The R Words A Look at Recruitment & Retention.

Recruitment and retention are the backbone to the longevity of any successful organization--CPA firms included. When checking in with the state of those renowned "r" words amongst CalCPA firms, we discovered the focused effort of a few firms to offer specific internship slots to community college students. We dug a little deeper and asked questions about these efforts, as well as general recruitment and retention best practices. In doing so, we spoke to: . Keith Hamasaki, Director, KROST; CalCPA LA Chapter First Vice President (KH)

* Michelle Lee, Pasadena City College Professor (ML)

* Sara Gregor, National Campus Recruiting Manager, Armanino LLP (SG)

* Johanna Sweaney Salt CPA CGMA; Partner; Gray, Salt & Associates, LLP (JSS)

What is the biggest recruitment obstacle your firm encounters?

KH Finding the right talent. This is more than just finding people to do the work. We're looking for teammates who support each other and can grow and develop into the CPA profession. Finding those types of teammates is difficult because it requires more than just the GPA,

At the community college, our biggest obstacle is firms seeing us as a worthwhile recruiting pipeline and therefore making a commitment of time and finances.

SG It's very much a candidate market, so we're competing a lot with other firms. A big obstacle is the competition.

JSS. Finding well rounded, qualified staff-there seems to be an ever-growing gap of students lacking the soft skills that are necessary for client interactions that go along with working in a small firm.

Community colleges are not traditionally schools that firms focus on when it comes to outreach and internships. Why is your firm involved here? KH When I was in college, I started recruiting with accounting firms late because I worked 32-35 hours per week. I found myself struggling to catch up, and my classmates struggled because they were transfer students. I had a mission that just because these students started later, doesn't mean they have to miss out on the opportunities that four-year university students are afforded. Since I've been with KROST, we've had this community college program, in partnership with professors Michelle Lee and Barron Yanaga, designed to help students understand and get to know the profession so, when they do start recruiting, after they transfer they can hit the ground running. What's different about KROST's community college internship and externship is that we don't expect to give these...