Revolutionaries for Hire - accounting firms can now recruit from dot-com sector - Industry Overview - Statistical Data Included

California CPA, Nov, 2001 by DEANNA McCRARY

CPAs Capitalize on Dot-Com Demise

Less than a year ago,

San Francisco's streets south of Market, home to hundreds of dot-coms, were brimming with young, pierced-and-tattooed professionals swaggering to loft work spaces, soy lattes in hand, humming a tune along the lines of Queen's "We Are the Champions." The technology revolution had embraced Gen. X and Y by the tens of thousands and funneled their enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirits and yes, naivete, into the most potentially gratifying--and riskiest--venture in U.S. business history: the dot-com. All the while, California's CPA recruiters bemoaned the difficult task of recruiting bright, young talent to a profession decidedly famous for NOT allowing you to bring your pet to work.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

Today when you walk through those streets, many of the java stops are gone and "for rent" has replaced "IPO" as the mantra of the day. Even the weekly magazine that chronicled the dramatic highs and lows of the Internet economy, the Industry Standard, closed its doors for good at the end of September. And morbid-sounding Web sites have sprouted up, such as Ghostsites, www.disobey.com/ghostsites, which features the The Museum of E-Failure that details the industry's demise by archiving the home pages of sites that have bit the market dust.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the demise, however, is the huge number of people who suddenly have found themselves out of work. By the beginning of the summer, 64,983 dot-com employees had been laid off in 2001--compared to 3,315 dot-com layoffs from January through May 2000. This is an increase of 58 percent from the 41,214 layoffs in all of last year, according to research reported by the Industry Standard.

CAPITALIZING ON THE DEMISE

Now that so much talent is back in the pool-of-consideration, can CPAs gather some into the fold and solve their hiring woes? Many California CPAs say that while it's still a challenge to find top candidates for senior positions, the dot-com demise has provided plenty of candidates for entry-level and junior management posts.

"Recruiters are looking at us much more actively as a place to fill spots," says CPA Joel Freedman, vice president of finance for San Francisco-based McKesson, the world's largest supply management and healthcare information technology company. "We also are seeing many more quality candidates coming through than we did before, which certainly is related to what is happening in the dot-com industry."

Freedman sees this time as a win-win opportunity for CPA firms, industry and former dot-com employees alike. Firms and companies now can fill spots with more qualified candidates than they might have settled for during the height of the Internet rush, Freedman explains. And, former dot-com employees now have the opportunity to build a solid, secure and lasting career.

"The dot-coms were flashes--meteorites that burned out," says Rich Laveroni, personnel director with Oakland-based Rooney Ida Nolt & Ahern. "The accounting profession should capitalize on that." He adds that his firm would happily welcome former dot-com employees as long as they are qualified and indicate a sincere desire to stick around for awhile.

ROLLING OUT THE WELCOME MAT

"It's another new world," says Richard Blake, managing partner of Palo Alto-based Pearson Del Prete & Co. LLP. "The pendulum has swung." And it seems to be swinging in a better direction for small CPA firms like Blake's.

Within the last three years, Blake says his 16-member firm has had more turnover than in the 20 preceding years combined. And, he had to offer three rounds of raises within a seven-month period to block the exits. Still, he lost a key senior employee to a dot-com.

"She was offered the same salary she was offered here, plus stock options, but working half the time," recalls Blake. "I told her that if they had another opening I'd like to take it! How can you say no to that?"

Last year his firm relied on temporary agencies for help during tax season. "At one point we hired anybody that could walk and chew gum, we were so desperate for people. We felt that a live body was better than no body at all."

But times have changed. To his surprise, Blake notes that two people recently contacted him, unsolicited, asking for permanent tax season work and he had six other interviews set up for a single day in September.

"That just didn't happen last year," Blake says. He adds that not only does he hardly have time to interview all the available candidates, but candidate quality also has increased. "I'm getting people with experience, which was not what I was getting before. Now I'm getting people who weren't just accounts payable or receivable people, these people actually have a year or two of tax preparation, which is just great." Perhaps most telling: the senior employee who was swept away by dot-com fever returned to his firm earlier this year.

Tony Rose, CEO of Rose, Snyder & Jacobs, a 28-employee firm in Encino, says that his firm would consider former dot-coin employees if they had at least some basic bookkeeping skills, and a record of not skipping around too much from job to job.