What Being a Starter or a Finisher Means For Your Accounting Career

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A Clarity Labs blog.

In, Ah, But That’s Life, No? Jarod Kintz muses, “The other day I tried to design a finish line, but I didn’t know where to start, so I just sat there and drank Gatorade.”

For any project to be successful you need both starters and finishers.

The question is – which one are you and what does it mean for your accounting career?

The Starter

Starters love the initial phases of a project. They are excited by novelty and thrive on creativity. Their strength lies in their ability to formulate a vision and take the initiative. For starters, however, boredom can quickly set in as a project progresses and they have to see it through to completion.

The Finisher

Finishers, on the other hand, enjoy the process part of a project. They love detailed lists that give them a goal. They deliver on outcomes, and are task-oriented. Their strength lies in their ability to follow through and execute. Finishers typically, however, are not idea generators and they need some core idea or baseline to follow through on.

What It Means For Your Accounting Career

As someone who wants to further their accounting career, try to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. If you’re typically a starter, thrive in that creativity and then understand that managers really value execution. If you’re a finisher, revel in the process part of your job, but don’t be afraid to tap into one of the more creative members of your team if you need a new approach.

Fundamentally, a great team is comprised of starters and finishers. Together they are an unbeatable combination.

Clarity Labs is designed to address the biggest hiring and recruiting challenges in the finance and accounting industry. The result:  innovative solutions that facilitate successful hiring practices and advance our proprietary recruitment technology, Luma-Fi. Stay tuned for more Clarity Labs information, including initial research findings, next week. To ensure you don’t miss the latest news, subscribe to our newsletter.