Talented teens encouraged to plunge

TARA Franzinelli and A.J. McDonald are only 16 but they already have their careers mapped out.

TARA Franzinelli and A.J. McDonald are only 16 but they already have their careers mapped out.

The two Year 12 students have been selected by PriceWaterhouseCoopers as trainees. They will start work next year while studying for their accountancy degrees.

The Perth teenagers were recruited by the prominent firm after being talent-spotted by Curtin University.

Curtin goes into schools and cherry-picks the best students to undertake a university accounting subject. The most successful students to complete the subject are put forward for the traineeships at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Program co-ordinator and senior accounting lecturer Glen Hutchings said the aim was to get the best and brightest school students into accounting.

He claimed the misconception that accounting is boring number-crunching deterred people from applying. According to Mr Hutchings, the industry demanded leadership and good communication skills, but students with those skills were generally directed towards law or medicine.

"Penetrating high schools and changing the view of accounting is what this program is all about," he said.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has found that high school students stayed longer in their jobs than their university counterparts, who often leave to travel.

"There is a greater sense of loyalty for the firm because they have paid for their studies," Mr Hutchings said.

A spokeswoman said PriceWaterhouseCoopers recruited Year 12 students as trainees not because of the skills shortage but because they wanted to provide opportunities for students to kick-start their careers.

Ms Franzinelli said she now had her heart set on a career in accounting after completing the subject at Curtin.

"You see a different side of accounting to what you see at high school," she said. "Before this program I wasn't really considering it, but now I definitely want to do it."

Ms Franzinelli said she was thrilled to be selected as a trainee because it would fast-track her career.

She said she would start working full-time next July after one semester at university, and then would combine work and study for the remainder of her course.

Mr McDonald said he really enjoyed the study. "I thought it was all figures but we have done a lot of managerial accounting, which has been great," he said.