A degree in Accountancy can lead to a career in every sector of business and finance, both in Ireland and abroad, and accounting graduates returned to IT Sligo recently to speak with final year students about employment opportunities in the field.
Michael Gilmartin and Stephen Dykes from Sligo (pictured below with lectuers Caroline McNulty, John Gaynor and Head of Dept of Business, Patricia Doherty) both graduated with a BA in Business Studies (Accounting) in 2007 and are now both qualified Chartered Accountants and working as Managers in the Assurance Practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Dublin. They encouraged students to consider graduates opportunities PwC and detailed the value of graduate schemes in career progression.
Bier Liu (pictured below with lecturer Caroline McNulty), who graduated an honours degree in Business Studies (Accounting) in 2011, also returned to speak with the students. She is currently studying for exams with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and is employed by AIB in Dublin on its Graduate Program.
A dedicated, three-year degree in Accounting was introduced at the Institute in 2010 and the first cohort of students from the course is due to graduate next September. Graduates of this programme will gain exemptions from Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI) and the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA).
Patricia Doherty, Head of Department of Business, welcomed the returning graduates and thanked them for sharing their experiences with the final year students; “IT Sligo accounting graduates continue to be successful in the highly competitive recruitment market of accounting both in Ireland and further afield,” she said. “This is a further affirmation of the quality of both the accounting programmes in IT Sligo and the calibre of accounting graduates.”
