CA Magazine: Afraid of the "L" word!
This month's CA magazine features a mention of Stefano Picone, CA, founder of mycasite, but before you can read that you may read the following unrelated trainwreck of a paragraph - read it and guess what went wrong here:
"Firms only interested in training CA students who wish to practise
public accounting but lack the audit hours to do so should also
consider hiring experienced CA students who have already completed the
required chargeable audit hours at another firm. CA students can
complete their practical experience requirements for qualification at
your firm and may be eligible to practise public accounting. The
current economic situation has resulted in the availability of a number
of experienced CA students ready and able to take on new opportunities."
Did you see it?
Avert your eyes children!
Did they just casually say "current economic situation"?
I'm sorry, I think the editors must have accidentally hit "find and replace" on the more technical term EPIC SMACKDOWN OF LAYOFFS.
The scarring from cutbacks takes a while to heel. It leaves people more finely attuned to what they've experienced, even after things have stablized, so that's no doubt what they saw in that casual paragraph.
May the brain trust suggest rewording that paragraph to something a little more direct?
"Do you need staff? Don't worry - a fair-value adjusted consignment of kids a year out of university were released back into the job market like under-sized sea bass last year, in a wave of firings and layoffs to respond to a recession that had already run its course."
To be fair, it's not like CA magazine hasn't mentioned layoffs before - three of the five hits in a search of the online magazine site came up in 2009. Oh wait, one of those hits is a duplicate, so it's actually two of four unique occurrences of the word.
And they don't really address the pain of students who thought they had it made, but suddenly found themselves floundering. Well, at least they did mention the resources available at My CA Site which survived some silliness with the ICAO while at the same time getting official recognition of a sort from CA Magazine.
Perhaps you wouldn't even consider the layoffs epic - if you managed to survive them.
After all, fortunately things have stabilized since the complete disaster known as 2009's job market for CA students. But even if your job survived the cuts, there's now not enough people to manage the remaining workload. Your newfound job security is no doubt of the perverse kind which no doubt makes you confusedly exclaim "Um, hurray...?"
So jeers for the timid "corporatese" language, but kudos to CA Magazine for recognizing young CAs making their own way in the world, and for being brave to climb ladders tall enough to be able to take a photo of Stefano and then print it.