Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

Accountancy Prospects 2011

by
6th Jan 2011
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Accountancy is faring well during the economic downturn with demand for staff up significantly year-on-year and competition fierce for new recruits.

Organisations looking to become more efficient and drive business growth strategies are keen to recruit accountants to help them get there.

According to new data released by Reed, demand for new accountancy staff is up 11% for pre-qualified accountants and 12% for fully qualified accountants compared to December 2009.

This is nearly treble the rise experienced by the economy as a whole with growing demand from the private sector responsible for this increase as new public sector jobs continue to fall to less than half their level of a year ago.

Competition for new roles remains high, but salaries for new accountancy jobs are likely to remain flat in 2011. However, if private sector growth continues, skills shortages will become more apparent to salaries up in the year ahead.

An indication of the demand for top level accountants can be found in The Daily Telegraph's recent Top 10 jobs for 2011, which included both chief financial officer (CFO) and part-qualified accountant roles.

The high value attributed to CFOs and finance directors in the current economic climate goes without saying, but a demand for graduate-level and partly-qualified accountants is also showing growth.

Fewer graduates undertaking accounting training in recent years has caused a talent war for top performers, in particular professionals with two to three years' post-graduate or practical experience.

A recent Marks Sattin survey, meanwhile, suggested that young accountants are shunning Big Four firms. The study found that trainee accountants would rather work for a small to medium-sized accountancy firm because they believed smaller outfits could give them wider experience and more freedom early in their career.

While a question mark hangs over whether high street firms are in a position to pick up the wave of recruits who are shunning the big firms, the Big Four remain aggressive on their recruitment strategy and are pre-empting this trend by targeting school leavers rather than graduates.

Deloitte is setting up a national programme to hire school leavers under a "bright start" scheme due to begin in September. The firm now feels it will be necessary to target school leavers as talented students are rejecting university due to high fees.

Not surprisingly many students are opting to go straight into employment rather than taking on £27,000 of debt for a university course.

The Deloitte scheme is likely to be the first of many corporate higher education programmes which could fundamentally change the way companies recruit young people.

PwC remains bullish on luring graduates and recently reported that up to 8,000 people applied for graduate jobs and internships in 2011. Towards the end of last year PwC head of student recruitment Richard Irwin said the numbers "reflect early signs of confidence in the job market returning amongst students."

More generally the Forum of Private Business (FPB) is predicting a 3% increase in small business employee numbers next year. The FPB said vacancies have outweighed redundancies among small companies taking part in its monthly "economy watch" survey since July last year.

Accountancy has seen some huge changes over the past few years and these early signs of confidence show that the profession continues to be an attractive employment haven during the downturn.

AccountingWEB.co.uk resources for job hunters

Find your next role on jobs.accountingweb.co.uk.

Tags:

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.