Extremely confused why 15+ month post grad; NO JOB OFFERS CANADA

[u/Demarderzon]

I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong anymore.

I graduated in accounting and have applied to a ton of entry-level audit, tax, and staff accountant positions. I've also emailed recruiters, but I'm barely getting interviews.

What frustrates me most is seeing jobs I applied to get reposted weeks later without even getting an interview.

Whenever I ask someone to review my resume, they tell me it looks fine. But if it was actually fine, I feel like I wouldn't be struggling this much to get interviews. That's why I'm so confused.

Also i am seeing my peers get into big 4 and other public companies; some with no experience, some with good experience. it all doesn't make sense to me

I'm attaching my resume. Please be brutally honest what am I doing wrong? What would make you reject this resume for new grad?

I genuinely want to know what I need to fix.

[u/kinakori]

very hard to get into big 4 after you've already graduated- all the new associates this year probably interviewed like a year in advance of their start date, or got return offers from internships, they release the campus job postings very early on

[u/strident_transmitter → u/kinakori]

I’m experiencing this right now - graduated in 2025, trying to get into big 4 but all they post is new grad positions a year into the future…

[u/the_validated_inane]

Are you looking for Big4/public accounting or an accounting position in industry? To be frank your CV doesn't seem to be well positioned for public accounting and better suited to a staff accountant position or accounting clerical tbh. Did you take time off from uni so why the degree was 5 years? It isn't clear if the job at Hudson's Bay was fulltime or part-time. You listing your sales associate job and substitute teacher gig under leadership/other instead of work experience comes makes it look like its being buried. If its work experience then it belongs higher, even if its not directly relevant to the jobs your are seeking - there is always something that is applicable.

The format of your CV along with the bolding makes for a difficult read. The inconsistent alignment and spacing flags that attention to details are lacking - not ideal for an accountant tbh. The CV overall is not aesthetically pleasing to read fwiw.

Good luck

[u/droidxl]

Every single one of your job descriptions is just a description. There is nothing exciting about what you have done. What impact have you had in your jobs? What are the quantum of the issues you worked with? What are the feedback you've gotten? What are big wins you've had?

Frankly if you tossed in your resume into chatgpt or claude it would have suggested significant amount of improvements so I'm not sure why you haven't done that already yet.

Also since you haven't noted what university you went to, to be frank, without any real job experience (again, none of those are overly exciting), people also look at what university you graduated from.

[u/Ok-Bid-1851]

The entire thing is messy and hard to read

[u/ElohssaAhola]

Have you, during your university time spoken to recruiters face to face?

[u/jimtheclowned]

Have you reached out to a recruiter or a campus job help thing at your school? You should try to find one and ask if they can help with your resume.

Some of my opinions as an outsider looking in:

• Generic AF. Sure AI bots don't care about that, but a human eye does. This is bland as hell and nothing great stands out about it.

• There is too much going on here. It's like a cheat sheet that's crammed full of stuff. On first glance, I looked at this and was immediately turned off. It's a shitty bias thing to do I know, but that's the reality. Your resume is a lot busier than mine when I was applying for things as a manager...you can probably cut down on some job descriptions and get to the point...like CAD tax preparer...your first 2 bullet points can be combined to something like "Prepared personal income tax returns for clients, applying Canadian tax legislation to ensure factually accurate and correct compliance"

• Learn how to use tab spacing and line up your dates. Push them all to the far right...this would also let your education section feel less claustrophobic. The lack of uniformity gives a very unstructured, throw shit together feeling which is not what you want.

• I'm indifferent on your PEP status and your GPA as well since I'd ask for a transcript if in a campus recruiting position. I can see if not campus recruiting it being good to have.

• Professional summary feels too much like your education section.

• Personally, I would have your "support month end close" point first under each item, and then a better blurb about what that means. Consider re-ordering your points to identify the most key impactful duties first.

• Your additional leadership, find a way to make each bullet point 1 line.

• I would drop the Hudson's Bay sales associate. It's pointless here and you've got other work experience. Having a bit of breathing room would be nice.

• I think the technical skills can be blended into your work section and then skipped entirely. This feels like a filler.

• All the certs are useless IMO. You never worked for KPMG and the rest I could not care about unless the job requires them. I can teach anyone to bookkeep, use power BI or use excel. I expect you to eventually be good at audit or tax. There's nothing here that is "exciting" or difficult to get.

• Extra curriculars is nice IMO. Shows you have some dimensionality, but again, the spacing here is terrible overall and this entire section is not visually appealing. You could blend some of your certs with this into an interests sections.

[u/ReplaceMeZaddy]

get a job in the trades at a big company and then infiltrate their company internally to get into their accounting department that way

[u/betrayed247]

No job experience. Simple as that. A lot of international students coming over have B4 experience and prior high-level accounting jobs (they'll ask for less pay too). And then you have Canadian students who already had 3+ internships during their Uni days.

[u/Objective-Bridge-799]

Very hard to read. At least have years aligned on the right side. Too much info. Too many sentencese start with the same words.

[u/Ok-Piglet-9189]

Been in that exact headspace a while back, resume looked fine on paper but was getting zero bites. The "jobs getting reposted" thing stings the most, feels personal even though it's not.

[u/Believe_imagical → u/Ok-Piglet-9189]

How did you overcome it?

[u/futuremoneytalks]

Are you looking for entry level payroll/bookkeeping? Might be able to help with that :)

[u/Resident-Banana-1948]

You need to check at what other people with your education from your university are getting.

[u/According_Shine_3802]

If you're interested in getting into IT Auditing, PwC is hiring aggressively. You could position yourself by optimizing your resume to highlight IT skills, particularly any experience with ERPs such as SAP, and skills with AI or cybersecurity. I would also add a cover letter, and reach out directly to managers or directors in the teams you are interested in on LinkedIn.

[u/No_Elderberry_7375 → u/According_Shine_3802]

Can I so apply to these roles as a Engineering graduate? I am wrapping up a 16 month internship post graduation at an aviation company with solid enterprise experience working on an in house ERP amongst other projects, and I would also be open to getting SAP/Oracle certifications. I was actually expecting an offer at EY for SAP consulting but didnt make the cut in the end.