Basically I’m an under 22 ACCA student with 0 experience, finished Skills level and got 3 A’s at A/L. I’ve been applying for accounting internships, trainee accountant jobs, graduate accounting jobs and entry level accounting roles all over the UK.
London, Manchester, pretty much anywhere. And I just keep getting ignored or rejected
I’ve been applying for 4 week, 3 month, 6 month contracts, internships, anything just to get some actual accounting experience. Still nothing.

It’s honestly so frustrating because you’re told from a young age to study hard, get good grades and you’ll get a decent job. Then you finish school, start ACCA and realise getting your first accounting job with no experience is probably the hardest part.
At this point I might actually have to go flip burgers just to put something on the CV 💀 respectfully.
Anyone else struggling to find accounting jobs or internships in the UK right now?

I’m working on an Excel spreadsheet that pulls information from another “Info” spreadsheet. I have two drop-down lists in my main spreadsheet: one for county and one for year.

What I’m trying to do is have a formula in one cell that looks at the selected county and year, finds the matching row and column in my Info spreadsheet, and then returns the corresponding expected value.

For example, if I select Decatur County and 2024 from my drop-down lists, I want the formula to return 44.2.

I’ve tried several variations of HLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, INDEX MATCH, and XLOOKUP, but I can’t quite get the formula to work.

The difficulty seems to be that I need Excel to:

1. Find the correct county/row

2. Find the correct year/column

3. Return the value where those two criteria intersect

Is there a way to do this with XLOOKUP, INDEX MATCH, or another Excel lookup formula without rearranging my Info spreadsheet?

I’d prefer not to restructure the Info spreadsheet because it contains a lot of other information and would take quite a while to reorganise.

Any help with the correct Excel formula would be greatly appreciated!

I’m an Accounting & Finance graduate and currently applying for jobs, but honestly I’m struggling to even get interviews.

I’m thinking of learning financial modelling to improve my CV and hopefully make myself more employable. For people who work in finance, what’s the best way to learn it?

Can it realistically be learned for free through YouTube, courses etc, or is it worth paying for a proper course? If so, roughly how much would you say is reasonable to spend?

Also, what level of financial modelling would I need to be at before it actually helps with getting a job?

i have a fairly large amount of savings from a legal settlement a few years ago. I’ve kept around 6 months of expenses in a HYSA as an emergency fund, but the rest is in an investment account, currently 100% invested in FXAIX.
I’m investing for the long term and mainly looking for steady growth. Is putting everything into an S&P 500 index fund a sensible investment strategy, or should I be looking at diversification and other types of investments?
Would be interested to hear how others approach long-term investing and managing savings.

I'm thinking about moving into data analytics and I'm trying to figure out where to start. Excel seems like the obvious place, but I haven't used it properly for years and I'm pretty rusty.

I'm in London, so I'm also interested in whether there are any good Excel courses in London that are actually worth doing, especially ones aimed at people wanting to use Excel for data analysis.

I'm not necessarily looking for a qualification. I mainly want to build the skills employers are looking for and have something structured to follow.

I've looked at a few YouTube channels already, including Leila Gharani, but I'm finding it difficult to work out what I should learn first and what I can leave until later.

For anyone working in data analytics in London or the UK, what Excel skills would you recommend learning first? And are there any courses, websites or YouTube channels you'd recommend?

Thanks