time, ostensibly eating free snacks in the lobby, but clearly the scene made an impression. (At airport  check-in he said, Mom! Lets use your Wikipedia page to go to the front of the line!) What Im working on now is trying to see myself how I really am. Ive been looking at this photo of me on the bed since last summer, when the Farmer took it. I think to myself: is that really what my body looks like? Because honestly, I hate my body. Sometimes I love it and I think Im lucky, like I won the lottery in the body department. But now that my body is older I cant stop thinking about how Demi Moore changed all the bulbs in her house so that she didnt have to see herself in bad light. Its so hard to see yourself clearly until you have hindsight. For example I just, in the last month, finally understood why I was paired with an absolute genius for junior varsity debate. I figured it out by obsessively googling old debaters. For those of you who did not do high school debate which surely is  most of you what you need to know about it is that its so  incredibly hard-core  and time consuming, and the kids are so incredibly smart, that they all get straight As and are excused from any school activity they want to be excused from because they are so smart. (Look at this link. You will not believe how insane top-tier high school debate is.) So in my extremely intense high school, everyone got tracked. And I was not on the super-smart track with the rest of the debate team. I was on the mediocre track, failing classes like chemistry and gym. (It is very difficult, by the way, for someone with Aspergers to move between classes in an efficient way. So I just stopped doing that. It never occurred to me that people fail gym. Or that gym is required for graduation. And I will just tell you right now, so you have a picture of what I was like in high school, that my senior year I had four periods of gym so that I could graduate. Which, actually, worked out ok for me because I didnt have to switch classes.) Back to debate. The sponsor of the debate team was Mr. McClain the former head of Northwesterns debate team, which is a huge deal. You had to take a prerequisite class for debate, and hed choose you if he liked you. In the prerequisite class, I did my final speech on how to juggle. I juggled the whole time I gave the speech. When I got to four balls, I dropped them a few times, so I was chasing them around the classroom but still giving my speech. Mr. McClain said it was the best speech he had ever seen in his twenty-whatever years of teaching this class. I thought he was lying and put it out of my mind. Which means I had no answer for anyone when they asked me why I was slated as the top debater coming into the junior varsity debate team. Everyone is ranked. There are no secrets. My partner, Henry, was an absolute genius. Incredible genius. So far above me that it took me a few months to even understand that he was running circles around me. People wondered why we were partners. I wondered too. Most teams traded off who gave the important speeches and who gave the more automated speeches. We stopped trading. Mostly because he had a fit that I was so much worse than him. But also, I loved that he did the hard parts. Policy debate is hard. Its hard work to argue that the CIA should stop selling torture weapons to Honduras (yes, the CIA did that) and then have to deal with the argument that if you start regulating the CIA the US government will crumble. Henry yelled at me often for not understanding things. You must win the categorical imperative argument to win the thumbscrew argument! hed scream at me. And then hed throw index cards full of Kant quotations over the tops of my books and Id stare, wishing he would also tell me where to file them. Then I realized: The reason Mr. McClain made me and Henry partners is because I did an amazing job with my juggling speech. And, actually, Im an amazing speaker. Look, I make $15K a speech, talking with no notes, about a wide range of topics. And people love me. The people on the debate team had a different kind of intelligence than I have. But I didnt see that. I wonder, what is the thing I dont understand about myself today? I dont want to take twenty years to figure it out every time. So I started looking for areas where I look like I dont belong. One of those is money. You know how the debaters looked at me and thought I was an idiot for not being as good as they are? People think about me that way with money. I make a lot of money, but I dont have a lot of money. The Farmer has earned roughly $15,000 a year for every year of his adult life. And he has way way more money than I do because he doesnt spend it. I read a lot about how ENTJs are great with money. And I think, I must be great with money because Im a hard-core ENTJ. But I dont have money. Then Melissa sent a quote to me from the story Bull, by Chinese author Mo Yan,  published in the New Yorker.  And I love the quote. It describes me so well: If getting rich had been on my fathers agenda, hed have had no trouble becoming the wealthiest man in the village, of that Im sure. But he was a dragon among men, and dragons have no interest in accumulating property. Youve seen critters like squirrels and rats dig holes to store food, but whos ever seen a tiger, king of the animals, do something like that? Tigers spend most of their time sleeping in lairs, coming out only when hunger sends them hunting for prey. Similarly, my father spent most of his time holed up, eating, drinking, and having a good time, coming out only when hunger pangs sent him looking for income.   Father made his living by his wits. Now I do not have to see myself as bad with money. I am with money like I am with juggling; Im good with money, but in a different way from most people. I want to have a great body like most people have a great body. But I dont. I have a great body when my husband snaps a miraculously perfect shot of me as if we are shooting for American Apparel. (That link is NSFW.) But then I think, Oh, but thats the only way to have a great body today  with a camera and some distortions. And then Im back to not knowing, really, who I am, or where I fit. The world is full of distortions from the high school debate team and then everything going forward. Our job, as adults, is to sort out the distortions, across days and months and years. Because its a big project that we never finish, but the picture gets sharper and sharper.

Resume Finder - Learn How to Find Your Dream Job With One

Resume Finder - Learn How to Find Your Dream Job With OneResume finder is a tool that will help you locate potential employers who are looking for people with specific skills. It can also help you browse through the job listings that can be quite handy when you want to avoid missed opportunities.As you go through the many job listings on your daily basis, there is no doubt that you will get to know that a majority of the job offers and applications you receive are not exactly what you are looking for. You will also come across resumes that you do not really understand or have the slightest idea how to go about. In these instances, resume finder can be your saviour!There are hundreds of options you can select from in order to find the best online career search tool available in the market. However, there are certain things that you should consider before you actually go ahead and download a resume finder. To get you started, here are some simple tips that can help you find the best re sume finder service.The most important thing to remember is that it will take time for your resume to be approved by the employer. It may take several days or even weeks before you will get an answer. Therefore, there is no use in wasting your time because there is nothing to be gained by it.Secondly, you need to ensure that you have the necessary files and documents ready. This is important because the entire process of searching for and then finding the right career path takes time. Therefore, ensure that you have everything in order before you sign up for a resume finder service.Another thing to remember is that all online services have free options as well as paying options. Do not fall into the trap of falling in between the two. There are free online services which are less reliable than paid ones.Before you sign up for a particular service, ensure that you have taken time to go through all the features and benefits. Even if there are free options available, it is always bette r to research for a paid one.The above mentioned points are easy to follow and should help you find a good job with a resume finder. Keep these tips in mind and you will surely benefit!