AAT – Is it for me?

At this time Mitchell Adam has three fully qualified AAT consultants, something which benefits our clients, and ultimately ourselves. But why would an AAT qualification support someone in a recruitment role?

Benefits to our clients
One of the main reasons it is beneficial to our clients is due to the technical understanding, since a lot of the responsibilities have been completed before (particular on the clerical & part-qualified positions), our consultants are able to quiz a client about the role specification to ensure when searching they are reaching out to the right level of candidate. This then leads on to another benefit, being candidate engagement. Due to the consultant’s experience within different sectors / size turnover companies, they are able to ensure that the role is explained in a good amount of detail and sector described correctly so the candidates knows exactly what they are signing up for before they take the plunge.

• “The AAT qualification has given me some good, all round exposure to finance from transactional processing to production of management accounts. It gave me a platform to understand accounting, alongside speaking to stakeholders within the business to ensure profits for the month were recorded accurately learning about key business acumen.

Due to my previous dealings within finance, I have been able to transfer over my skills into finance recruitment from a candidate perspective, able to understand in more depth what people want from a new role and from a client perspective, able to pick apart a specification and hone in on exactly what type of Accountant would work well within the business / role.”
– Matt Booth, Senior Consultant – Senior Appointments

Benefits for future AAT consultants
If you are considering studying AAT, there are a number of ways the qualification can benefit you as a financial sector recruitment consultant
• Good way to use the qualification you’ve spent time working towards in the event you don’t want to continue working in an accounting role
• The ability to gain a good understanding of what a client is looking for, as you have faced similar issues or responsibilities before
• Technical understanding of a candidate’s needs and the skills to test their abilities, similar to a first interview
• Help you to gauge how different each sector is and how recruiting into different sectors requires other skill sets
• A chance for someone who doesn’t necessarily enjoy accounting and wants more of a commercial, strategic role where they can still use their qualification
• As a consultant you will run your own desk, not having a set number of tasks to do or deadlines to hit month in, month out
• Receive financial benefits dependant on the work you put in along with incentives that might not be available in a more corporate environment.

• “The AAT qualification is a great respected accounting qualification which gave me a great opportunity into the finance industry working in various sectors from care, technology and recruitment over my 7 years in finance. This gave great knowledge of clerical level finance up to the stage of management accounts. Over my 7 year career I developed from inputting invoices to creating full profit and loss and balance sheets for a large technology business.

I believe this helps me in my current career in finance recruitment when dealing with various financial stakeholders, giving me a full understanding of the finance function on a candidate and client level.”