

Today, the cycle has come full circle. Talent is again the name of the game, though the competition has taken on a new edge as the playing field has changed.

"The market is tight. Super tight," said Jennifer Wilson, co-founder of ConvergenceCoaching LLC and a veteran consultant to accounting firm management teams. "Accounting employment is virtually a full-employment environment."

Wilson points to blog posts written by her ConvergenceCoaching colleague Renee Moelders, who reported that the estimated average unemployment rate for accountants was lower than 3%, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegging it at 2.2%.

The accounting profession has long enjoyed low unemployment, but a couple of factors have produced a talent shortage that experts including Mark Koziel, CPA, CGMA, AICPA vice president—Firm Services & Global Alliances, describe as more intense than they've seen in the past.

The first factor is increased workload compression. The 2014 and 2015 busy seasons were two of the toughest on record due to late changes to tax rules by Congress and inadequate IRS support that made it painfully difficult, if not impossible, for CPAs to get questions answered. Long, frustrating hours during tax season and beyond may be one factor contributing to CPAs' leaving public accounting.

The second factor is demographics. Baby Boomers heading into retirement and Millennials seeking better work/life balance represent the largest streams of accountants out of public accounting. The loss of Millennials further drains an already thin pool of CPAs with three to 10 years' experience, perhaps the most competitive front in the battle for talent.

It is on that front that the third factor squeezing the current accounting labor market emerges. The recession caused many accounting firms, especially the largest ones, to cut back on thousands of staff positions—a rare occurrence in public accounting. Many of the accountants laid off or never hired during the recession left the profession entirely, leaving a talent void for many staff positions.

A GAME OF TALENT DOUBLEHEADER

The Game of Talent is played today on two fields. On one side, the goal is to hire experienced talent. On the other, the prize is a steady flow of talent from college campuses.

Of the two, the acquisition of experienced CPAs is the more difficult, while the cultivation of a strong college recruiting program is the lifeblood of many firms.

Some strategies for recruiting experienced talent are explained below.

Game 1: Experienced talent

Public accounting firms seeking to hire CPAs with three or more years in the profession face more than just an uphill climb. It's more like a mountain, one that firms must scale to secure the prize at the peak—a signed employment agreement with the best candidate available.

Firm recruiters and hiring managers must realize that the mountain isn't going to come to them. They need the right plan and tools to go to and climb the mountain. And they have to be ready to race other firms to the summit.

"The average senior in recruiting firms I interact with will tell me that they get at least one recruiting hit a day from an external recruiter or a third-party firm," Wilson said. "So I tell firms, 'If you're not reaching in, through an external recruiter or your own full-time recruiter, you are really being naïve, because everyone else is reaching in to your firm.'

"Firms do have to take a more active strategy."

One of the first parts of that strategy is determining which experienced CPAs to recruit. Wilson divides potential hires into two groups—actives and passives. Actives are CPAs who for a variety of reasons don't have a public accounting job but are seeking one. Passives are CPAs who are employed at another firm and are not actively looking for another job.

Wilson encourages firms to be proactive in pursuing passives and to pay special attention to CPAs looking for work due to a move to another city or state, often because their spouse got a new job. Firms also should take a close look at CPAs returning to public accounting from industry or after an extended absence, which frequently was taken to concentrate on raising young children.

The best candidate for an open staff position often is a CPA employed at another firm. How can CPA firms attract those talented accountants?

Faulk & Winkler LLC, a 46-employee firm in Baton Rouge, La., relies heavily on LinkedIn in addition to traditional approaches, including an ad in the local newspaper, said Lauren Fitch, J.D., the firm's COO. Fitch searches for CPAs employed in the Baton Rouge area and then, using the LinkedIn feature that shows how users are connected, looks to see if any of the firm's LinkedIn contacts know the candidate and could make a connection. She has found this approach to be more effective than directly emailing candidates out of the blue.

"It's not very successful if it's a cold touch," she said. "They probably won't respond."

That's why Fitch seeks warm leads in candidate searches. As part of that process, she has pushed her firm's CPAs to be on LinkedIn making connections and having meaningful touches with those connections.