Amid policy shifts, new accounting and finance regulations, and changes in systems, we are seeing market indicators of a shortage of qualified accounting professionals who can't keep up with the recent demands of the job market.
The economy is rebounding as we emerge from the pandemic, yet the U.S. has the highest number of job openings through May, according to the
The accounting and finance industry has also seen a steep decline in the number of college students pursuing accounting degrees. Colleges have reported a 34% drop in students majoring in accounting, as well as fewer accounting majors opting for graduate school or CPA licensing.
With the emerging desert of qualified employees in the accounting industry — and the growing candidate recession — there are still ways to find an oasis.
Cultivating the new landscape
Accounting professionals can be pretty risk-averse, with a “hit the ground running” mentality as workloads and deadlines can be demanding. During the pandemic, those workloads didn’t slow down, and professionals were asked to take on more responsibilities while companies were not back-filling roles. In addition to this shift and the shortage of qualified candidates, it has created a need for employers to manage expectations and be open to looking outside the box. What firms really need to focus on is flexibility for specific qualifications, narrowing it down to “nice-to-haves” and “must-haves,” remembering that you can always train hard skills.
In a recent national webinar of ours, in which 200 attendees answered a poll question asking, “What is your biggest challenge in acquiring talent,” 33.8% answered not finding the right skill set, 26% answered competing for local talent, 23.4% answered they were outbid for compensation (salary, benefits, etc.), and 16.9% answered they were moving too quickly.
Companies might lose out on great candidates if they aren’t flexible with required qualifications, including software efficiencies, years of experience, professional background, and more. So it's important to hire professionals who are self-motivated, solutions-focused, problem solvers, have a strong work ethic, strong emotional intelligence and efficient communication skills.
For example, hire individuals who have implemented process improvements and automation at their past organizations illustrating that they are proactive. I also advocate for my clients to critically think through every job opening they have and see how they can be flexible. Can they modify the scope of the role to consider internal candidates, and even up-level or down-level the role to fit a current employee’s strengths? This could be as simple as having two current employees manage a team of eight people rather than bringing on someone new to manage the whole team. In this current candidate recession, there isn’t a better time to look for talent within your organization who are looking to take on additional responsibilities.
I encourage my clients to focus more on the type of person who will be successful within the organization and take additional time to train where some experience might be lacking. There are key qualifications with education and work experience that can be a must-have in showing career progression and tenure, but the bottom line is that companies need to be more open to having conversations to get to know people beyond their resume.
Surfing the virtual onboarding wave
With virtual work here to stay, it's important to understand the challenges of remote onboarding to help new hires feel like part of the organization. Find ways to connect them with every member of their team to build relationships and trust, ensuring they have enough support.
One of the differentiators we have heard internally after virtually onboarding is that everyone on the team makes a point to continuously foster the relationship, and that we take the time to allow people to get to know each other personally. When you’re working from home, you have meetings for a very specific purpose and sometimes people forget to stop to ask about the weekend or their family, like you would in an office setting. For hiring managers and teams, it’s crucial to carve out time to get to know the person better and connect on a personal level, with no work agenda.
Diversify the culture for success
It’s easy to invite individuals to the team who are just like us in order to find a culture fit. And while staff members certainly need to share core values, it is also very important to have diversity on your teams. Diversity in personality, experience, ways of thinking, problem-solving skills, and more. If you are aligned on the core values and the mission of the organization, then diversity only helps stretch the organization to think differently, work differently and solve problems in a new way. You want a balance of people with different strengths and backgrounds, which makes it a culture add to the team as a whole.
Dive into the pool
There are many ways to attract top talent during a quality labor shortage:
- Be flexible and move fast. Top talent has the pick of the litter in today’s market.
- Talent solution firms can provide support in vetting candidates before the company meets them, speeding up the hiring process immensely.
- Have a clear interview and hiring process internally, whether it’s cutting down the number of people who need to meet with the candidate, understanding which teammate is going to ask the candidate which questions, or even using our hosted interview process to efficiently meet and narrow down candidates.
- If your organization is unsure about hiring a permanent role during these unprecedented times, consider hiring a professional consultant or interim employee to obtain critical resources quickly to relieve the heavy workload on your existing team.
