Originally Posted by Jones

The problem with your career isn't about Big 4 (they are so easy to get in nowadays it ain't worth much) or supposed audit/accounting experience or rudimentary things like Excel skills. Most low level finance jobs be it accounting, reporting, auditing etc. are being replaced or offshored by foreigners.

For most corporate Finance people who have reached a career stalemate, most of the time it's the inability to move on to a corporate/strategic business partnering advisory level. For e.g. at the age of 36 to apply for a senior professional job, you will either need some specialization like cross-border tax, transfer pricing analytics, specific regulatory compliance, captial structure optimization, financial risk management framework setup or ability to understand the business and engage senior level stakeholders on financial matters.

For e.g., if the GM of a particular hospital comes to you for guidance on business scenario planning, wants to make a major capex and wants some support to build a business case for Board approval, are you able to partner the GM and engage them as an equal?

Most corporate finance people I know get stuck with doing standard SOP financial report generating and transactional process stuff that they cannot move on to the next level. First few years in your job people tend to be more forgiving, but if you've worked in corporate finance departments for >10 years especially in mega MNCs, employers do expect more than just basic data crunching and report template running.

You need to see it more big picture like a personal development towards understanding your business dynamics, senior level engagement and leadership skills rather than specific narrow actions like joining whatever big4 jobs there are or learning excel automation skills.