I had the pleasure of launching a scholarship awards program in Pristina, Kosovo a couple of weeks ago. The intention was to offer two accounting students the underwriting of training for their technical skills and to provide career development opportunities for them: for one year.
I’ve learned over the years that not every accountant sets out with the ambition of recording history for their entire careers. These trainee professionals want their work to have impact, they want to help; but they are not the kind of characters that naturally gravitate towards sales and marketing disciplines. They are still technicians.
Given that Kosovo’s economy is a transitional one, students aren’t blessed with the resource or support to develop a more commercial mindset but then even in the US and UK, where do you go to learn about supporting your clients beyond compliance? The institutes? The associations? The networks? Not really.
An accountant in practice finds themself unwittingly in a strange juxtaposition.
On the one hand, they want to serve their clients, be proactive, leave a legacy and on the other; they’re part of a profession that spends very little time developing those abilities in them, especially when some new tax legislation is about to land.
My thoughts then turned to the readers of this article. If I was a junior accountant in your firm, what would I be coached to become: a worker ant? A client manager? An advisor?
We say that the recruitment of talent is tough for the average firm in accounting and no doubt that’s true.
- Do we ever explore the reasons why?
- Why would a talented person want to work for your firm?
- What’s on offer?
- What’s the career path?
- What are the career development opportunities?
- What are the reasons not to leave and join another firm?
If you’re in a partnership, there’s an agenda item for you for the next partner’s meeting. If you’re a sole practitioner, there’s a discussion point for the mirror in the bathroom when you get home.
It shouldn’t need a scholarship program like mine, to get young professionals to be commercially focussed on their careers. It should be the culture inside your firm.
To your success
Martin Bissett
