STAY AWARE: Hiring Trends In Corporate Tax Departments Now And For The Future

About five years ago, when we surveyed thousands of executives on corporate tax departments trends, I recall one tax executive’s comment vividly… “ The Corporate Tax Department of the Future Will Be Very Different From The Tax Department Of Today.” This comment was emailed to me by a prescient corporate tax executive five years ago. This tax executive provided an insightful understanding of trends that were about to take place. The focus of this post is to discuss trends we now see that are happening behind the scenes in the tax community.

With thirty years’ experience being retained by corporate tax clients to find tax executives, I am highly qualified to discuss hiring trends well in advance of the market understanding the trends currently unfolding around them. The last prediction posted in my blogs a couple of years ago was easy in that I stated once tax professionals start working remotely, they would not want to go back to the office. In this post, I will bring to your attention where we see rising activity in hiring trends and the cost to corporations who do not understand the importance of the technology experts they employ.

Recently, I communicated to a senior management tax executive of a private equity firm my advice on the most important person they should have in-house on their acquisition team. Over the years, they have learned the importance of a strong in-house tax team who can assess the challenges they will face while conducting mergers and acquisitions. While in the past the focus has been on highly strategic tax planning, these teams are becoming ever more careful of the challenges they face in the integration of the software of two separate entities. In some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars of software purchases would not work to integrate two separate systems. This is a software trap many companies are walking into these days. It is messy and it is very expensive.
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Looking For A Tax Job? Advice Of An Internationally Recognized Tax Recruiter

While speaking to an accounting firm principal recently, he mentioned layoffs in the firms. What I shared privately surprised him. Last week, several clients called needing to hire more people in their tax organizations. Yes, we are in the middle of a pandemic and corporate tax departments are actively hiring. In the words of one Tax Director, “We are in more than one hundred countries globally and are already set up to work remotely from home any day of the week. We have a lot of experience working remotely so we are getting our work done.”

Another fact you may find interesting, I recently placed a tax executive and they start this coming week working from home. Working remote was not in the job description. The company wired up a computer and sent it to their home. Fortunately, there are corporate decision-makers who take action and get things done no matter what the circumstances. They know tax increases are coming and are hiring trained tax experts in their tax departments now. They know there is a shortage of available trained tax expertise given the current and certainly future demand.

What is happening in the tax job market right now?

1. Baby Boomer tax professional early retirements are increasing the availability of jobs.
2. Tax reform and tax technology requires tax professionals with a new set of tools.
3. Tax professionals with software technology expertise are thriving in this market.
4. The skills and knowledge required are changing for tax professionals every day.
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Kat Jennings, TaxConnections CEO

Over the years, I have called my biggest competitor in tax executive search on occasion. We are both well-known as two of the most experienced tax recruiters for multinational corporations, law firms and accounting firms (probably in the world). We recently discussed the years of experience we have in searching for tax executives for our multinational clients. Our competitiveness disappeared long ago into a mutual respect and admiration for each other with the challenges we faced working on tax executive searches that are some of the toughest encountered.

For the unknowing beginner, it takes years to build the skills required to represent multinational corporate clients. We understand search for tax executives involves a lot of very hard work. You do not just go into your files to find a candidate for a client. The work involves helping clients build a job description that attracts the right candidates, extensive research of tax candidates in the industry, thousands of emails, hundreds of phone, working nights and weekends; it is seven days a week. You need to know what you are talking about when you interview tax executives. They are highly educated and very strategic thinkers. The bottom line is it takes years to acquire the level of expertise a highly skilled tax executive search expert brings to company. It is truly the art of search for tax executives that you learn over many years to master.

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LOOKING FOR A TAX JOB? LOOKING FOR TAX CONSULTING OPPORTUNITIES? LEARN FROM AN INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED TAX HEADHUNTER WHAT YOU MUST DO TO GET NOTICED BY PEOPLE WHO WANT TO HIRE YOU!

TaxConnections CEO Kat Jennings is hosting a rare conference call on Friday, May 11th 2018 at 1:00PM PDT/2:00PM MT/3:00PM CT/4:00PM EST specifically to teach tax professionals how to be more successful finding a tax job or consulting roles.

Want to stop wasting time submitting your resume to company portals? Want to know why companies never respond to your resume submissions? Want to know why there are more tax jobs out there today but people cannot find you? Want to learn the challenges hiring authorities encounter to find you? It is nearly impossible to succeed until you understand the barriers to success and how to break down the walls preventing you from getting to the decision-makers.

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Corporate Tax Hiring Trends With Tax Reform

For those of us who experienced the impact of the last major tax reform under President Ronald Reagan, I have a prescient message for you “ there will be a lot of new opportunity for tax professionals.” During the TRA 1986  there was a surge of hiring in corporate tax organizations as company executives scrambled to figure out the impact of tax reform legislation on their businesses. Behind  the scenes, we see companies already scrambling to get ahead of the changes about to appear with tax reform. The surge in new jobs and opportunities President Trump talks about is real and it is about to impact the corporate tax profession. The number of tax search experts at the top of our profession who were around at that time you can count on one hand and we all know what is about to happen with tax reform from our previous experiences. There are no computer bots ready to figure out the tax impact for companies as it takes pure human intelligence to research the impact on every tax organization.

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