What’s the secret to recruiting and retaining the next generation of accountants?
It’s a combination of trust, flexibility and investment, according to the 2024 class of Best Firms for Young Accountants (see the list on page 10).
In a professional landscape stressed by an ongoing talent shortage, fostering an attractive firm culture where young talent wants to work and stay is more important than ever. That involves identifying their needs and wants, which differ from those of previous generations.
Young talent wants the opportunity to grow and to feel trusted by their firms, but they also value work-life balance. They want to feel fulfilled by their professional lives and still have the time to enjoy their personal lives.
While each of the Best Firms for Young Accountants takes its own approach to retaining talent, all of their efforts point to the shared themes of trust, flexibility and professional development.
“Basically anything that needs to cater to your life, we’re up for it because we want to keep our good people, and happy people make happy workers,” said talent and engagement coordinator Kendra Anderson at Rudler, a Fort Wright, Kentucky-based firm with more than 60 employees.
Establishing trust
In a shrinking talent market, the search for new talent is shifting further upstream in the pipeline. Many firms are extending internship offers to college students as young as sophomores and beginning outreach programs to high schools.
Building out a robust internship program is a great way to build for the future, according to Holly Feltenberger, director of talent acquisition and retention at McKonly & Asbury, a Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based firm with over 120 employees: “If you don’t have the students coming in to learn and grow, then you’re going to stagnate, and your employees are going to stagnate and they’re going to be, I think, unhappy.”
Hannis T. Bourgeois’ young professionals group hosts one of its regular social events.
A student’s internship experience is crucial to their decision to stay at the firm. That means training them and trusting them with real work — not just having them push paper. “We expect you to do the same job,” Janice Snyder, assurance and HR partner at McKonly & Asbury, said. “We’re not putting on a show. We want you to know what it’s really like to work here.”
Meanwhile, Austin, Texas-based Maxwell Locke & Ritter focuses its recruiting efforts on experienced hires with five or more years of experience. By focusing on this demographic, new hires require less training than interns and can hit the ground running, clients are better served, engagement teams can be slimmer, and the firm experiences lower turnover.
One significant application of trust is remote work. At Maxwell Locke & Ritter, “We don’t have a policy. We basically tell people to work what’s best for them,” leading partner Kyle Park said. “We expect you to be available and accessible — not only to people inside the firm, but to your clients — and as long as you are, we don’t really care where you’re at. … We treat everyone as a professional. We’re not babysitting or hand-holding anyone.”
Of the firm’s 138 employees, roughly a third are remote and based outside the office’s locality, another third are remote and local, and the remaining third work a range of schedules from hybrid to fully in office.
Meanwhile, WilkinGuttenplan, based in East Brunswick, New Jersey, has employees working across 11 states. Of its 138 employees, “pretty much everybody” is remote unless they choose to work in the office, said talent acquisition and development manager Fatima Sabir.
“People have different obligations outside of work, so we want to make it easy for them,” Sabir said. “That correlates to working parents, but it doesn’t even have to be working parents — it could be anybody. You could be taking care of your own parents. You could have a dog. Whatever the case is, obviously we know these individuals are important to you, even pets.”
Susan Yohn, director of HR at Brown Plus, a 124-person firm in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, explained the benefits of allowing employees the freedom to work from home: “What it has allowed us to do is retain our team members. … We are able to look outside of our geographical region for talent. The talent shortage is real, so we’re able to bring in great talent from different locations.”
Transparent leadership and upper management is also crucial to fostering a culture of trust that retains young accountants. At Brown Plus, leadership is very visible: “For every new hire that comes in, we have a morning mixer for them where people can come down and talk to them and just say hi. We provide breakfast and just kind of get them more acquainted with people in the firm,” Yohn said.
There needs to be a consistent message between what people hear and what people see. Management must practice what they preach. That increases trust and, in turn, opens the door for candid conversations and feedback.
The Brown Plus tax team takes on an escape room challenge.
The Brown Plus Emerging Professionals group facilitates just that. The group is comprised of employees with zero to seven years of experience. Together, they host volunteering and networking events, as well as lunch-and-learns. Once a year, BEP members present their feedback and concerns to the board and offer suggestions for improvement. “Last year, our paid parental leave policy paid for two weeks of paid leave, but they were looking to increase that. So we increased to three weeks of paid leave,” Yohn said.
Groups and committees such as these give young people a stake in the firm without being a stakeholder. Allowing them to contribute ideas and shape the firm fosters a sense of belonging.
Even something as simple as the dress code comes down to trust, too. The best firms all follow a “dress for your day” or “dress to your client” policy. So on days with no meetings, employees are welcome to wear jeans and sneakers, or even shorts and hoodies in some offices. On days they meet with clients, they’re expected to dress to the client’s standard.
“How someone is dressed doesn’t affect how they do their jobs,” McKonly & Asbury’s Snyder said. “When we go to our clients, we dress how they dress. If the client is in suits, we’re in suits. If our client wants us to wear jeans, then we’re going to wear jeans. We’re going to respect their wishes. But when someone’s in our office, it just doesn’t matter.”
Making the investment
Next-generation accountants want their firm to invest in them as much as they’re investing in the firm. That’s why the top Best Firms for Young Accountants all have professional development in common. That can look like reimbursements for continued education, CPE courses and tracking, CPA exam prep, days off for taking the exam, bonuses for passing, and support groups for those studying.
“There’s a lot more to development than just doing a job,” McKonly & Asbury’s Feltenberger said. “There’s a lot more relationally, there’s a lot more emotional intelligence that people have to develop … People don’t realize that.”
At her firm, that looks like interns being assigned a buddy when they start. This is the “baseline,” Feltenberger said. “When you don’t feel comfortable going to your supervisor or direct report, you can ask your buddy questions. You can be a little more open and honest and feel more comfortable.”
Everyone at the firm also receives a direct report — a manager who is personally invested in driving their career and works with partners and leaders to facilitate that employee’s growth — as well as a mentor, whom the employee chooses.
Keeping it real
The focus on mental wellness and enabling work-life balance is perhaps among the most important aspects of what makes these firms the best for young people, who simply want to be treated as human beings.
That means feeling heard and seen. “Bring it on. Tell us what you don’t like,” Snyder said. “I have meetings with younger staff and say, ‘Tell me something you think I don’t want to hear.'”
WilkinGuttenplan utilizes a commitment schedule basis rather than implementing across-the-board hours requirements. Accountants decide on a minimum target of hours worked (billable and nonbillable) that they want to meet through the year. “Do they want to just work that minimum target, or do they want to exceed that minimum target?” Sabir said. “We give them the opportunity to tell us what makes sense for them.”
There, accountants can start their day whenever it works best for them, whether that’s 8 a.m. or 11 p.m., and the firm encourages people to establish boundaries and push back if they are asked to work outside of their set schedule.
“That’s kind of our human approach to everything,” Sabir explained. “When we get on calls, we understand we’re all humans, and it’s a very comfortable environment where you can vocalize and have open communication, candid feedback, everybody truly just understands one another.”
Members of Maxwell Locke & Ritter’s tax team enjoy the annual overnight retreat.
At Rudler, Anderson finds unique ways to plan fun, de-stressing activities for both in-office and remote employees. “Anything that we do in office, I try to make a version of it that caters to the remote people,” she said.
During tax season, for example, they hire a massage company to come to the office, while remote workers get mailed an at-home spa kit. On Valentine’s Day, Anderson took inspiration from nostalgic elementary school years and had employees decorate tissue boxes to collect candy and cards. “Of course one of the guys had to do a beer box,” she joked. “We just try to keep it really lighthearted.”
“Whatever a person needs to flourish mentally, we really try to cater to that,” Anderson continued. “Burnout, we know that’s real. That’s why we do a lot of fun things throughout tax season, like the coffee carts, playing games, weekly bingo, massages.”
These firms also adhere to their core values and make tangible, consistent efforts to demonstrate them.
“We’re flexible. We’re very employee-friendly. By flexible, I mean in terms of working hours — where you work, how you work, that type of thing. Friendly, meaning we want you to live life outside of the office,” Maxwell Locke & Ritter’s Park said. “We have a saying that no success at work is worth failure at home, and you can interpret that however you want it to be.”
“We genuinely care about one another,” Holocombe added. “We care about each other as employees and coworkers, but we really care about each other as people.”
The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.
The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.
In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings.
Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.
Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.
Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed.
The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.
Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition.
Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time.
“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said.
One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load.
“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai.
Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies.
“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.
However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area.
“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai.
As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales.
“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai.
While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves.
“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”