Recruiting

This issue of Generational Viewpoints features two individuals from Kennedy and Coe llC (www.kcoe.com), a Salina, Kan.-based top 100 firm with over 200 professionals. Generation X member Jeff Wald, born in 1972, and Baby Boomer chief executive Kurt Siemers, born in 1948, shared their responses to the following question:

When Elizabeth Taylor died last year, she left a legacy of iconic movie performances, philanthropy, and lots and lots of diamonds. It was among these incredible baubles at Christie's auction house, where they have since been sold for astronomical sums, that members of global women's network 85 Broads convened to ask the popular question: Where are all the women?

In a bit of good news despite a still-uncertain economy, compensation for accounting professionals is expected to rise some 3.5 percent overall in 2012, continuing its upward momentum from the prior year.

IMGCAP(1)]A major financial reporting and accounting deficiency needs our long-overdue attention: the failure to reflect the value of human capital as an asset on a firm’s balance sheet.

Ninety-two percent of financial professionals believe that businesses will either maintain their current employee headcount or increase their employee count in 2012, according to a survey of U.S. accounting firms.

Career growth opportunities ranked as the number one inducement for staying at or joining an accounting firm, according to a new survey by the American Institute of CPAs.

Hiring of finance and accounting employees is expected to improve in the first quarter of next year, according to a survey of CFOs by staffing company Robert Half International.

Plante Moran has hired 135 accounting, tax and consulting interns and professionals and entry-level staff who are slated to start January 1.

The nation’s unemployment rate fell four-tenths of a percentage point to 8.6 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, marking the lowest unemployment rate since March 2009.

Accounting firms are going back to basics in their retention efforts, with renewed focus on establishing and building a quality culture.

Employees at small businesses made less money in November than in October and were working fewer hours, even though 55,000 new jobs were added at small businesses in November, according to Intuit.

Jobs in the private sector shot up by 206,000 in November, according to payroll giant ADP, outperforming most forecasts.

The House overwhelmingly passed legislation repealing the 3 percent withholding mandate on government contractors, along with a tax credit for hiring veterans.

IMGCAP(1)]There are two types of viral infections that can plague the people within an organization.

CBIZ found that small business employment fell for the fourth month in a row in October.

The unemployment rate dipped one-tenth of a percentage point to 9.0 percent as employers added 80,000 jobs in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Private sector employers added 110,000 new jobs to their payrolls in October, mainly in the service sector, according to the monthly employment report from payroll giant ADP.

The accounting profession has traditionally attracted high-caliber candidates, those with top-flight financial and technology skill sets and long on ambition.

Only 15 percent of the small business owners in a recent survey expect the number of jobs to increase at their companies over the next 12 months.

CBIZ reported a further drop-off in small business hiring in September.