When Professor Dave Greene originally created the A313 Intro to Careers in Accounting class, the fundamental idea was to make sure students understood that there is no linear path to a career in accounting. “This class shows them that they have many choices beyond simply two or three areas and that an accounting degree opens doors for them,” says Professor Brett Levitt, who currently teaches the class.
When Levitt first heard about A313, his initial reaction was that he wished such a class existed when he was a college student so he could have had a more well-rounded understanding of his career options. After getting an accounting degree from Kelley years ago, he went directly into consulting. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy what he did, but he just didn’t know what could have been.
“Now when I listen to Professor Eric Holzman talk about forensic accounting, it sounds so interesting and I think, ‘Had I known then what I know now, who knows where I would have ended up?’” says Levitt, who just completed his fourth semester teaching A313.
Levitt invites in a lot of speakers so that students can hear directly from the source what a certain career entails.
“It’s one thing for me to talk about investment banking, but having never been an investment banker, I can only explain so much,” says Levitt. “Students like hearing how these speakers got to whatever point they are at in their career—from what they did when they first started out to what they did in the second rung or third rung or wherever they are now.”
Very few people stay at the firm they started with. It’s good for students to hear that someone started in one area but then changed gears a year or two later, using the fundamentals from their early career.
Levitt exposes his students to a variety of firms, including Alvarez & Marsal, which is not a public accounting firm. Plus, he invites speakers like the campus recruiter for Grant Thornton, who explains which information to highlight on a resume and other ways to shine during the recruiting process.
Highlighting so many careers is important given that roughly 50% of Kelley students change their majors at some point.
“Unfortunately, many students find out too late—usually the second semester of their junior or senior year when they start taking their major courses—that they don’t want to stick with that major,” says Levitt. “If you’re applying your junior year for internships and yet you’ve never done anything in, say, marketing, how do you know if you want to go into consumer packaging or social media if you’ve never been exposed to those things? That’s why I love the A313 class,” which is taken by students in their first or second year at Kelley.
He’s not the only one. Levitt regularly receives feedback from former students telling him how the A313 course positively impacted their postcollegiate journey.
“They like hearing from the professionals, they enjoy the soft skills stuff we go over, and they appreciate that the class is interactive so they can practice networking and conversation starters,” says Levitt, who notes that next semester they are changing the class meeting time from twice a week for one hour to once a week for 75 minutes to align with the other accounting workshops.
“As a whole, the class lets students know about their options and gets them more comfortable communicating with others in a networking setting,” says Levitt. “The overall goal is to help them find the right job, and this class narrows the process.”
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