ZIG

I am ACCA qualified accountant eligible to apply for CGA membership. Our medicals are done last week and we are planning to move (if things goes smoothly) by the end of coming March/April.

I have couple of years of experience working for a owner managed business (construction) in London and a year of experience working with a general accounting practice in Milton Keynes mainly dealing with sole traders and small companies accounts and taxation affairs. I do not have any experience of Audit.

What level of jobs I should be looking for based on my profile? what are the average salaries and what is the best place to move with ample job opportunities?

Many thanks for your help

JonboyE

You are most likely to get work where the most business is: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

There will be a huge variation in salaries depending on the location and size of the employer. You will probably be in the $40,000 to $150,000 pa range.

In the Vancouver area a qualified, experienced company accountant who does not have much managerial responsibility beyond supervising a few juniors will earn around $80,000. A chief accountant downtown will be well over $100,000. Drive 20 miles up the valley and some jobs will pay $50-60k. Public practice will be in the same sort of range until you get to partnership level.

Three years experience is not a lot. As it is "foreign" experience it will probably be discounted quite a bit. Robert Half have salary surveys in all the major cites so they can be good people to contact. It is unlikely they will find you work but will meet with you and they have a good understanding of the market and current salary levels.

March and April are the two busiest months for accountants in public practice. It will be tough getting anyone to even talk to you unless you are capable of diving in and being productive straight away. You therefore need to learn everything you possibly can about personal income tax between now and then. The best text book is http://www.amazon.ca/Byrd-Chens-Cana.../dp/0132147521 Worth every cent. Even if you don't look for work in public practice you will still be expected to know your way around the tax system so this sort of primer is very useful. It helps get around the no Canadian experience problem.

The other thing to remember is that Canadian employers will want to take up references. They don't write to your referees - they want to call and talk to them. Make sure you have two or three people who are prepared to go beyond, "he worked here from then to then and earned £X."

ZIG

Thanks a lot JonboyE for your detailed reply and sending a link for wonderful resource.

Howefamily

I found work quickly in Nova Scotia as a Management Accountant (3 weeks) but I think I was lucky in the timescale.
I have 10 years management accounting and financial analysis experience and never delved into the tax side of things.
I am CIMA qualified and can directly transfer to CMA here once I have a years Canadian experience.

I have found that the salary here for qualified accountants without Canadian experience to be around the $50k mark, but once you get that experience I have been told that my earning potential could rise to about $70k or more.

There is a recruitment consultant at Accountant Staffing in Halifax called Troy Yeo who is very helpful. He is also an accountant. He gave me good honest advice and even went as far as writing corrections all over my Resume to re-word it and make it more Canadianized. For example there is no Finance Director here but a Director of Finance.

The website that I look at in Nova Scotia is Careerbeacon which shows a good turnover of financial jobs here. When I asked Troy how many applicants were there for each job on average and how the market was, his reply was "competitive" and that was back in January of this year.

Good luck

JonboyE

This is a difference in terminology that is useful to highlight. In the UK, when a job title includes the word Director it means the holder sits on the Company's board of directors, is involved ion the strategic management of the company, and accepts a degree of personal responsibility for the company's actions and performance.

In Canada, a job titled "Director of ..." may mean the same, but it can also just be a head of department.

Souvy

This is a good point. When my (UK) company made me a director last year it took me a while to make them understand why I wanted to be styled in a North American fashion.

Director - XXX, not XXX Director.

Most of my work is done in Canada/US and the people I contact are generally high level. My title indicates to them that I am at the same level and they reply to my emails. That wasn't the case when I was a mere 'Manager'.