Is the quality of newly qualified accountants improving or declining?

Ray Perry, director of brand, CIMA

It is improving – particularly from the perspective of fitness for purpose. With the CIMA qualification and the other qualifications available there is a focus on business and the business space.

For instance, in shaping our new syllabus the main pieces of research that drove that was around what do businesses require. You can’t expect students to come out of university and have the acumen and the experience to know what they require and it really is the job of the professional institutes to make sure that what we are providing does fill that gap.

The practical experience requirements and so on have to match what employers want. What we are driving at is that the skills base is going to be broadly the same year on year, but what we have all got to drive is the fitness for purpose angle and ensure businesses get what they want.

We are also conscious that we have to train not just for what the employer needs tomorrow in the finance function, but for a much wider funnel into general business.

Generally, UK companies are taking recruitment and training more seriously. There is an expectation that all the jobs tend to want a CCAB qualified individual for a more senior job.

Everybody is looking for companies that provide that level of qualification and support and if the company is going to specifically invest in training and books and courses to help these people get through, then obviously they don’t want to waste their money.

And of course they want the best people in the first place. I think that really is why it is getting ever more competitive.

Where are the skills gaps among newly qualifieds that need to be plugged?

Mary Campbell, ICAS council member and MD and founder of Blas Limited

The concern that I have as an employer is around the lack of commerciality of a lot of the youngsters coming through. And that is something that we would look at in the syllabus content at the institute. How do we make sure that we have got youngsters who are trained across a range of disciplines in a world where they are likely to be going into an environment where they will be highly specialised?

Everything that we do in business should involve a focus on the commercial reality. That is a very difficult line for people to get right, particularly given increasing regulation. We have accountants who are increasingly becoming box tickers rather than commercially aware people.

Certainly for the past five years, within a Scottish context, we have been running programmes from primary school onwards around the theme ‘it’s cool to be an entrepreneur’. Those youngsters are not coming into the profession yet, but in another five to ten years’ time they will be. That’s great in terms of promoting the need to think commercially, the need to think globally, the need to understand that business is about making money and not necessarily about counting the money.

That said, I think it is very difficult for youngsters to be able to show that they have got a high degree of commerciality, I fully accept that.

No institute is ever going to equip the young people coming through with all the answers. I think the best any of us can hope to do is provide a framework for people so that they know how to think, they know how to enquire, they know how to get to the heart of a situation.

Are compliance and regulation becoming more glamorous?

Jenny Balme, HR director, Grant Thornton

I am not sure if it is more glamorous. I think that the opportunities available once people have qualified within the profession are still there and many of them do look to specialise in risk management areas.

But, equally, some want to remain within the audit function, and I think there are perhaps many more opportunities now to specialise in these areas.

People are picking and choosing. I am not sure that compliance is seen as glamorous, but some people really enjoy doing it. I can see that it is quite lucrative and there is a high demand for it and, while that continues, there will still be people wanting to do it.

I think a few years ago we saw among the graduates coming out of university that accountancy perhaps wasn’t as popular as it had been, but I think that is coming back now. Perhaps the profile that it has been receiving has generated that. It has picked up again now in recent years.

We are all in the market for getting the best graduates onto our training schemes and part of the difficulty that we have now, and I think it is a good thing, is that more people are going to university. But, for us as employers, to be able to pick out the ones that are the best, is more of a challenge.

It is a challenge to get onto the campuses and attract them, but it is also a challenge to be able to distinguish between those coming through the process, which is why most firms put in ordinary interviews and additional processes.

It is a competitive market. The demand for accountants continues to grow. Compliance and other aspects of the economy mean that it doesn’t matter what sector you are in, there seems to be an insatiable demand.

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