While every successful accounting firm credits their people as their greatest resource, for Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Global Tax Management, other organizations' people have become a target market for its new practice niche — providing training for these tax professionals at peer firms and corporate tax departments.
The tax-only firm's internal training program has been so successful through the years that GTM began outsourcing it as a collegiate-style series of online seminars for early-career professionals with up to five years of experience, on an individual basis or as part of a group rate.
The process started with a premarket analysis of clients and their interest, explained CEO Dave Sekula, based on the firm's internal GTM University program and the outside training that the firm had been offering its larger Fortune 500 clients.
"We wanted to confirm interest, if they'd be clients if we got the economics correct, and our go-to-market strategy, how to contact people, the value proposition, pricing models," Sekula explained. "In the tax world, there is not a steady stream of consistent training, it's more piecemeal — seminars or whatever's scheduled."
From that research, the GTM Training Institute was established as an online learning program offering 51 continuing professional education credits over a 34-class program to help working tax professionals grow their competencies in income tax compliance and tax provisions.
While initially geared toward in-house tax department staff, GTM has had "a couple opportunities with smaller CPA firms that operate similar to a corporate environment but may not have the department or the structure of a program to execute on a training strategy," reported Frank Nieves, practice leader for the GTM Training Institute.
Long before the Great Resignation, Sekula and Nieves — who started as a Big Four auditor before transitioning into tax work and then became a GTM internal training leader — have witnessed talent gaps in the marketplace.
"The tax world always had a [staff] shortage," said Sekula. "Institutionally, colleges, universities, the culture of public accounting, you need to become auditors, you become an auditor and figure out what to do with your career, but actually most people fall into tax or go into their first job and are directed into it or have an internship that ends up in tax."
"With that said," Sekula continued, "the other thing that happens is a lot of people learn on the job; there's not the type of systematic training in the general sense in the tax world. The Big Four have very systematic training … . In the corporate world, you are typically piecing it together, learning on the job or in seminars, webinars. This idea that GTM has done very well is take people out of school — the average employee stays well over seven years — and in our program we used to call GTM University, [we support those new hires] out of school to be proficient up to the manager level of their career."
With this new service offering, which began its inaugural session Sept. 7, GTM aims to fill this need for standardized training for early career tax professionals. The courses are led by Nieves and curriculum developer and lead instructor Joanne Tempone, with some assistance from GTM experts on specialty topics like state and local tax.
"The way we kind of talk about it is providing a service to the industry, for the gap in talent that has existed," explained Nieves. "We have a unique positioning in the market, working side by side in a corporate environment, and seeing the talent levels working with that personnel. Our mission is to develop that pipeline of future tax leadership with a hands-on approach to guiding people on the path … . The program is a natural extension of the shortage of formal training. We are answering the demand of the market, really, the need that has been there for a long time."
Peer networks
The online courses, scheduled every other week, are not the only GTM Training Institute components reminiscent of the higher-education experience — the weeks in between offer chances for continued learning. "In the off weeks, there are office hours for participants to ask questions," Nieves said. "[Participants] can pop in to ask questions and listen to other people's questions, absorb dialogue, absorb tax speak, and engage in dialogue."
These video conference meetings also foster collaboration between the participants, Nieves shared.
"The structure of study is that these are people in real-life situations that are going to be your peers, so you develop a peer network that grows over time as you relate with other people," he continued. "It helps to expand your knowledge about things. We might have participants in software, and someone else in manufacturing, and those issues might not 100% overlap. But the technical aspects in the day to day, there are common applications across the fields."
While in its initial run of courses GTM Training Institute has had classes of 20 to 30 East Coast-based participants, the goal is to expand the program nationally.
"We always have the ability to open a new section of a course," Nieves explained. "And to the extent that we get participants on the West Coast, we will adapt for those participants. In the future, we will be growing and expanding across the country."
