Careers

Workplace/Workforce Forecasts For The Coming Year

As the economy picks up, employers may face a shortage of skilled labor. Unprecedented churning in the labor marketplace will begin by mid-year. Skilled labor shortages in the United States will move even more jobs to other countries, where workers will improve their skills to perform new tasks. More people will become independent contractors, selling their services to employers on a project or set-term basis. This movement will expand the work of specialized staffing firms and electronic job boards.
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Education & Careers

Three Critical Elements of a Successful Job Search

Any marketing guru will tell you, the success of a product launch depends on the quality of its advertising message, its exposure to a targeted audience and the skill of its sales presenters. If any one of those critical elements is missing, revenues fall short of corporate goals. Likewise, a successful job search requires:A clear marketing message (resume and cover letter) Ample exposure to targeted employersPolished interview skills to secure the job offer.Fall short on either of the three, and an extended, lengthy job search is the result.
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Practice Management

IRS Auditing Corporate Executive Compensation Packages

Some of America’s largest companies are being advised to ramp up their internal auditing efforts in anticipation of an Internal Revenue Service audit of executive compensation packages.Two dozen companies are already under the microscope with IRS auditors pouring over records covering corporate perks such as stock options, corporate jets, luxury apartments and other benefits, the Associated Press reported Friday. The IRS is not ruling out the auditing of executives’ personal returns as well."Executive pay packages have become much more complex.
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Education & Careers

Strategic Vision - All Firms Need It

This article provided by Gary Boomer, CPA, of Boomer Consulting. Vision is important if your firm plans to grow and prosper. The large firms spend considerable resources on visioning and strategic planning. Building consensus and gaining input from staff, managers, and owners is important. Perhaps your firm is smaller and doesn’t feel it can spend the resources on strategic planning. Based upon what the well-managed firms do, at a minimum, your firm should have a one-page strategic plan with measurable goals.
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Education & Careers

Career Networking Tips and Ideas

Networking is a matter of maintaining relationships with people who can assist you in your future professional objectives. These people could be bosses, coworkers, subordinates, competitors or golfing buddies. The following is a short list of tips to assist you in maintaining a viable professional network. Make a conscious decision of with whom you want to keep in contact for your network. Choose quality over quantity. Don't feel the need to network with people who can't assist in furthering your career. Remember that every contact you make can be important.
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AccountingWEB Life

How to Stay Motivated Day in and Day Out

By Kerry L. Johnson, Ph.D. It's 8am on Monday morning. You had a great weekend and wish it didn't have to end. Last week was finished with a bang but today you just don't feel the same motivation to win. As a result you walk in the office and immediately read your mail. Then you talk to another salesperson for an hour while sipping coffee. It's almost time for lunch. You avoid propsecting for customers due to the lack of time available before you eat. You're back at 1:30pm and realize you have a couple of letters to write. It's time to go home. You just wasted a day.
174
Community News

Tips For Creating an Effective Employee Incentive Program

By Lisa A. Rozycki, Marketing Director, Reinsel & Company LLPEditor's Note: In an article published on AccountingWEB, Lisa Rozycki described how employee incentive programs can "Bring out the Best in Your Firm." Following up on this topic, Ms.
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Community News

Survey Reveals Clients Deeply Dissatisfied With Professional Service Providers

Despite efforts at reform brought about by corporate governance concerns and the Enron accounting scandal, corporate executives remain deeply dissatisfied with the work product provided by their accounting, legal, IT and other consultants according to a new survey. As a result, according to the survey, 1 in 9 professional services or consulting relationships could be terminated in the next 12 months.
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Tax

Recruiting And Training Tax Preparers

By: Charles E. McCabeWhen I began my career in the tax business over 30 years ago, getting good tax preparers was not very difficult. My employer, H & R Block, Inc., had developed their income tax school a few years earlier as an ingenious method of recruiting and training tax preparers to support their rapid expansion. As a district manager and later a regional director, I was able to find plenty of good people who were willing to pay to take the Basic Income Tax course with no guarantee of employment.
333
Education & Careers

CEOs Concerned About Threats to Their Corporate Reputation

In a new national study of nearly 200 American chief executive officers, 81% expressed concern over threats to their corporate reputations, citing customer service problems, financial irregularity, negative press coverage and employee misconduct as among the issues that have the greatest potential to damage their corporate reputation."The clear message today is that CEOs live in a fishbowl," noted Christopher Komisarjevsky, president and chief executive officer, Burson-Marsteller worldwide.
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Practice Management

Strong Manager-Employee Relationship Key to Worker Satisfaction, Survey Finds

Getting along with the boss is more important than pay or benefits when it comes to happiness at work, a new survey suggests.
101
Education & Careers

Job Market For 2004 College Grads Shows Improvement

The college Class of 2004 may reap the benefits of an improving job market, but results of a new survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) show it's unlikely the better outlook will translate into big starting salary offers. In an earlier NACE survey, employers projected hiring 12.7 percent more new college graduates in 2003-04 than they hired in 2002-03, the first projected increase since 2000-2001.
169
Education & Careers

The Resume Pyramid: Building a Great Resume From the Top Down

If you have experienced writer’s block while trying to construct your resume, you might find it helpful to think of your resume as a three-layered pyramid. All the elements of an effective resume will fit within those three layers. Layer #1: The Pyramid Pinnacle: Your Job FocusThe top layer of the pyramid is your career focus—the starting point of a great resume. Think of a focused resume as the opposite of a one-size-fits-all resume.
230
Education & Careers

Finding Ways To Make Your Employees Intrapreneurs

by Joyce GioiaIn our everyday work, we talk to a lot of people about what they want in their careers. It seems that many people--especially the young people we talk to--tell us that they're pretty happy doing what they're doing right now, but that eventually, they want to do their own thing. They want to own their own businesses. After all, that's the American Dream, right? Everybody wants to own his or her own business? Aren't entrepreneurs the kind of people who are most celebrated in our culture, these days, corporate or otherwise?
145
Education & Careers

AAA President-Elect: Accounting is Sexy Again

Jane Mutchler is bullish on accounting, and sees a bright silver lining on the corporate scandals of the last couple of years.
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Education & Careers

Ten Preconditions To Personal Development

Reprinted with Permission from "The Goals Guy". Intellectual Curiosity - A passion to understand the changing forces swirling around you, an eagerness to learn them faster, and a recognition that learning is an unending journey. Humility - A pervasive acknowledgement that no one can have all the answers. You must have a willingness to learn from others. Self-Criticism - A logical extension of humility. A constant questioning of conventional wisdom and a keen awareness that success invariably sows the seeds of failure.
125
Education & Careers

2004 Salary Guide Now Available

Average starting salaries next year for accounting and finance professionals should remain consistent with 2003 levels, according to the just-released 2004 Salary Guide from Robert Half Finance & Accounting and Accountemps. Additionally, experienced accountants who can help businesses improve cash flow and address new reporting requirements will be in demand, research shows.“While salary levels overall will likely remain stable, candidates with highly sought-after skill sets may see modest gains in compensation,” said Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International.
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Education & Careers

What Recruits Want to Know

By Phyllis Weiss Haserot With retention issues a significant cause for concern at most firms, it is useful to follow the trends on what job candidates are looking for. What kinds of questions are they more likely than previously to ask? Knowing what's on their minds enables interviewers to prepare responses and to push for reasonable changes that will make the firm more attractive to desirable recruits.
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Education & Careers

AARP Survey Finds Most Americans Plan on Working Into 70s

A recent nationwide survey conducted by the AARP of 2,001 workers, between the ages of 50 and 70 years old found that many workers plan to continue working well beyond the customary retirement age of 65.Findings reveal that most workers still adhere to the traditional image of retirement, such as spending more time with loved ones and receiving pension and Social Security benefits. It was also uncovered that the majority of respondents said that their personal definition of retirement includes some form of work.
122
Practice

Overcoming Attendance Problems: Free Report

"Overcoming Attendance Problems" shines the legal spotlight on mistakes managers can make - and how to avoid them - when dealing with absenteeism and tardiness problems, especially regarding Family and Medical Leave Act and Workers' Comp requirements, along with pitfalls that exist when absenteeism decisions bump up against other anti-discrimination laws.Every time an employee takes an unexpected day off, it not only disrupts your company's schedule, it also wastes company cash.Plus, you have to deal with complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Family and Medical Leave
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Pages

Voice of the Editor

What would you do if one of your clients won the lottery? We asked several accountants to weigh in with their advice for the lucky Powerball winner, and the tips we received are useful for anyone who receives a windfall, whether it's a lottery win, an inheritance, a big bonus on the job, or a killing in the stock market.
Read more
Gail Perry, CPA
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, AccountingWEB
editor@accountingweb.com
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