Recruiting

Accounting firm Aronson & Co. has launched a video contest to attract accounting and finance students with a prize of a $2,500 "professional makeover" that includes services such as clothing consultations and resume preparation help.

It’s nice to see that CPAs and their firms are doing very well. According to the just-released 2007 Rosenberg MAP Survey, firms with net fees over $2 million enjoyed annual net fee growth of 11.4 percent in 2006, compared to 9.7 percent in 2005. The average income for partners in these firms, according to the survey, is $350,000.

The American Institute of CPAs introduced a guidebook to help accounting firms set up "off-ramping" programs to help women transition out of demanding full-time accounting careers, while maintaining a relationship so the off-ramped employees can assist the firm when needed.

More than half of undergraduate accounting students admitted to cheating, a proportion roughly comparable to that of other business majors, according to a newly released academic study.

Virginia CPA firm Yount, Hyde & Barbour has established a $2,500 annual scholarship for accounting students through the Virginia Society of CPAs Educational Foundation, making a $50,000 gift to the foundation so the scholarship can launch next year.

The Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation has introduced an internal auditing textbook that promises to unite theory with practical knowledge to give students a more realistic look at the profession.

Sage Software has unveiled its latest versions (7.6 and 8.3) of Sage Abra HRMS, the company’s human resource management system for small and midsized businesses and organizations in North America, featuring Employer Information Report EEO-1 and compatibility with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

Kaplan CPA Review has introduced online review courses for CPA candidates.

CPA firm WithumSmith+Brown has outgrown its current location in downtown New Brunswick and is moving to a new location around the corner.

Charles “Chuck” Allen has worked for the accounting firm Crowe Chizek for his entire career. Fresh out of college as a campus recruit, he joined the firm in 1975. In April of this year, the 53-year-old became CEO of Crowe Group, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based firm’s parent company, succeeding two-term CEO Mark Hildebrand. Before becoming CEO, Allen served as managing executive of Crowe’s commercial services group. During his career, he has concentrated on assisting private investors with acquiring and financing companies and establishing a private equity group client base. He talked with WebCPA about his plans for broadening the Midwestern firm’s national footprint, the recent challenges facing the accounting and private equity industries, and his firm’s efforts at recruitment and retention.

The National Association of Black Accountants and the Howard University School of Business Center for Accounting Education are launching an effort to encourage a greater number of black CPAs.

The American Institute of CPAs presented awards to 10 budding CPAs who achieved the highest cumulative scores last year on the four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination.

Like motherhood and apple pie, a pipeline process that helps you organize and realize your opportunities is easy to label "a good thing."But there's a considerable gap between knowing this and making it happen in your own firm. My goal in this article is to help you bridge that gap.

Two accounting students have launched a used books site to combat the rising prices of textbooks.

CCH and H&R Block signed an agreement that gives Block tax preparers and franchisees access to tax-training courses from the online CCH Learning Center.

Workstream introduced an on-demand compensation-planning system, Workstream Compensation Professional, aimed at midsized companies.

Attracting fresh talent isn’t an impossible dream, but get them while they’re young and still in school. Establishing relationships with universities and individual college professors helps Grant Thornton attract the best students. But even small firms without big budgets can focus on recruiting at the local level, especially if they start the process when the students are still impressionable sophomores. By the time they have their diplomas in hand, most grads already have made up their minds as to where they want to work, according to Ed Nusbaum, Grant Thornton’s CEO and executive partner. Investing in them for a summer internship—even when the workload is light—could pay off when they become seniors, he says. The good news is that many of those young prospects are making conscious decisions to start their careers on a smaller scale. “When I pursued accounting, everyone looked at the Big 8, and Grant Thornton was No. 9. Nobody went anywhere else,” says Nusbaum, an Ohio State University alumnus who began working for Grant Thornton nearly three decades ago. “Today, the top six to seven firms attract the majority, but people go straight into industry or with local firms. Back then, if you did that, professors would say you’re crazy—and they have a lot of influence.” The American Institute of CPAs is targeting an even younger audience, high schoolers. Start Here, Go Places, is the AICPA’s student recruitment campaign, aimed at “building awareness” and “changing perceptions” about the profession. It connects students to a Web site that speaks their language, using words like “awesome,” providing ways for them to “get a leg up” on other college applicants by taking business courses in high school and offering quick facts, such as the inventor of bubble gum was an accountant. There are even video clips with real-life CPAs who drive—get ready for this—Corvettes (That means they’re cool.) This content is relevant to its readers and feels more like something they’d find in Seventeen magazine than, well, an accounting publication. No one knows how many kids say “I want to be an accountant when I grow up.” But at least they are learning that the profession exists and that jobs are available. Enron might have made those jobs more difficult, but it also drove awareness and made the thought of becoming an auditor “more enticing,” Nusbaum says. But work-life balance is also important, as much of a cliché as that may be. There’s no denying the fact that most teens don’t envision themselves working around the clock. Thirty years ago, when Nusbaum began his accounting career, he worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day, from January to March. On Sundays, he left at 5 p.m. “That was the easy day,” he says. Today, people put in a lot less time in the office. Kids don’t say they want “work-life balance.” They say they “want to have a life.” And the perception today is that accountants do have lives because people like Nusbaum are helping to influence their views and shape the next generation of CPAs.

Three academics from the U.K. who have written a book about auditing, and a Virginia professor who has developed a taxation education curriculum, will receive awards from Deloitte & Touche’s not-for-profit Deloitte Foundation.

Accounting and finance workers are slightly more optimistic about their jobs and the overall economy, according to a quarterly survey commissioned by recruitment company Spherion and conducted by Harris Interactive.

Carol Stacey, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporate Finance, has become vice president of The SEC Institute, an organization that holds conferences and workshops around the country to explain SEC and PCAOB rules and regulations.