At Harold Sharp, we take pride in the diverse and inspiring career paths of our team members. In our spotlight interview series, we explore the journeys of our colleagues, from their initial steps toward qualification to the exciting developments that followed.
Meet Dave Gaskell, one of our senior accountants. Dave loves automation almost as much as he loves coffee, and is fondly known by the team as “the Excel guy” due to his vast formula knowledge. Our Trainee cohort sat down with Dave to find out a little more about his day-to-day.
How did you get into accountancy?
My first job was actually at Tesco. Whilst I enjoyed it, I got up to speed quickly and found myself feeling ‘too comfortable’. I missed being challenged, and realised quite quickly that I wanted to pursue a career where I was working with numbers. At 19, I decided to switch to accountancy and qualified just before I turned 24. Since then, I’ve worked across a few different firms, but I’ve been at Harold Sharp for several years now and it’s the best fit yet.
What does your role involve?
My day-to-day covers a mix of complex accounts, forecasts and technical jobs - especially anything involving large datasets. I tend to gravitate toward the more complex or detail-heavy jobs, especially those that benefit from advanced Excel wizardry or automation tools like Solvexia. I also enjoy supporting the team when challenges arise, whether that’s restructuring spreadsheets or working through a forecasting puzzle. I like to think that’s where I can add the most value!
How did you become the “Excel guy”?
Mainly through trial and error! I’ve always been interested in how to make things quicker and easier. And building spreadsheets trains you to think differently about workflows, dependencies and automation. I think that’s why Harold Sharp has proven to be such a good culture fit for me, as we’re encouraged to pursue those efficiency gains and I’ve been able to continue building my knowledge as a result. There are some great resources out there - Stack Overflow is a personal favourite. Over time I picked up advanced Excel, SQL, and automation tools. If a task takes an hour every month, I like to challenge myself to find a way to reduce it to five minutes!
Do you have a favourite type of client to work with?
I enjoy working with e-commerce businesses. They tend to be the ones that throw up the big data challenges - thousands of transactions, messy exports and multiple sales channels. It’s satisfying to turn that into something structured and useful. A couple of personal favourites are an international e-commerce retailer and a digital media platform – both in the sports sector. Their businesses are fast-paced and data-driven, which keeps things interesting on our side too.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Get your qualifications first, then take time to figure out where your strengths lie.
I’d also advocate for building on your Excel knowledge from day one. Whilst the majority of the work we do for clients relies of cloud-based tools and automation, Excel literacy remains key. Excel skills give you a solid grounding in data structure, logic and financial workflows – all of which build your transferable skills.
Whether you lean towards the technical side or prefer client interaction, there’s space in accountancy for both.
Each quarter our Trainee Working Group sit with a member of the team for 30 minutes of Q&A to find out about their path to progression, what made them choose accounting and why they stuck it out. Stay tuned on the Careers Hub for more stories like Dave’s.
