If anyone can sell the lucrative but often misunderstood and seemingly unglamorous accounting specialties of tax and audit, it is executive recruiter Anthony Santiago.
The “tax profession is not what people expect. It’s very interesting and essential to a company’s profitability,” says Santiago, who founded TaxSearch Inc., a 30-year-old firm focused on recruiting tax professionals.
Despite an ailing national economy and high rates of unemployment, it is tough to fill vacancies in tax departments. Companies are searching for creative candidates who understand business, are comfortable with technology, can master constantly changing tax codes and are willing to travel the globe. Santiago has accounting jobs waiting for qualified people who can earn as much as six figures early in their careers.
The problem is that the profession is overwhelmingly White and approaching retirement age. And there is a shortage of accounting professors with Ph.D.s who can prepare the next generation. Now, says Santiago, “We have a knowledge drain going out the door, which is a big problem, and we’ve got to supplement it.”
To help reverse the faculty deficit, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) has created the new Accounting Doctoral Scholars program by pooling more than $17 million and soliciting commitments from more than 70 of the nation’s largest accounting firms and several state CPA societies. Tax and audit are “the areas of greatest shortage,” said Dr. Doyle Z. Williams, the program’s executive director.
Williams, like many others in the profession, says a “significant decline” in the number of accounting doctorates has loomed for the past decade and is now acute. He points to aging faculty as a major factor.
Dr. Jerry E. Trapnell is executive vice president and chief accreditation officer at the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). When he surveyed the landscape at this year’s gathering of accounting academics in San Francisco, he saw “a very gray-haired place.”
