Recruiting the Best Accounting Students in a Tight Market: Some Guidance

Sharon L. Kimmell, DBA, CPA (Inactive), and Pamela K. Keltyka, PhD, and Emeka Ofobike, PhD, CPA, CMA

Thanks to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002 and the decline in the number of accounting majors during the late 1990s, the demand for top accounting graduates currently exceeds the supply. As a result, many firms are having a difficult time filling their staffing needs (“Tight Job Market Can Mean Increased Workloads for Accountants,” AccountingWeb.com, June 16, 2006. There are many factors that firms must consider if they want to be competitive and successful in hiring recent accounting graduates. Some of the suggestions detailed below may seem obvious, but a survey conducted by the authors indicates that such recruiting practices are not universally practiced by firms.