By Rishabh Tandon CA

Being able to travel and work all over the world was one of the reasons Rishabh Tandon became a chartered accountant. The qualification has helped him land his dream job at Google-owned YouTube as the platform’s finance lead for global music publishing.

1998 – 2002

I was born and bred in Melbourne, but when I was in grade 5 we moved to Delhi. School in India was stricter and more academically focused. We returned home in time for me to finish high school. After that, I did a Bachelor of Commerce at Monash University, majoring in accounting and finance.

2012

While still at uni, I did an internship at EY before entering the graduate program there and qualifying as a chartered accountant in 2012. I knew that I wanted to live overseas again and got an opportunity, via CrossCountry Consulting, to move to the US with a three-month contract.

2013

I’d only been in California a few days when I went to check out the Google Campus. I already wanted to work there, and applied many times over the next few years before getting a callback.

2017 – 18

Those first few months in the US were the hardest I had ever worked. After my initial contract was up, I got a job with KPMG San Francisco working on financial due diligence in the M&A group, primarily advising private equity clients on investments in the tech sector. This photo is me with Sophie (our labrador) at Crater Lake in Oregon. It was so hot she needed to wear her hiking boots!

Eventually my resume got seen at Google. After a long recruitment process, I was hired as YouTube finance lead for global music publishing in 2018. The work I do now affects a few billion people a day, and just having a small part to play in that is something I am very proud of. This picture was taken on my first day.

My fiancée Arati and I got engaged in late 2018. Not long before that, we hiked to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. (This is us on the peak.) It was one of the most physically demanding things we’ve ever done.

2018 – 19

What first drew Arati and I together was our shared love of travelling. We’d each visited about 35 countries before we started dating and have hit another seven together, including Bhutan (pictured). We’re getting married in 2020 and plan to continue the trend of visiting a few new countries every year.

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