How to get hired
Accountant hiring in India is practical. Few employers care about your percentage; nearly all will sit you at a computer and ask you to do the work. Prepare for that test and you are ahead of most applicants.
The practical test
Expect some mix of these, often in Tally or Excel:
- Pass entries for a purchase with GST, a sale with a discount, a salary payment with PF and TDS, and a credit note.
- Reconcile a bank statement with the ledger and explain the differences.
- Match purchase-register input tax credit with GSTR-2B and list what can't be claimed.
- Work out TDS on a contractor bill, a professional fee and rent.
- Prepare a simple ageing of debtors and say who to chase first.
Practise these at home on Tally's educational mode or a free trial. Then say in the interview exactly which returns you have filed, for how many months, for what size of business.
Where accountants get hired
- Small and mid-size businesses and CA firms. The most common start for B.Com freshers. You'll do everything: billing, payments, GST and TDS, PF and ESI, and handing data to the auditor at year-end. Low pay at first, but the widest learning.
- Hotels, hospitals and multi-site chains. Hotel groups, hospital chains and retailers hire "Executive – Accounts", "Accounts Executive" and night auditors at each property, with a central finance team above. Shift work and weekends are common, but the processes are structured and moves between properties are easy.
- Global centres and F&A outsourcing firms. These hire for payables, receivables and general ledger roles in English, often on US or UK shifts; see the accounts payable and R2R guides, which cover that track in detail.
- Staffing agencies. Many accountant jobs come through agencies. That's fine if the agency is named on your offer and PF is deducted. Never pay a fee to an agency to get an interview; paste any such message into our job check tool.
The monthly calendar you will own
Indian accounts desks run on statutory dates. For a business filing GST monthly, GSTR-1 is due by the 11th and GSTR-3B by the 20th of the next month; TDS deducted in a month is deposited by the 7th of the next month; PF and ESI contributions are due by the 15th. Quarterly TDS returns and the annual GST return follow. An accountant who never misses these, and can explain a notice when one comes, is worth more than one who knows only Tally.
Moving up
The ladder runs Accountant, Senior Accountant, Accounts Manager or Assistant Manager – Finance, then Finance Manager. Three moves speed it up: learning an ERP (SAP, Oracle or Microsoft Dynamics) so you can move from SMEs to large companies; owning month-end closing and the audit file, not just entries; and adding a qualification (CA Inter, CMA Inter or an M.Com with a GST certificate course) when you want to cross into manager roles. Accountants who know the business's costs, not just its ledger, are the ones promoted to finance manager.
What the work is like
The first fortnight of every month is pressure: closing books, filing returns, chasing bills. March and April bring year-end closing and the statutory audit; the tax audit and return deadlines later in the year are the next crunch. In small firms you'll also handle the owner's personal tax and banking chores. The job is stable and needed everywhere, which means you can find work in almost any town, but pay rises slowly unless you add skills or change employer.