The fourth year of Ernst & Young's Discover Tax Leadership Conference drew 102 minority college students from all over the country to New York (braving the cold) to learn about tax - and themselves.

Everybody has secrets.

A series of surveys conducted in the past decade suggests that CFOs may be staying in their jobs longer.

Small businesses with less than 50 employees slashed 12,000 jobs last month, the smallest decline since July of 2008, but businesses in the service sector actually added jobs for the second consecutive month.

CFOs were more optimistic about the economy and their own companies in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new survey.

A measure of the overall confidence of accounting and finance employees dipped slightly in the fourth quarter.

Staffing company Robert Half International has introduced a set of online salary calculators for a number of industries, including accounting and finance.

One-third of small businesses question their ability to access credit in 2010, according to a new survey.

Accounting Principals, the accounting and finance recruitment unit of MPS Group, has released its 2010 Salary Guide for Accounting and Finance Professionals.

Intuit has created a Lacerte and ProSeries Tax Certification program that 1040 tax preparers can use to demonstrate their proficiency and firms can use to test their existing staff and find qualified job candidates.

Several years ago, the most critical generational issue facing CPA firms was attracting and keeping bright new talent. Today, the generational scales have tipped; it's no longer the youngest employees who are causing concern - it's the most experienced employees.

ACCOUNTING STAFF CUTBACKS SHOULD SLOW

IMGCAP(1)]Everywhere you turn, people are talking about the next generation: Millennials, Generation Y, Nexters.

IMGCAP(1)]Concern over the recession and double-digit unemployment has overshadowed what promises to be nothing short of an HR tsunami: the increasing shortage of qualified workers for the new economy’s high-skilled jobs. However, changing the Tax Code to make training a capitalized business expense would go a long way toward turning the tide.

Mark Bailey & Co. is no stranger to the Best Firms roster. The Reno, Nev., practice repeated last year's feat of being ranked No. 1 in the small firm category and attributed that accomplishment to its management team striving to give their employees as much freedom as possible.

'I'm convinced it's all about our team," said Christy Pierce, managing partner at Atlanta-based Braver Schimler Pierce Jenkins, about her firm's success. "We have an extraordinary group of people who work very well together, we respect each other from a multitude of different places - from professional strengths as well as personal characteristics and abilities - and when we need each other, we're there. It permeates the office."

In response to the downturn in the economy, this year BlumShapiro decided not to hold an outside party in January for its employees and their families. Instead, it opted to keep the party in-house and donate the money it saved to local homeless shelters.

In the second annual Best Firms to Work For survey - a joint effort between Accounting Today and the Best Companies Group in Harrisburg, Pa. - we set out to find which firms are doing their best at keeping their workforce productive and content, even in these tumultuous times. The winning firms were divided into three categories for ranking: small firms with between 15 and 24 employees, midsized firms with between 25 and 249 employees, and large firms with more than 250 employees. Mark Bailey & Co. in Reno, Nev., Braver Schimler Pierce Jenkins in Atlanta, and BlumShapiro in West Hartford, Conn., garnered the first-place rankings in the small, midsized and large categories, respectively.

Small firms (15-24 employees)

Small firms Midsized firms Large firms All firms