With the accounting pipeline drying up, the profession is throwing all kinds of things at the wall to recruit young people hoping just one of them might stick. One such venture is Accounting+, a Gen Z-ified recruiting site brought to you by the Center for Audit Quality that might give young people the impression that the profession is far less Caucasian than it actually is if you believe the images on the front page (you shouldn’t).
Financial Times wrote about Accounting+ recently which is how it got on our radar. Read:
Its website emphasises how technology and artificial intelligence has automated many old accounting tasks, opening up avenues for more creative work such as data analysis, advising on business decisions and hunting down fraud. (The site also offers quizzes and astrological advice on which type of accountant youngsters may want to become. Gemini, Libra and Aquarius are the “thinkers, communicators and doers of the zodiac” who “analyse, synthesise, and probe” and “would thrive in a forensic accounting internship program”, for example.)
The Accounting+ campaign echoes Warren Buffett in calling accounting “the language of business”.
“We believe this is a tie for students of colour, that it is the language of business and provides a pathway to entrepreneurship,” said Liz Barentzen, vice-president at the CAQ. The group believes that increasing the numbers coming into the profession depends on widening its appeal to diverse communities.
“There is a generation coming up that places a premium on a diverse and inclusive workforce, but we do not have that story to tell yet,” Barentzen said.
Perhaps we are just bitter elderly millennials (I am) to find this whatever the opposite of effective is but is this the best we can do? What Kind of Accountant Should You Be quizlets?
Anyway I guess this is what we’re doing now. Accounting may be the language of business but starting salaries tell us that accounting isn’t very fluent which is why analytics, finance, and tech are winning the competition for young talent thus far. Hey, at least there’s job security.
People of Colour??? What are they, British?
We don’t want diversity we want more money!