Preparing tomorrow's workforce: as companies struggle to develop adequate levels of accounting, finance and audit professionals from a shrinking talent pool, ensuring those in the pipeline are well-equipped to meet the challenges is a primary concern. A diversified group met to address these issues and offer solutions.

• Author: McDonald, Paul
• Position: WORKFORCE ISSUES

From increased globalization to growth in offshoring, new business trends have raised the bar for the repertoire of skills expected of both today's and tomorrow's accounting, finance and audit professionals. According to the Robert Half International Financial Leadership Council, which met in early 2007, the worlds of business and academia must forge effective partnerships to help new practitioners prepare for the future.

The council, comprised of 23 members (including 5 FEI members--see box on next page), represents a well-respected and diverse panel of industry influencers from the U.S. and Canada, and includes experts from private industry, public accounting, legislative bodies and academia. These individuals participated in the two-day summit with the objective of identifying key issues impacting the accounting, finance and audit professions, as well as potential solutions.

The group focused on four overall issues: the state of the accounting, finance and audit professions; recruitment and retention in the post-reform era; preparing tomorrow's workforce and adapting to today's global business environment. Notable was a call for rethinking traditional recruitment and retention strategies and improving collaboration between business and academia.

Following is a summary of some of the council's chief findings and recommendations for preparing tomorrow's workforce.

Closing Knowledge Gaps

To succeed in tomorrow's accounting, finance and audit environments, council members said practitioners need a wider range of skills than at any time in recent memory. Well-developed financial and technology abilities remain essential, but strong interpersonal and analytical skills are increasingly crucial for success. The emphasis on interpersonal, or "soft," skills has grown as the work of accounting, finance and audit professionals has become both more complex and more integral to business success.

Council members were united in their belief that universities cannot adequately prepare students on their own. Colleges can lay the groundwork for success by helping students build an array of technical and soft skills and, even more importantly, by nurturing in them the ability to learn how to learn. In addition, employers must continue to play a key role by providing additional training and mentoring opportunities to accelerate professional learning and growth. And, industry associations can help practitioners at all levels close knowledge gaps.

CHIEF FINDING: Enhancing Communication Skills

Strong communication skills were singled out as among the most essential interpersonal attributes for new entrants to accounting, finance and audit. Innovative universities have already begun addressing this need by adding a communications component to their curricula and grading students on their oral and written communication skills, in addition to their mastery of technical concepts.

New entrants to the workforce...