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 job done. With tax reform creating more work for everyone, the stakes are about to get higher this season and beyond. We have a real solution we have developed for a limited number of CPA firms.  What we do… we do for a limited number of firms because we rather do an extraordinary job for a small number CPA firms than making a promise to the majority. 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 the smartest solution to the fast changing phenomenon in hiring and retention.

There are firms now 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. The “innovators” create change and are risk tolerant. These are known to be about 2.5 percent of the population. These innovators can see 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 opinion leaders and function as cross-pollinators spreading ideas to others in the professions. The early adopters are known to be about 13.5 percent of the population. Then the “early majority” arrives who follow the early adopters and they consist of about 34 percent of the population. The “late majority” follows after that and adopt the idea once it becomes mainstream, and they are about 34 percent of the population. 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. These firms will sink and 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. Although I do not know these English gentlemen, they understand what is going on in the market. They get it and are dialed in where most people do not even understand the changes happening around them. 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 trending shift in the market. There is a hiring challenge for organizations searching for 3-10 year tax and financial professionals today and there is a real solid solution. The solution is thinking differently to solve this hiring challenge. Take a step back and think about what was happening in 2018; we were in a recession and firms did little hiring. 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 faster 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 instance, 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 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. 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.

We 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; you have at least 20 employees and you can afford a Sponsorship, please contact us. You will get a great result as a TaxConnections Sponsor. 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. Would you like to outperform the competition?

Contact Kat Jennings for more information on this program.