Jonathan Kim had a career in restaurant management when he realized he had a knack for another area of business: cost accounting.
Kim enjoyed giving managers advice and talking through better cost control methods. Talking with his father, an accountant in New Orleans, helped Kim see that it could be time for a career change.
The 30-year-old is now moving ahead in work and school with the network he built as an accounting undergrad and the skills he gained in ɫ's online master's in accounting.
Professional Network
In 2016, Kim quit working in restaurants to focus on his bachelor's degree at the University of Louisiana.
Getting involved with groups like Beta Alpha Psi, an honor group for accounting students and professionals, helped Kim's career move faster.
“I actually met a lot of accounting professionals here in Lafayette. Through that kind of networking, I secured an accounting internship in the summer of 2019,” Kim says. “As soon as I graduated, they offered me a full-time position.”
As Kim began his full-time role, he took another leap by enrolling in the MS in accounting online.
Kim says a graduate degree seemed “unfathomable,” when he first enrolled — but after talking with Master Instructor in Accounting Pam Meyer about his goal to become a CPA, he saw that the program was a good fit.
“It would provide me with the remaining 30 hours I need to qualify for the exam, and a graduate degree has a lot of prestige, so if I decided to switch to private accounting it can help leverage me into a leadership role faster than if I just had a bachelor's degree,” says Kim.
“It made a lot of sense to me as the best way to not only promote my own future, but to satisfy the requirements to become a CPA. It just seemed like a win-win-win to me.”
Also in the win column was the chance to work full time while earning his master's degree in only 12 months, with support from professors.
“I found balancing my course work with my professional work to be a lot easier than it was for undergraduate,” he says.
“One of the greatest components of my success was understanding the professors. They knew we all, or at least the majority of us, are working professionals. That really helped with providing some flexibility.”
Practical Knowledge
The online accounting program gave Kim a chance to study data analytics, theory, and cost accounting.
“I'm learning so many things about various topics I'm interested in,” he says. “One of the things I really enjoyed was the analysis techniques we were learning in the classroom, I was able to apply that immediately at work. I felt like that really gave me a leg up above some of my peers who did not have the same graduate degree as I had.”
Six months into the program, Kim had stood out enough that when one of the partners at his office decided to start his own firm, he tapped Kim to join.
“He said, even as a first-year staff accountant, the things I consider and the techniques I use, has put me ahead,” Kim says.
“I can definitely credit most of what I'm practicing on a day-to-day basis to things I've learned in the graduate program.”
Kim says his next step is to sit for the CPA exam, but before that, he’ll be celebrating the end of his academic marathon.
“I am taking so much time off. It has been quite a year,” Kim says. “After working full time, dealing with the pandemic, and trying to balance school with life, I've never been so tired in my life. My employer and girlfriend both insist I take as much time as I need. So, I'm really looking forward to it, even if it's just sitting on the couch and catching up on TV shows I haven't seen in the last year and a half.”