While many firms search to find talent at the 3-7 year level, a better solution is being provided to accommodate a firms’ growth today. We have been studying this phenomenon carefully for a few years now. It is a real problem when stakeholders in CPA firms do not have the expertise available to get the increased workload done. With tax reform creating more work for everyone, the stakes are about to get higher this season and beyond. In this post, I will first explain why firms are having such great difficulty attracting tax and accounting professionals with 3-10 years of experience and then a  solution to the fast changing phenomenon in hiring and retention.

There are firms emerging as “Fast Thinking” and those who will fall behind with “Jurassic Thinking”. Firms we characterize as “fast thinking” are the innovators who come up with new ways of improving their business operations. These “innovators” create change and are risk tolerant. These are known to be about 2.5 percent of the population. These innovators are viewed as unusual at first until their ideas grow larger into acceptance and are then followed by the “early adopters”. Early adopters are well-known leaders that function as cross-pollinators spreading ideas to others in the profession. Then the “early majority” arrives who follow the early adopters. The “late majority” follows after that and adopts the ideas once it becomes mainstream. We then have the “laggards” who are fixated on keeping things just the way they are in their Jurassic thinking and they ultimately become extinct.

Read any book written by Richard Susskind and his son Daniel Susskind including The Future of the Professions, The Future of Law and your professional world will be forever enlightened. They “get it” and are dialed in where most people do not even understand the changes happening in the market today for firms. TaxConnections is constantly studying the changes in the market and the impact on public accounting firms, law firms and corporate tax and financial accounting organizations today. There is a very clear trending shift in the market right now. There is a hiring challenge for organizations searching for 3-10 year tax and financial professionals today and there is a real solution for those “innovators” and “early adopters” who want to be on the front lines of these changes.

The solution is thinking differently to solve the current hiring challenges. Take a step back and think about what was happening in 2008-2011; we were in a recession and firms did little hiring at that time. In fact, they hired a fraction of what they would normally hire for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. Grads coming out of law schools were promised jobs at the big law firms were encouraged to take gap years. It was a tight market during those years for the Big Four with layoffs nationwide. The result is what you see today… firms challenged to find the trained talent they need.

The good news is that the talent pool is there for the “fast thinking” firms. The solution is going virtual with a remote workforce. More tax and accounting professionals are going remote as they have been groomed to think remote. For example, a Big Four firm who has a monthly rental space has 1,000 offices; however, they have 3000 employees and they want them out to clients working and not sitting at their desks. Think of all the money these firms save on rental property. Their workforce is now working at client locations, from home, in a coffee shop, airport, hotel sitting areas, in the corner of a gym locker room, on the beach, in the chair of a barber shop or beauty salon, etc. You name it they are working remotely from all kinds of locations. Are the lights coming on inside your head right now? The remote work force is here to stay and people are loving the fact they are more productive and spending less time driving to and from an office each day in a snow storm or hurricane conditions. If you are planning on having your work force sitting next to you each day, give them a computer and sit them on your desk on the video screen. Get of out your Jurassic Thinking.

TaxConnections developed a system that works to attract a vibrant workforce and also drives new clients to your firm. If you are a firm interested in learning a lot more about how to gain a real competitive advantage; and you can afford one of the limited number of Sponsorships we have available, please contact us.

You will get a great result as a TaxConnections Sponsor as we agree on a category of business you want to focus on. View a small sample of our clients, we have a proven track record of connections worldwide that we created over 30 years of personal relationships.

We are onboarding 10 CPA Firms, 10 Law Firms and 10 Software Services Firms. TaxConnections business development strategy recruits top talent AND new clients for firms all year round. We provide a 360 Business Development strategy.

TaxConnections seeks out innovators and early adopters.