Recruiting

KPMG, through its private foundation, has awarded 10 more $10,000 minority doctoral scholarships for accounting students, on top of the 35 it has already handed out in the 2007-2008 academic year.

Put a dozen managers and executives from financial planning firms in the same room, and before too long the conversation is likely to turn to the business issue that concerns them all: profitability. Whether they represent a one-person shop or are part of a large corporate structure, planners are almost universally challenged to serve the needs of their clients at a profit.To achieve that profitability, you must first address two other challenges - those presented by staffing and compensation. Getting the right people in place, giving them the tools to excel, and rewarding them for performance are all critical steps in achieving profitable growth.

RSM McGladrey has introduced Firm Foundation, an association and program for small CPA firms that gives them tools and training in areas such as practice management and marketing.Firms with approximately 10 to 30 full-time employees can join the association. Members get access to technical tools for tax and auditing, as well as assistance in succession planning, recruiting, people management, profitability, growth, human resources and technology.

A tax manager who left her firm in Hawaii and moved to South Carolina was the subject of a very interesting article in the July 2007 Boomer Bulletin from Boomer Consulting Inc. What was so interesting was that not much changed for the Hawaiian firm, as she continues to work for it remotely from South Carolina.

Sage Software has hired a new head of human resources functions in North America, appointing Lisa Codispoti as chief people officer.The company, a subsidiary of the U.K.-based Sage Group, employs more than 5,000 people.

Chief financial officers are split on the importance of an accounting graduate’s university when evaluating a candidate for an entry-level job, says a new survey.Forty-nine percent of the 1,400 U.S. CFOs polled by the staffing service Accountemps said the prestige of the candidate’s university was not important at all.

The National Association of Black Accountants said at its 36th annual convention that it is distributing $201,000 in scholarships to 60 college students nationwide, a threefold increase in fundraising compared to a year ago.The group also said Ernst & Young would donate $200,000 in scholarship money over the next four years to support students interested in pursuing careers in professional services.

Smart firms realize it’s better to hire a good guy and teach him the right skills than to hire a skilled psycho. Resumes tell employers something about skill sets, but little about candidates’ personalities. It takes the right interviewing techniques to figure out which people will be the best fit for your firm and to avoid hiring nightmares. Linda Bryan, owner of Dallas-based Tamlin Software Developers, was the poster woman for how not to select staff. “I was a disaster,” she confesses. “I hired some real goofballs, really weird people that didn’t work out.” These poor decisions resulted in a high turnaround, which can financially burden any company, as well as some embarrassing situations. One day a Fortune 100 drug company client came to the computer consulting company’s offices to discuss a large project and was waiting for one of Bryan’s new hires—someone who seemed “very business like and sharp”—for nearly two hours. She never would have expected the excuse he provided when he made his grand entrance. “He was supposed to show up at 9 and at 11:30, here he comes barreling through the conference room door and his hair is all disheveled and his suit is actually torn on the sleeve and we all just look at him and he says, ‘I’m sorry I’m late. There was this exotic bird and I’m an exotic bird lover and I jumped through a wired fence [chasing it] and it ripped my coat.’ He just went off,” Bryan recalls. “I just thought ‘You’re so fired.’ That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I thought I have got to get better at this.” She started asking advice and others told her she needed to hire on attitude, not aptitude. When she thought about it, she realized that she had hired people who had the right skills on paper but not the right personality. She found a book called “The Smart Interviewer,” which taught her how to ask questions that would allow her to get to know candidates to better determine whether they would fit into Tamlin’s culture. Only if they pass that part of the interview do they get tested on their technical know-how. “I started using that interview process and we started calling it the Good Guy Test. The first thing is do you have the right attitude/the right personality to fit in here. Then the second thing is do you have the right skills. It’s the reverse of what I used to do,” Bryan says. “Since then we’ve had some good longevity and some really good people.” It is not uncommon these days to have prospects meet their future colleagues to see how well they jibe. Some companies invite candidates to lunch. Others have subordinates interview their potential bosses. Just because a candidate doesn’t connect with the rest of your staff doesn’t mean he or she is not a talented individual. Every firm has different policies and ways of doing business. It just means that this particular individual is a bad fit for your particular firm’s needs. It behooves both the employer and employee to figure this out before signing on the dotted line and risk having to “mutually agree to part ways” soon thereafter.

The number of finance and accounting workers who expected their companies to increase headcount in the upcoming months fell 8 points to 30 percent in the latest Hudson Employment Index. Following a substantial rise in May, overall worker confidence plunged 9.8 points, to 106.3. The responses came from roughly 9,000 workers across all sectors. In addition, 19 percent of those polled anticipated layoffs, versus 15 percent who projected layoffs in May. The number of workers who felt their finances were getting worse rose three points in June to 38 percent.Those who said their finances were improving dropped three points to 44 percent.

The Hong Kong member firm for Grant Thornton International said that six partners and 80 employees from CPA firm Moores Rowland Mazars have joined the firm. The partners include Mark Fong, the current president of the Hong Kong Institute of CPAs. As a result, Grant Thornton will now have 21 partners and 480 employees in Hong Kong. The addition comes as a result of the restructuring at MRM, which will split into two firms -- Mazars and Moores Rowland. Grant Thornton currently has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has reappointed Daniel Goelzer to a second five-year term at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Prior to joining the PCAOB in 2002, Goelzer spent seven years as general counsel at the SEC. He is also a CPA and was an auditor at Touche Ross, the predecessor firm to Deloitte & Touche. SEC chairman Christopher Cox said that Goelzer "brings broad perspective to the board through his substantial experience as a regulator and practitioner. We are fortunate that he is willing to serve the nation, investors, and our markets in this capacity."

I have always found regional accounting firms fascinating. Just take three recent developments regarding the regional firm of Virchow, Krause & Company. One was that Wells Fargo Insurance Services of Minnesota, a subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company, acquired Virchow, Krause & Company's Twin Cities employee benefits operations, including the head of the employee benefits practice in Minneapolis and his team. It is a good example of how regional firms view these very specialized practice areas. The acquire them and spin them off reminding me of many businesses that view the acquisition and the selling of a portion of their business as a regular means for increasing profitability.

When Scott Cook presented his keynote speech at the end of the final day of Intuit’s QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions conference in San Diego last week, he asked the audience how many among them had ever had a boss. Of course, everyone raised their hands. But then he inquired how many of them who had ever thought their boss wasn’t doing a good job in certain areas actually sat down with those bosses to suggest ways to improve? Only a select brave few. “If you’re the boss, you’re getting a rose-colored view and not feedback on things you need to fix,” Cook says. “I’m the only person in the company who doesn’t get a formal personnel review.” Once someone establishes a position of power within his or her company, it’s that individual’s responsibility to ask for feedback in order to constantly improve, because most employees aren’t going to give that criticism unsolicited. It’s a phenomenon Cook refers to as “revolutionizing the way leaders lead,” and he’s fighting on the front lines of that internal battle. Cook participates in 360 reviews in which an independent outside party comes to Intuit and interviews employees at various levels about certain leadership qualities. Agreeing to this kind of research is one thing. Listening to the observations is quite another. “Every instinct I had was to disagree, or agree but not understand,” Cook admits of his reaction when he learned what employees felt he wasn’t doing well (He didn’t admit the specifics to the San Diego crowd, however.) In order to break old habits, Cook had to “design interventions,” posting sticky notes next to his desk and forcing himself to read those reminders prior to conducting meetings. Just like in other recovery programs, acknowledging the errors of your ways is the first step toward recovery. “I told the people who work around me what my problems are and how I’m going to change,” Cook says. “I told them ‘I need your help.’” It became clear through this honest discourse that the company he founded 24 years ago continues to enjoy success not solely because of his team’s ability to drive sales, but because of a constant drive for self-improvement, which trickles down from the top. Effective leaders shape great companies. Cook chose to check his ego at the door and give his subordinates permission to critique him in order for him to improve himself and his company. In doing so, he set an atmosphere for his entire staff to continuously strive for self-improvement, thereby always raising the bar as to what truly defines greatness.

Although Capitol Hill insiders such as Karl Rove, Paul Begala, Terry McAuliffe and George Will garnered marquee billing at the American Institute of CPAs Spring Meeting of Council, profession-centric issues, such as staff recruitment and the alternative minimum tax, reverberated the most with attendees at the three-day confab here.

By 2010, there will be 10 million more jobs than there are people in the U.S., and the process of attracting, retaining, and keeping key employees motivated begins with a strategic plan that includes a formal hiring process, a commitment to building a learning culture, and competitive compensation and work/life balance policies, according to a panel at the American Institute of CPAs' Tech+ Information Technology Conference, here."You make your worst hiring decisions when you need someone now," Sage Software director of channel development Ed Kless told attendees. "You need to put a hiring process in place, and even if you work with a search firm, make them go through your hiring process as well.""Remember, if you hire the right people, you don't have to motivate them," Kless said. Angie Martin, of Dallas-based CPA firm Lane Gorman Trubitt, said that firms must develop an environment that "encourages knowledge sharing" and provides learning opportunities both internally and externally."Not all learning is CPE," she said. "Learning happens in all directions and at all levels in an organization. Ideally, 12 percent of an employee's salary should be spent on training and learning." Sandra Wiley of Boomer Consulting said that key employees aren't always forthcoming at exit interviews as to why they're leaving. "They'll say, 'It was a great opportunity' or 'I'm getting more money,' but the real reason many of them are leaving is they're not being challenged."She outlined a 10-point checklist that included such areas as mapping out career development, offering highly competitive salaries and benefits packages, and allowing employees to tailor their individual work/life balance plans. "Remember, it's not the number of hours they work, it's what they get done," she said.Taylor Macdonald, chief strategy officer at Sage, told conference-goers that there has to be some flexibility with regard to compensation. Firms have to consider things like arbitrary bonuses, employee stock ownership plans and employee recognition programs."You can't always treat everyone the same, because everyone isn't the same," he said.

For some, going global means eating a hamburger one night, sushi the next, a gyro sandwich the third, followed by curried chicken, and then Chilean sea bass. “Going global” or “going international” means something entirely different for firms. It might mean hiring a more diverse staff to appeal to a more diverse potential client base. For others, it might mean foreign outsourcing, or joining an international firm association to develop working relationships with firms in foreign countries. To some, it might mean hiring accountants from overseas to fill staff vacancies. And let’s not forget the need to understand international accounting standards as the move to convergence gains strength. There are, especially in regional firms, exchanges of staff where staff from one firm work in the offices of a firm in another country for a number of months. One firm association rotates its annual international meeting among its seven international regions to ensure a continuing diverse international flavor. I just read an online article in USA Today about the fact that more MBA candidates are going abroad for their degree. The reasons given were that it normally takes one year rather than two, the future MBAers like international travel, it helps their career if they might want to eventually work in that country, and there is contact with MBA candidates from many other countries. What is interesting to watch in many firms is that there is an increased comfort level with going international, similar to what you experience when you eat unfamiliar food from different cultures. Think also about the fact that the youngest generation is growing up in the “Age of Globalization,” and using the Internet to easily plan foreign travel and interact, communicate, and maintain contact with those in other countries. Ultimately, they are forming and building at a very early age an international network that will serve them very well in their future personal, employment, and professional endeavors.

The nation's C-level financial executives expect to continue hiring during the third quarter, albeit at a slower pace than in the previous period. Some 6 percent of chief financial officers polled in the Robert Half Financial Hiring Index said they anticipated hiring employees in the third period, while 3 percent of those surveyed said they expected cutbacks. Meanwhile, 90 percent of the Robert Half respondents projected no changes in financial staffing levels. The Mountain and West South Central states forecast the greatest gains in financial hiring, with 10 percent of the executives in each region responding that they planned to hire additional staff, and just 1 percent projecting staff reductions. The Robert Half poll includes responses from more than 1,400 CFOs from U.S. companies with 20 or more employees.

Thomas R. Smith, one of the country's leading attorneys in the area of mutual funds, has joined the Investment Management Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission as a senior advisor to Andrew Donohue, the division's director. Prior to joining the SEC, Smith was a partner with the New York office of Sidley Austin LLP, and also served as managing partner at Brown & Wood LLP from 1996 until the firm's merger with Sidley Austin five years later.

Sometimes the best way to get in the door of a business is by befriending the secretary. They have the power to create a bridge—or a barrier—to the Big Kahuna. But they also possess the ability to frustrate and potentially turn off clients and associates if they are unresponsive, unknowledgeable or downright indifferent. Journalists also rely on secretaries and PR types to connect us to executives working for the vendors we cover as well as busy CPAs and value-added resellers. Especially in the world of accounting software, it is a rare joy to encounter a person at that level who not only understands the questions we are posing, but also provides us with the answers we need. One of these talented people recently stopped working in his role, leaving some of us demanding reporters stomping our feet. We’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of service with this individual and established a friendship in the process. It’s easy to just shrug our shoulders and acknowledge most people who work to connect us to executives aren’t as advanced as he is. But why should we settle for sub-par, or even average, service from a company with which we’ve been doing business for years? Vendors, resellers and accountants should all take a look at their client-facing staff and see what tools they can arm them with to better serve the people who call or visit their offices. Many of these employees are fresh out of school and eager to learn and help. Can you teach them some basic industry jargon so they aren’t scratching their heads when a client asks a question? Can you put a rule in place requiring them to respond to inquiries within a certain period of time? Simply telling clients that their issues are being worked on can sometimes ease their anxiety, as opposed to waiting until those problems are solved to touch base with them and risk them thinking they are being ignored. Most people who conduct business with firms don’t expect administrative assistants to be experts in their fields. But they do expect to be treated with the same level of respect and professionalism as they would by a managing partner or CEO. These individuals serve as the front door to your organization. It’s up to you to make sure they are open and welcoming.

A recent law now requires New Jersey CPAs to attend an orientation program within six months of qualifying as a CPA.