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If you're not familiar with CA firms, you may be a little surprised to know that there's such a thing as "recruiting season." Employers will come around university and college campuses during set times of the year - both in Canada and the US - to interview potential employees en masse . The phenomenon of ‘campus visits’ is especially pronounced in the US where there’s a plethora of colleges to visit - smaller campuses often miss out on visits from the Big Four and students who want to get noticed with an in-person interview end up having to travel to a campus visit taking place at another larger school. A reader asks what to do if you had the misfortune to miss out on recruiting season - or were simply unsuccessful in the hunt for a position . Above: Non-big-four recruiting poster in Buffalo's airport. Photo credit: Krupo (as usual) I'm grouping both scenarios together because the methods of dealing with either scenario are ultimately the same. Figure out what...
One reader asked a clever question to one of my recent posts about the market's job situation: Just out of curiosity, how much lay offs are there in the accounting firms? What is causing all these lay offs? I thought the CA firms had a shortage of workers and they were hiring like crazy? I’m not really in the accounting field, so I guess I’m behind on the new… Layoffs are caused by an excess supply of employees, and an insufficient demand for their work - same as in any company. How many layoffs are there and what's causing them? The short answer to both is, "it depends." If you live in a region where there's lots of work, layoffs aren't happening. If you're in a region where some or all audit firms lost business, you'll be looking at 2 to 20 people in a given city's office. Yes, I can't give you a hard number, just some ballpark estimates, and that's because it's all spread around. So much so that when someone hazards a firm number, hecklers...
The TTC's workers are threatening to go on strike again next month, the CBC reports . The rather angry comments left in response jive with me to some extent, though my reaction is muted by the fact I've seen how much idiocy the drivers have to put up with. Part of the TTC union's campaign is to divide the public transit service's economic value by the number of employees and to settle on the result as the employee's value added. Before the economists in the audience bust a gut laughing or just have an aneurysm explode all over their monitors, this quote from the above page's comment list nails the fault in that logic: Do the TTC employees honestly beleive that they are each worth a million dollars? Who are they kidding? I work for a company that has revenues of 346 Billion. With 40,000 employees, does that make me worth $8,650,000.00? Well put. Having said that, some of the TTC's employees do a hard job while still showing customers a polite and friendly face...
Bill Kennedy wrote an amusing post posing the question, are there any good accounting games out there for Xbox? Being a partisan PC gamer of sorts, my answer is, "are there any good games out for Xbox?" Seriously, you'll have to pry my mouse and keyboard out of my cold dead hands. If you're trying to interest your kids in business, the AAA "Tycoon" titles are, however, where it's at, as are titles like Simcity. Anything where you manage some sort of economy is the current pinnacle of 'awesome'. You could make an intelligent case for the original Railroad Tycoon and Simcity pushing me down the road towards my CA. Railroad Tycoon, and it's two strong sequels RRT2 and RRT3, have you in the role of a tycoon trying to make a fortune with railroads - had you guessing there, didn't I? Originl RRT, being a vintage 1990 game, was relatively basic, but the strong gameplay was there. You needed to make more money than you spent, had to decide on financing...
Funny, without an audience giving you feedback, you write about what strikes your fancy and will hopefully appeal to people. With people telling you what's on their mind, though, you can apply a laser-like focus on what interests them instead. This assumes you have something intelligent or useful to share about their interests. And so thanks JC , for revealing that at least one person out there finds the things Neil and I write about somewhat useful . JC's question, posted on Neil's blog, was regarding the 'slow season'. Someone new to the profession will think, quite logically, if you have a 'busy season', then perhaps you may have little or nothing to do during the slow season. At the risk of making some broad, sweeping generalizations, I'll tackle this question by drawing upon many years of busy seasons, both from my personal experience and those of others who have shared their stories with me over time. Before jumping into a few myths or scenarios, I'll...
I seem to have a new fan, which is always good news. Well, perhaps a little less so when you hear things like this sent to you by e-mail. "So, what kind of person has all that pent-up rage, hostility and bitterness, but doesn't have the guts to allow others to comment to his posts?" I don't know the answer to that question, really, since comments have always been enabled on any site I've been posting to. Regardless, I'm glad to join the esteemed club of people who are accused of pent-up rage, hostility and bitterness - although I haven't yet scored "accountant hater, a malcontent, ... (or) Sage of Omaha " . I don't think there's anything "pent-up" about my rage, as I'm quite liberal in dispensing it when necessary. Perhaps I'm generally quite happy which is why it doesn't appear very often as I don't get a chance to get really upset too frequently. But then, this isn't about the ad hominem attacks on me, it's...
Easy answer. This one. My first response to his associated related "Recruit Genie" site was "BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA" coupled with, "was this designed by a 12 year old with too much time on his hands?" "Strange as it may seem, employees don't have many free speech rights, especially when it comes to making negative, public comments about their current employer. That's just fine with us..." No. No. Stop. Which former Soviet Republic did you grow up in? How many cold winters did you experience in Siberia? Yes, badmouthing your boss is not something that's a Good Idea, but coming out like the all-knowing Oracle with your own commentary is worse than amateur. It looks like the sit is really a Borat DVD easter egg or something similar. It gets funnier, though. This is worse than the sales pitches I attempted for my college newspaper back in the day: Job posts are always free, but you can enhance your presence and your recruitment brand with an inexpensive...
Some young man - for all I know, he could even work in the same building as me - writes about his personal finances, and considers the Toronto real estate situation . He identifies two groups of buyers, young urban professional types, and older boomers who want a maintenance-free lifestyle. Well, there's another group - foreign (and domestic) investors who then rent out the pads. And I glare angrily at them for keeping up demand on the market, which keeps prices from slumping in the face of the construction boom gripping the city. Like me, he doesn't like the prices much, nor the condo fees - bleh. And apparently taxes on units are going up super-high, which is only good if you're not living there - at least all those rich young folks and investors give the city something back. You'd think all this construction would slacken off prices, but no. That ECO100 lesson I'll always remember is the one where our professor point out that although condos may appreciate in value...
Francine is continuing her probing look into how the profession operates by taking a look at starting pay . Before we dive headlong into that issue, some personal observations. If you study long and hard, you certainly want to be fairly compensated. Having said that, is studying business really hard? Not really. Lots of the clever people I know burdened themselves with extra course loads or extracurriculars to add some real challenge to their university program. I mean, we're not studying quantum mechanics, or trying to score high marks in chemistry or biology. We're learning about inventory cycles, double entry bookkeeping and how to both fix and break these sorts of things - yay audit. But, there's a high demand for people with a schooling in basic business acumen, which inflates salaries - both of the Commerce grads, and of their instructors. High pay for instructors in Management Faculties translates into higher tuition. If your friends are paying yearly tuition of, say...
Neil has a fun little conversation going on the topic of the 2007 UFE . The discussion branched off into the question of why Ontario did worse than the national average and what could be done to improve matters. Could forcing candidates into a 2-year program improve matters? Paul says no, " Low provincial/regional pass rates are always hard to swallow and can undoubtedly be improved by increasing the amount of screening and the length of the education period prior to allowing a UFE candidate to write for the first time. However, I question whether a higher UFE pass rate would make the program more attractive to potential entrants. After all, what’s the benefit of making it easier to get THROUGH the UFE if it makes it harder to get TO the UFE in the first place?" Assuming pass rates of 80, 80 and 75% on the three exams, the average first year writer has a 48% chance of passing, and Paul says that this is still better than the 0% chance you have of "passing" in your first...
Over at one of the discussion forums I visit there was a heated debate about the reason for the higher prices of goods in Canada, despite the fact that the Canadian dollar has hit parity with that of the Americans. The debate spilled over into other various fun topics, including taxes and healthcare. One person commented that taxes have little to do with price differences, "The fact that anyone thinks that stuff like health care and taxes have anything to do with price difference, they deff need to go back to school. You don't add taxes to the price of a car until after you buy it. So this argument about health care and taxes is totally irrelevant to this thread." I decided to respond to that comment, and to then turn my response into a full-blown post. If this was only about the exchange rate difference, that comment would be correct. If you take this debate to be more all-encompassing, the cost of doing business has to be considered as well. Remember that you're not...
I recently wrote about new Moore movie and the effect it would have on medical tourism. Of course, that's not what people really seem to care about, given the discussions that have arisen. The funny thing is that I find myself explaining the Canadian system to others in various forums now, the same way I used to explain Catholic faith to overtly hostiles members of other faith groups. Seems like our new comment server has a word limit, though, so here's part 2 of my response to the comment I was given. In Canada our health care system is composed of many NFP NGO's. Some are run/owned/sponsored by church organizations. St. Mike's and St. Joe's in Toronto come to mind, but there are many more. Your suggested solution is actually pretty much what we do. The difference being that the "large catastrophe accounts" you propose are more simply enacted by collecting taking the cash through our taxes. This means that the richer citizens will generally subsidize the...