as business guru tom peters once said, “soft is hard.”
the careers of finance and accounting professionals are increasingly driven or delayed by “soft” skills such as general business knowledge and interpersonal communications, according to new research reviewed by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. read more →
how to invest your mentoring time where it matters most.
question: we were looking for an additional experienced person since september and hired someone with five years experience in mid-november, but she said she couldn’t start until january. she said she had work she had to finish up. two days before christmas she called to tell me her firm made her a “better” offer and she decided to stay there. it meant we had to enter busy season short a person. this seems to happen a lot. what do you suggest? read more →
cpa firm hiring tops 40,000 for first time ever.
by rick telberg
bolstering reports of a suddenly surging profession with a high demand for top talent, a new survey of colleges and firms by the aicpa shows that cpa firms are hiring a record number of graduates.
at the same time, the pipeline of accounting students is bulging, suggesting to some that the continuing high demand for new recruits can be met by newly minted graduates for the next few years.
this will come as good news to firms facing growing new-business opportunities, tougher competition and a growing need for entry-level staff.
it does not, however, help alleviate the catastrophic stall in growth dating back to the 1990s with the spread of the so-called 150-hour rule that has left the profession with a gaping hole in its succession and business continuity strategies. the profession, already facing a succession crisis due to the aging-out of the baby boomers, now finds itself with a dearth of 40- and 50-something senior managers and junior partners to take over management and control – a fact that a record supply of new graduates won’t correct for 10 or 20 years, if ever.
the good news for hiring: pipeline fills with huge supply of talent.
the report shows: read more →
a sign of economic recovery and increased competition.
bringing in new business and finding top-notch staffers to handle anticipated growth are emerging as the new, most pressing challenges for cpa firms today.
with a rebounding economy, the aicpa says in its new pcps “top issues survey” that client retention, which had been a significant concern for firms in the 2009 survey, has been overtaken by a tilt toward growth issues.
“finding qualified staff” was a top issue from 1997 to 2007 for all but the smallest firms, but disappeared entirely from top 5 lists in 2009. now it’s back.
some 37 percent of finance and accounting workers say they are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months, an increase from 33 percent last quarter.
fifty-three percent say they are not likely to job search, falling five percentage points from the previous quarter.
confidence among u.s. finance and accounting workers decreased 2.4 points to 53.4 in the first quarter of 2013 after rebounding in the last quarter of 2012. read more →