Accounting managers see more of a skills gap than new hires do

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How prepared are new accountants to enter the workforce? Depends on who you ask.

Early-career accountants tend to think their skills are pretty solid, according to a new survey by the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS). Their managers, you may be surprised to hear, don’t exactly agree.

ICPAS surveyed 185 staff with five years’ experience or less in accounting and finance, and 285 managers who supervised early-career accounting and finance staff. Across a set of 37 skills, early-career accountants rated themselves an average of 7.39, on a 10-point scale. But the managers gave the new accountants an average of just 4.95 across the board. On every single skill, new accountants rated themselves higher than managers did.

Managers felt that newer hires were weakest in areas related to critical thinking and initiative. They gave them particularly low marks on topics such as making decisions independently under pressure (3.96 rating) or without explicit instructions (4.08), finding answers (4.6) and knowing when to ask for help versus researching on their own (4.13), and drawing conclusions from data (4.37).

The tables, they turneth: But are early-career staff getting the support they need to increase their skills? Here, ICPAS uncovered another perception gap: Managers were far more likely than early-career staff to say they gave feedback on every topic ICPAS asked about. For instance, 59% of managers said they discussed “taking initiative or problem solving” with employees. Only 21% of early-career staff said they’d gotten feedback in that area. Four in ten said they gave feedback on “professionalism or workplace etiquette.” Just 8% of staff agreed.

Accountants might be suffering from a failure to communicate. But managers do seem to understand what entry-level staff are going through. In interviews with ICPAS, they said that new hires face higher expectations than they themselves did, and that new staff are given less of a grace period for getting up to speed. Soft skills, the managers said, are now being prioritized alongside technical skills such as Excel proficiency.