Career Choice: Marketing vs Accounting

Last Updated on April 5, 2020 by Iryna

After 10 years in the Accounting field, I’ve switched to Marketing. It was a long path that led to this career choice.

Even though I had a very good feedback from my accounting managers, I liked the analytical part of work, working with numbers and organizing papers, but something was missing for me.

I was getting excited when I had creative tasks, like being part of an engagement championship team and preparing team building activities, or creating a PowerPoint presentation on business trip expenses and providing training to the employees.

I’ve realized it was time for me for a new challenge.

Now, after a few years of experience in the marketing field, I can compare those two areas.

I know there are people out there who are thinking about making the career choice, like Marketing vs Accounting. Or there may be people who, similar to myself, think about switching from the Marketing field to Accounting.

I’ve met such a girl a long time ago at the job fair. While I was curious about switching to Marketing, she was requiring information about moving to Accounting from Marketing.

In this case, there are transferable skills you can bring from one job to another, but there are some differences you need to consider.

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Schedule

Accounting job requires you to be present at the office within regular hours, depending on the company schedule.

Mostly 8:30am-5:00pm or 9:00am-5:00pm here in Canada. However, once I had a contract with 10am-3pm hours 3 times per week. Perfect for me to be able to drop-off and pick-up my daughter from school.

So there is room for flexibility in the accounting field. Mostly you need to comply with the hours and be present in the office, even there is no work at some point (but usually there is A LOT of work, believe me!).

If it’s month-end in a big company, for example, there may be overtime work required, depending on the company and the volume of work.

I once saw an option of working from home very occasionally for some dedicated employees, who stayed with the company for years. It was on a  very occasional basis when they’ve expected repair guy or some furniture delivery at home.

Lately, I see some job opportunities with remote work for accountants. Mainly thanks to remote features of Quickbooks program.

Also, if you are really into accounting and would like to move forward in this career, you can receive CPA (Chartered Professional Accountant) designation, get clients and work from the comfort of your home.

I took a few classes of this certification. Studying was very saturated, but intense, plus expensive. My company was paying for education at that time.

Once you get your certificate, you need to pay yearly membership as well. If you are employed, usually the employer will pay for it.

Also, make sure to ask for the pay rise once you receive your certification. Accountants with CPA get a much higher salary.

Marketing – is a different story. Usually, there is flexibility in your schedule. Your job is to finish your tasks within a deadline.

Very often you may find a remote job opportunity for the marketing field. My latest position was a Sales and Marketing Specialist, remote job.

Before finding this job I was so jealous of my neighbors working from home. Three people I know on my street are in marketing and they work from home. I was happy to have my last job as a remote one, even though it took me some time to adjust.

It’s very different from the office job, and there are some pros and cons. But work/life balance is amazing. If you have kids, you will understand me.

Communication

When you are determining your career choice and comparing Marketing vs Accounting, take into consideration your personality as well.

I find that, while working as an accountant, communication with peers could be minimal some days. Of course, it depends on the position, size of the company and overload.

If you work in a large company with a big volume of work, chances are you may get days where it would be just you, papers and computer.

There could be some work-related interaction through e-mails or phone calls, but not much in-person, unless your responsibilities include involvement with employees. It gets more intense closer to the month-end.

It is different for small companies. Usually, you’ll have a variety of responsibilities, and more opportunities to interact with the stakeholders.

Meetings are not that often in the accounting field. I had monthly meetings at one large corporation, and it was more frequent than I had before in other companies.

Marketing, on the other side, means communication, interaction, customer service in a big way.

Aside from regular interaction with people, like discussing with the design agency new brochures and their look-and-feel, we also had weekly team meetings, where everyone had to provide an update on their part of the work.

Also, there was always a presentation of some finished projects, like an ad on the radio or some market analysis, new marketing trends. Aside from that, I could have 2-3 meetings a day with other departments or stakeholders.

It was very different from my accounting career.

Responsibilities

In your accounting job, you would usually get a list of responsibilities you would need to follow, with a few here and there to be added once your path is determined.

There could be times when your co-worker goes on vacation and you need to take on their part of the job and do a little bit more of your regular tasks. Or maybe one day you will get promoted to another role and get a new set of responsibilities.

I worked in a company where they would rotate employees in positions every three years. This way they don’t get bored doing the same thing, can learn something new and also discover their strengths and weaknesses.

I think that’s a great idea! But this is not a very common practice in companies. Some accountants work 10, 20 years doing the same responsibilities (yes, I’ve met such people).

As you can see, accountants get a very stable list of responsibilities and mostly predicted schedule of work to be done.

If you make your career choice towards Marketing, on the opposite side, it can be exciting, but sometimes vague in terms of responsibilities.

Some days you may get tasks to do that you haven’t done before, or you even have no idea how to do. As this field is changing all the time, there is always a learning curve, room for experimenting and testing.

You need to have a can-do attitude for this field, where every task can be embraced, no matter how difficult or unfamiliar it sounds.

Job Opportunities

As you know, almost every company has an accounting department, unless it’s a small company and they use a bookkeeper on a part-time basis. There are a lot of opportunities for accountants, especially good ones.

If you also get a certification, like CPA (certified public accountant), for example, your salary will be much higher, your resume will be more competitive, and you will be able to work for yourself by doing bookkeeping and taxes for businesses if you decide to do so.

There are full-time and contract opportunities available for accountants. I see that lately, you can also find remote opportunities, which is great.

My first job in Canada was a contract position, where they’ve called me in the morning and asked to start the same day for a week contract, which was extended to 6 month period.

Marketing career is more competitive in terms of job search. Companies require not that many marketing professionals, and nowadays they often outsource to countries like the Philippines and India to save on labor costs.

It took me a long time to score my first marketing job with some sacrifice in remuneration.

Learning Aspect

When you start working as an accountant for a new company, there will always be some learning aspect at the beginning.

This company may have customized software you need to learn. Or some procedures they do their own way.

After some time of learning, however, your job will be almost the same, with daily routine operations, stressful month-ends (hopefully not), repetitive tasks. There will be not much to learn later on, just some small nuances here and there.

If you make your career choice towards Marketing, it will be a never-ending learning journey. With Digital Marketing being an important part of Marketing now, there will always be an opportunity to upgrade your knowledge.

It is an exciting and challenging field with massive, sometimes overwhelming, amount of information. There will be always something to discover, try and experiment, fail or succeed and move forward.

At The End Of The Day

When my working day as an accountant was over, my mind was with my family, around house tasks, vacation planning, and other chores.

My approach to accounting job allowed me to relax my mind after the work is done – I would usually double-check my work to avoid mistakes that could lead to fines for the company. You don’t want to mess up with numbers.

I know some people could still think about work at the end of the day. I remember my accounting manager mentioned she had a dream about the balance sheet, figuring out discrepancies in her dream. But such things are mostly the exclusion from the rule in the accounting world.

Marketing job keeps you on for longer. You can get some ideas in your mind for the next presentation, or some strategy for the product promotion while cooking dinner or cleaning the house.

I don’t even mention the amount of information you can read on marketing during your off-work time to stay competitive in your field. Quite often marketing professionals get worn out with numerous business trips and constant communication and meetings involved.

No matter how much you love communication, there is still some aspect of stress involved in the preparation and delivery of the speech.  Plus you need to find an approach to different personalities in your company or clients, and it may be not that easy.

I know, it’s hard to make your career choice without much experience in the field, but hopefully, this comparison of Marketing vs Accounting will shed some light on your future.