It’s not often an aspiring accountant’s previous work experience includes 7,000 skydives, but MHA’s latest recruit is certainly a real high-flyer.

From working as a skydiving instructor in New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, the US and Canada, taking the drummer of AC/DC for his first jump, to becoming a dad and then finally embarking on his forever career in professional services, Mr Greig has experienced more than most newbies in the sector.

Mr Greig’s journey began after he left Perth’s Strathallan School in 2005 and took a gap year, which led to him learning to skydive in New Zealand. He returned home for a short time, studying music in Newcastle, before returning down under.

He said: “My friends who were skydive instructors had the life I wanted, so I decided to try becoming one myself. I worked in ‘the dropzone,’ driving the minivan, packing parachutes and working on reception.”

To become an instructor, Mr Greig had to reach the required 1,000 jumps. By 200 jumps, he became a camera flyer, filming people taking the leap. He then did this in California and Hawaii before going back to New Zealand where he qualified as an instructor.

Mr Greig continued: “I eventually moved to Fiji, then Australia and Canada… but visas started to get more difficult after that and it was time to get a more sensible career, I wasn’t planning on skydiving full time all the way to my 60s!

“Skydiving across the world was an amazing experience, but it proved an impractical career when I became dad to my son, Dylan, who’s now nine. The income is unpredictable when you’re at the mercy of the weather, visa time limits and tourist numbers. You get paid per jump so a month of bad weather is tough when you have a kid to take care of.”

Mr Greig returned to Scotland and enrolled in a finance degree at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2019.

He said: “Even while working at dropzones, I had been interested in how the business ran commercially, profit and loss and how it could improve financially.

“One of the modules on my degree was accountancy and it spoke to me more than finance, so I switched degrees. It showed me that there’s so much more to accountancy than crunching numbers. The language of business and management accounting in particular helped me to gain a clearer understanding of what made some of the businesses I had worked for financially successful and why some others hadn’t been.”

Mr Greig gained a summer internship with Geoghegans in Edinburgh before his final year at university and the firm then merged with MHA in early 2024.

The four-week placement was extended to eight weeks before Mr Greig started working one day a week during his final year at university. In July, he started a full-time graduate position.

He added: “I am constantly challenged and pushed out of my comfort zone. It’s a great balance of giving staff work that develops our knowledge but not to the point where it is overwhelming. Most of my time is spent preparing year end accounts and VAT returns and I am also part of the new MHA ambassador program where students are involved in promoting the firm.

“MHA is a fantastic place to develop my career. I have been so impressed with those who are just a year or two ahead of me as they have already built up a fantastic level of knowledge and are always happy to pass it on. As a single dad it’s also important for me to work for a modern, people-focused firm, which understands the need for flexible working.

“If you had asked me 10 years ago when I was jumping out of planes for a living whether I’d be in accountancy, I wouldn’t have ever pictured it. It’s been a long road, but I’m so glad MHA is where I ended up.”

So, with his last skydive having taken place in 2018, will Iain take the leap again?

“Of course!”  Believe it or not, skydiving can lose its excitement after several thousand jumps when you are jumping up to 15 times a day. But being away from the sport for a few years has made me really miss it. When I get back into it, it’ll be as a hobby though and not a job so that it remains as fun as possible.”