Based upon the title, I’ll bet most of the readers of this blog are thinking of far off places.  I’m thinking of Orange County.  I’m thinking about hiring finance and accounting professionals in Orange County. If you are hiring Finance and Accounting professionals in Orange County you’d better be thinking Globally.  The reason is that there simply aren’t enough graduates in the business programs in the US to fill the demand.  If you want to have an excellent department, you will need to hire non-US born professionals.

            I recently read a book entitled, “The Next 100 Years,” in it, the author predicts that one of the biggest threats to productivity in the US will be population decline.  We don’t have to wait 100 years; did you know that 75% of all members of the AICPA are forecasted to retire between now and 2020?  To make matters worse, the Accounting Professors are aging faster than the Accountants!  Even today we can’t train enough Accountants to keep up with demand.  The capacity of the accounting programs will be impacted as these professors retire.

            Every year I speak at the local universities and when I go there I find the students more and more international.  These are the students at UCI, Cal State, UCLA, etc.  At the local chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants Chapter in Orange County we recruited two top accounting students from CSU Fullerton to help with our meeting and we got one from China and one from Indonesia.  Great people!  Really sharp!  Very international!  In my recruiting firm we are so convinced that much of the best talent in the future will be from outside the US we starting a networking group called International Professionals in Finance and Accounting (IPFA).  We have to build relationships and learn to evaluate candidates that are very different than those that grew up in the USA.  When we get past the cultural differences, we find very well trained professionals who are hungry and willing to work for reasonable compensation.

            I think the hiring managers have the same challenge.  You will need to get used to diversity.  Be more flexible.  Read about cultures.  Travel.  We recently challenged one of our clients to consider an international candidate who is excellent but would require sponsorship of an H-1 Visa.  It was their first time.  The application was successful (the candidate paid the legal and filing fees) and the client could not be happier!  Think Globally!

 

Ken Tudhope

Project Pro Search

ktudhope@projectprosearch.com