Advice for a Successful Career in the Accounting Profession

Forward-Looking Guidance to Help Accountants Thrive Amid Industry Disruption and Opportunity

If you’re serious about leveraging your accounting degree for a resilient, and highly rewarding career, Advice for a Successful Career in the Accounting Profession is the modern playbook you need. Today’s accounting profession is facing unprecedented change—from a growing talent shortage to rapid advances in artificial intelligence and increasing private equity influence. This new edition responds directly to those shifts, delivering fresh insight, updated strategies, and practical guidance with five brand-new chapters tailored to the realities you’re entering right now. 

Drawing on decades of experience as a CPA and as former Office Managing Partner of KPMG’s Philadelphia office, Jerry Maginnis brings an unmatched real-world perspective to this expanded edition. Maginnis continues to mentor hundreds of aspiring professionals navigating an increasingly complex career environment.

Helping you intentionally build assets—skills, experience, relationships, and judgment—so they greatly exceed your liabilities, Advice for a Successful Career in the Accounting Profession: 

• Examines the impact of AI on audit, tax, and advisory roles—and how to stay relevant
• Provides practical strategies for standing out in large firms and smaller organizations alike
• Offers mindset and leadership principles for long-term growth, fulfillment, and influence
• Highlights emerging opportunities, risks, and required skills for the next decade
• Analyzes private equity investment and consolidation in the profession and the impacts on career mobility

Written in friendly, conversational language, Advice for a Successful Career in the Accounting Profession: How to Make Your Assets Greatly Exceed Your Liabilities, Second Edition, delivers relevant, actionable advice for accounting students and early- to mid-career professionals looking to adapt, grow, and stay ahead.

JERRY MAGINNIS, CPA, former KPMG Philadelphia Office Managing Partner, served as an Executive in Residence at Rowan University, where he helped prepare students for their transition from academia into the workforce. Jerry currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Chairs the Audit Committee of several public companies. He is also a consultant on accounting and business matters and speaks frequently to college and university students and accounting firm interns and new hires, as well as professional accounting organizations or associations, on the topics covered in this book.