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CAREER ADVISOR
In this issue, "Your Career Advisor" is responding to
the following question: "I am an accountant with post graduate studies in
accounting and taxation, what are my chances in the Gulf and
Egypt ?".All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.
Q: What are my chances as an Indian
with an advanced degree in accounting and taxation to work in the Gulf and Egypt
?
I am from india, and hold a post graduate degree in Accountancy and Taxation
in addition to having two years experience as a Assistant Accounts Manager and
Audit Supervisor.. I always had an intention to work for a overseas company. Is
my qualification and experience enough to meet the requirements of a Middle East
or Egypt base company ? If not how shall I build further to meet the
requirements? Please Advise me.
A. V. (India)
Replying:
Dear Mr. V,
A practical experience in the Accounting field combined with a post graduate
degree in Accounting & Tax is definitely a good mix. If you want to continue
in the same line/function, your next step to differentiate yourself and be more
attractive for employers to hire / promote you is a professional certification.
These are - as you probably know - CPA (US) or ACCA (UK) if you are more
inclined on the audit side or a CMA (management accounts) if you would like to
remain in the mainstream accounting and finance as opposed to audit.
With regards to your questions about the Arab
world; there are two main issues:
(1) for Egypt, the most populated Arab country, that exports tens of thousands
of professionals to Gulf states we do not believe you have such a rare
qualification requiring hiring an expatriate as opposed to hiring from the local
pool of skills. This differs when considering a very senior financial management
position; where multinational would consider international staffing. For example
two of the Big Five audit firms have Indians as head of their Financial
Consulting units in Cairo.
(2) with regards to the Arab Gulf; these countries rely heavily on expatriate staffing. The sub continent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) represent a major source of recruitment for them. However what has happened recently in some of these countries (specially the United Arab Emirates) is that they are trying to diversify their expatriate community for demographic reasons. Therefore we would encourage you - in addition to listing your CV with skill-link.com - to focus on Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Good Luck.
Note from the editor:
Employer names and inquiry sender names were withheld for confidentiality