Recruiting

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.

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.