The 2027 Career Guide for Chartered Accountants in Northern Ireland.

Newly Qualified Accountant: Chapter 2 – Stay or Go? Should You Remain With Your Employer or Make the Move?

You’ve passed the exams. Your training contract is coming to an end. The congratulations have been received and the letters ACA, ACCA or CIMA are finally within reach. Now comes a different type of question.

Do you stay – or do you go?

For many newly qualified accountants, there is an assumption that qualification should automatically be followed by a move. After three or four years with the same employer, perhaps watching friends and colleagues head off into industry, financial services or another practice, it can feel as though you should be doing the same. But qualification isn’t necessarily the time to leave.

It is the time to reassess.

Over the years, we have seen excellent career decisions made by accountants who left immediately after qualification. We have seen equally good decisions made by people who remained with their training firm for another 12, 18 or 24 months – sometimes considerably longer. The important thing isn’t whether you stay or leave. It is why you are doing it.

First question: what will your CV look like in two years?

Before looking at salaries, job titles or vacancies, ask yourself a relatively simple question:

If I stay where I am for another two years, what will be different about my CV?

Will you have:

• progressed to Manager?
• started managing or developing junior staff?
• taken ownership of larger or more complex clients?
• gained advisory rather than purely compliance experience?
• worked across new sectors?
• developed specialist technical expertise?
• completed an overseas assignment or secondment?
• gained greater exposure to Partners, Finance Directors or senior client stakeholders?

If the answer to several of those questions is yes, staying deserves serious consideration.

If the answer is effectively “I’ll have another two years of the same experience”, then it may be time to look at what else is available. This isn’t only our view.

Recent career guidance from Chartered Accountants Ireland encourages qualifying accountants to think beyond the immediate vacancy and consider their career as a longer-term project – effectively looking two moves ahead rather than concentrating exclusively on the next job. I think that’s excellent advice.

Your first post-qualified move doesn’t need to deliver your dream job. It should, however, make the job after that easier to obtain.

The case for staying

Let’s start with something recruiters perhaps aren’t expected to say:

Sometimes the best career move is not to move at all. (mic drop!)

You already have something very valuable with your existing employer – a track record and hopefully a lot of trust. Don’t forget that your current line manager likely went through this same process!

Your Managers, Directors and Partners know your strengths. You’ve built relationships with clients. You understand the systems. You’ve established your internal reputation. And, for the first time in several years, you can concentrate on your career without simultaneously studying for professional exams. This can make the first 12–24 months after qualification particularly valuable.

Instead of juggling client deadlines with exam preparation, you can focus on developing management skills, taking greater responsibility, building commercial relationships and becoming a more rounded accountant. For someone in a Big Four, Top 10 or ambitious independent practice, staying may also provide a relatively clear route towards Manager. And Manager can be a valuable exit point.

Leaving practice as a newly qualified Senior and leaving two years later as a Manager can present quite differently to an industry employer. You may have added team leadership, project management, larger client responsibility and more senior stakeholder exposure to your CV. There may also be opportunities sitting inside your current employer that you haven’t properly explored.

Could you transfer from audit into deals, restructuring or advisory? Could you specialise within tax? Could you undertake an international secondment? Could you move office? Could you become involved with a different client sector? Before assuming you need to leave your employer to change your career, find out whether you can change your career within your employer.

Give your employer the opportunity to convince you

Before accepting an external offer, have a proper career conversation internally. Not: “What salary will I get when I qualify?”

A much bigger conversation. Ask:

• What does my role look like after qualification?
• What additional responsibility will I receive?
• What is the realistic timetable to Manager?
• What would I need to demonstrate to achieve that promotion?
• Can I gain exposure to advisory or another service line?
• What international or secondment opportunities exist?
• How will my remuneration progress?
• Where do you realistically see me in two years?

You are looking for specifics rather than promises. “We see you as a future Manager” sounds encouraging. “We expect you to be considered for Manager next September, and here are the three things we need you to demonstrate between now and then” is considerably more impactful. The best employers understand this. They know that passing your final exams changes your value in the employment market and that retaining you requires more than simply offering a permanent contract.

Why are so many accountants prepared to move?

The appetite for mobility isn’t imagined. ACCA’s Global Talent Trends 2025 research found that 62% of accountancy and finance professionals expected to move roles within two years, while 58% expected their next career move to take them outside their existing organisation. Those figures aren’t exclusively newly qualified accountants, but they illustrate something we see repeatedly in recruitment: finance professionals are increasingly willing to move when they believe their development, reward or career progression will be better elsewhere.

For employers trying to retain newly qualified talent, there is an important message here.

Qualification cannot simply be treated as business as usual.

A salary increase certainly helps, but money should not be the entire retention strategy. Newly qualified accountants also want to know: What happens next? Sometimes, staying becomes standing still. There is, therefore, a danger in staying simply because staying is easy. After several years with the same firm, you know the people, the clients, the systems and probably where to find the best coffee. Starting somewhere new involves uncertainty.

That’s precisely why it is important to distinguish between loyalty and inertia. Some warning signs are relatively easy to recognise:

• your responsibilities aren’t materially changing after qualification;
• promotion is repeatedly discussed but never clearly defined;
• your salary has fallen materially behind the market;
• you have limited exposure beyond your existing client portfolio;
• there is little opportunity to manage people;
• you’re doing essentially the same work you performed before qualification;
• the areas you want to develop aren’t available internally;
• or, perhaps most importantly, you already know you don’t want a long-term career in practice.

At that point, ask yourself another question:

Am I staying because this is genuinely the best opportunity available to me – or because it is the easiest decision?

Comfort has value. But comfort alone doesn’t build a career. Plus leaving your employer doesn’t necessarily mean leaving practice. One of the mistakes newly qualified accountants sometimes make is viewing the decision as binary:

Stay with my firm or move into industry?

There is a third option.

Change firm.

Someone qualifying within a smaller practice may want exposure to larger or more complex clients within a Big Four or Top 10 environment. Equally, someone qualifying within Big Four may prefer a mid-tier or independent firm where they can gain broader client exposure, more direct Partner contact or potentially accelerate their progression.

Tax professionals may use qualification to specialise. Audit professionals may explore opportunities in transaction services, corporate finance, restructuring, internal audit, risk or advisory. The Northern Ireland practice market has also changed significantly in recent years. Consolidation, investment and acquisitions have created larger accountancy groups with increasingly broad service offerings. Moving firm can therefore provide a very different career experience without leaving the profession that trained you.

What about industry?

For many newly qualified accountants, however, industry remains the big attraction. And understandably so. The move can provide something practice cannot always replicate – the opportunity to sit on the other side of the table. Instead of reviewing or advising a business, you become part of it.

Typical first moves might include:

• Financial Accountant;
• Management Accountant;
• Group Accountant;
• Finance Analyst;
• Internal Auditor;
• FP&A Accountant/Analyst;
• Finance Business Partner; or
• Commercial Accountant.

The attraction isn’t simply salary.

Industry can provide ownership of month-end and year-end reporting, budgeting, forecasting, management information, systems, business partnering and interaction with operational management. But there is an important warning here. Don’t become obsessed with getting an “Industry” role immediately. Chartered Accountants Ireland has previously reported that only around 5% of opportunities available to newly qualified accountants are purely commercial roles. This is worth remembering.

Many leading Finance Business Partners, Commercial Finance Managers and Finance Directors started their industry careers in Financial Accountant or Management Accountant positions. They built strong technical and reporting foundations first and then moved closer to operations and commercial decision-making. Your first industry role should therefore be judged on more than its title.

Don’t let £3,000 decide the next three years (Yes, I made this point in Chapter 1 but it worth revisiting)

Salary matters. After years of exams, training contracts and long working weeks, it is perfectly reasonable to expect qualification to deliver a financial reward. But I cannot more strongly caution against making the first post-qualified decision entirely on salary.

Imagine two opportunities. One pays £48,000 and offers exposure to budgeting, forecasting, management reporting, a new ERP implementation and regular interaction with the Finance Director. The other pays £52,000 but offers considerably narrower responsibilities and limited progression. Which is the better offer?

Financially, today, the answer is obvious. From a career perspective, the answer may well be completely different. The additional experience gained in the first role could be worth considerably more than £4,000 when you return to the market two or three years later. This is why we encourage newly qualified accountants to assess career value as well as salary value. Always assess what the role will teach you.

Should you stay until Manager?

This is one of the questions we’re asked most frequently. There isn’t a universal answer. For some accountants, staying another two years and achieving Manager is an excellent strategy. For others, those same two years would be better spent building industry experience. Consider staying if you have a clear route to promotion, you’re still learning, your remuneration is competitive, you’re gaining management experience and you continue to enjoy practice.

Consider moving sooner if progression is unclear, your experience is becoming repetitive, you want commercial exposure or you already know that your longer-term career lies outside practice. The key word is purpose. Don’t stay for two years simply because someone told you that “Manager looks better on the CV”. And don’t leave immediately simply because three people in your intake have already done so.

Don’t underestimate what you already have

There is another issue we see regularly with newly qualified accountants. They underestimate themselves.

Three or four years in a strong training environment can provide significant experience: managing deadlines, dealing with demanding clients, analysing complex information, supervising junior colleagues, presenting findings and working under pressure. The qualification is important. But employers aren’t simply buying the letters after your name. They’re buying the experience that sits behind them. That means your first step before entering the market should be to understand exactly what you have to offer – and where those skills are most valuable.

Stay, move firm or move into industry?

A useful way of looking at the decision is this:

Stay	Move Firm	Move to Industry
Clear route to Manager	Better progression opportunity	Broader finance exposure
Increasing client responsibility	Larger/different clients	Ownership of the numbers
Strong mentors	New specialism	Budgeting & forecasting
Advisory opportunities	Different firm culture	Commercial exposure
Competitive package	Improved package	Broader career pathways
International/secondment options	Faster responsibility	Path towards FD/CFO roles

None is automatically better than the other. The right answer depends on where you want to end up.

Our advice? Think two years ahead

If you are qualifying in the coming months, don’t feel pressured into making an immediate decision.

• Talk to your employer.

• Talk to people who qualified two or three years ahead of you. Look at the external market.

• Understand your value.

• Compare opportunities properly.

• Most importantly, ask: What will this decision add to my CV over the next two years?

Qualification gives you options. Don’t confuse having options with needing to exercise all of them immediately.

We’ve seen accountants leave practice immediately after qualification and build outstanding careers. We’ve seen others remain until Manager and then make excellent moves. Some have changed practice and discovered a specialism they hadn’t previously considered. Others have stayed and progressed towards Director and Partner.

The mistake isn’t staying.

The mistake isn’t leaving.

The mistake is doing either without understanding why.

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In Chapter 3 of our Newly Qualified Accountant series, we’ll look in more detail at the career options available after qualification – from practice and industry to financial services, commercial finance and specialist career paths.

About the author

Justin Rush has worked in accountancy and financial recruitment across London, Dublin and Belfast for more than 20 years. He founded Abacus Careers in 2003 and has advised hundreds of qualified accountants on career moves across professional practice, industry and financial services, both in Northern Ireland and internationally.