When I started my career as a Tax Accountant and Enrolled Agent, I assumed my journey to success would involve working with a small group of clients in a corporate office in a major financial hub city. As my family grew and I realized I needed more flexibility, I began to reconsider my career path. I soon discovered an opportunity that delivered the stability and prestige of my former job along with unexpected new opportunities for continual learning, professional growth, and the flexibility to fit my life. Working remotely as a tax and accounting expert at Intuit—the company behind TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Credit Karma—I’m part of a mission-driven team that helps give millions of customers around the world the opportunity to prosper.
Time for change
I worked in traditional corporate accounting and tax preparation for more than 20 years. While I found my work fulfilling, there were several aspects of my career that had always felt limiting.
First of all, my clients were always concentrated in one geographic region and in the same general financial background, which meant my expertise was always focused on a specific niche that addressed their needs. Secondly, the heavy seasonality of tax preparation and corporate travel meant there were months at a time where I couldn’t be as active of a parent as I wanted to be.
And finally, being locked into one location because of my career didn’t always match my family’s needs. Our home city had extremely cold winters and I wanted the freedom to move somewhere that would allow my kids to be outside more during the winters, and have access to better schools.
Growing my expertise
When I saw that TurboTax was hiring Enrolled Agents I made the leap to remote work as a part-time Tax Expert, and immediately knew I was on to something good. In my previous job, I served about 300 clients during tax season. By my second Tax Season with Intuit I served over 2,000 clients. During my two seasons with Intuit TurboTax my tax knowledge increased exponentially compared to my previous 14 years. I was dealing with a much broader range of federal tax issues and I handled tax matters from all 50 states versus the three or four states I dealt with in my previous roles.
I became one of the top performers at TurboTax, and was invited to join the new QuickBooks Live program as one of the first 10 Accounting Experts. It was a full-time position, which wasn’t in my sights at the time, but I was intrigued by the opportunity and signed up. Since I already had an accounting background, the transition was natural for me. In fact, I’ve been able to leverage my tax expertise to help my accounting clients in many different ways.
As part of the first wave of Accounting experts, we pioneered and developed a lot of tools and processes that have become the standard for QuickBooks Live. Our team has continued to grow and so have the opportunities here. I was eventually offered a Team Lead position and have found training and mentoring my team to be the most exciting and fulfilling stage of my career so far.
Working remotely has had a huge beneficial impact on my family’s life. The flexibility in hours and lack of commute time has made me more available to participate in day-to-day family activity and all of the important milestones of my children’s lives. I have also been able to move my family during this time without worrying about having to restart my career again at a new company.
The power of relationships
A huge advantage of working for Intuit is the people you get to work with. Not just accounting and tax professionals, but also recruiters and project managers, our tech team, and so many others. Everyone has their own area of expertise and is generous about sharing it with the team, because we’re all aligned around an inspiring mission—to help give everyone the opportunity to prosper. I think if you pick any 10 people on this team the majority of them will tell you that Intuit is absolutely where they want to spend the rest of their career.
I’ve also been able to build great relationships with our customers. I remember the feedback I got from one customer who ran a 30 million dollar import export business and signed up for QBLive after I had shown him some of the capabilities of QuickBooks. His exact words were, “This has been one of the best purchases I’ve ever made for my business and I don’t think I paid enough”. Those kinds of experiences are invaluable to me, and help shape how I operate within and outside of Intuit.
Opportunity awaits
If you’re considering your next career move, it’s important to move beyond your preconceptions and consider new and different ways of working—I’m certain you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find.
Working remotely at Intuit has been an incredible career opportunity for me and I can honestly say I’m excited to come to work every day. Part of my current responsibilities include recruiting, and when I talk to new prospective team members, my pitch is simple. You’ll get the flexibility to fit your career to your life, not the other way around. You’ll be joining a supportive team that will teach you everything you need to know to be successful. You’ll learn at a faster pace than almost anywhere else, because you’ll be working with cutting-edge technology and helping people from a broader range of companies and industries. And you’ll be joining an organization with great values, that cares about its people, rewards hard work and offers unlimited growth potential in any area of the company.
If you’re interested in learning more about becoming an Intuit expert, check out our career site.