Industry News & Employment Outlook

CPA or MBA?
CPA or MBA? by Dona DeZube The alphabet soup of finance credentials and degrees causes plenty of folks to agonize over pursuing a CPA or MBA. Both the Certified Public Accountant designation and the master of business administration degree may appeal to those who have not yet found their finance niche. What's the difference, and which is better to pursue? The answer depends upon your likes and dislikes, your career direction and, of course, whom you ask. Not surprisingly, Peter Calladine, accreditation services manager at the Association of MBAs, says the MBA is the way to go. Today's commercial world demands more than an accounting qualification, he argues. "With business accelerating in the global marketplace, accountants need to be more commercially aware than ever," he says. "And increasingly, they are looking to the MBA qualification to give them this edge." Some business schools promote their MBA programs to accountants who wish to widen their understanding of business and specific industries, Calladine adds. Not everyone agrees. "I think the CPA is a better credential for someone going into finance than almost any credential, including an MBA, because you get to look at so many different businesses," says Michael Kinsman, PhD, MBA, CPA, a professor at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management. "You really get to see what's happening in the business and to see the structure. You're looked at as someone who has a credential when you get a CPA." Controller or Manager Essentially, the CPA designation empowers you to sign and audit reports, says Neal Ushman, PhD, MBA, associate professor of accounting at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. "If you want to go into auditing and review financial statements, you're going to need a CPA," he says. "If you want to go into banking, I don't think it gives you a comparative advantage." If you want to go into consulting or management for a financial services firm, go with the MBA. "It should give you a broad overview of the business environment and equip you for a wide variety of jobs," Ushman says. "Because our program is for working professionals, most of our students are in their mid- or late 30s, and very few are going to make a career change from finance into accounting. They're getting an MBA to enhance their promotability." Or Do Both To sit for the CPA examination, you'll need 150 hours of education. You may not realize that many states count an MBA and your undergraduate degree toward that total, Kinsman says. If you'd like to get both an MBA and a CPA, start with an undergraduate degree in finance, economics or accounting, and go to work for a public accounting firm. In three years, you can apply to a local MBA program and sit for the CPA exam. Your CPA firm will have the resources you need to study. Plus, you don't want to wait too long before taking the exam. "Someone who's just left undergraduate school will still remember intermediate accounting, unlike someone who is five years out and finished graduate school," Kinsman says. Next, head back to school for that MBA. Go part-time, and stay at your CPA firm either full- or part-time. At a minimum, make yourself available for seasonal work, Kinsman recommends. Where You'll End Up Kinsman sees students who started as securities analysts promoted to associates after gaining MBAs. His MBA students who also earn CPAs often move from assistant controller to controller. "They're seen as highly competent financial professionals," he says. "They've got the ticket." And it's never really too late to go after that CPA or MBA. "I had a student who told me he admired what I did, but he said, 'I'm 35, and I'm too old to get a CPA. I can't afford the time.'" Kinsman convinced him it wasn't too late. The man quit his job to take a position at an accounting firm. He passed the exam and today is one cheerful CPA. The man told Kinsman, "I went through a couple of years of lower pay, but I'm now making $20,000 more than I was, and I have a side job doing work for other clients." Most of all, the former student reported, "I'm happy."
 
Top Grading
Twenty-five percent of people hired and promoted by most companies turn out to be high performers, but using rigorous methods some businesses achieve 90% success. Recently I met with the heads of human resources of Global 100 companies, and in a confidential survey they stated that their companies mis-hired people 80% of the time and mis-promoted people 75% of the time. That's right, HR's chosen methods of selecting talent produce high performers only 20-25% of the time. These appalling statistics have been confirmed in our study of Fortune 500 companies (reported in Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Portfolio, 2005). And yet, many high performing companies achieve 90% success using methods described later in this article; it's taken over 30 years, and assessments of over 6,000 managers for me to refine these methods. Readers of Leadership Excellence know of Jim Collins' compelling plea to "get the right people on the bus," and of Jack Welch's passion for differentiating talent, of getting all A players. I consulted with Jack more than a decade, assessing and coaching senior managers, and he said, "there aren't enough Brad Smarts around, so teach us your methods," - and I did. Two decades later, GE continues to embrace a process that results in 95% high performers identified for promotion. Companies like Lincoln Financial, MarineMax, Barclays Bank, Honeywell, Hillenbrand Industries, and American Heart Association have all improved their hiring and promoting success from 20- 25% up to 75% and most, to 90%. That's 90% high performers. Picture yourself inheriting 10 C players and you are determined to replace them with all A players. Using typical "best practices," you are only 25% successful, so you hire 40, fire 30 of your mis-hires, and finally - after a blood bath - have your A team. That scenario is too bloody, and that's why otherwise talented leaders tend to keep their As and Bs, and only replace Cs. But using topgrading methods, you would enjoy 90% success, so you would hire only 11 people, fire 1, and have your 10 A players. Note that is a 30-1 advantage for the topgrader. What are those topgrading assessment methods? Before describing them, let's return to the Global 100 managers, and the methods used in those companies. Almost all use round-robin, competency interviews, looking for behavioral indicators. Almost all the competency interviews last an hour or less. Topgrading assessment methods are simple to describe, but were hard to do - until Jack Welch approved an innovation. A bit over-simplified, the topgrading method is a 4-hour, chronological interview, with 20 questions about every job - scrutinizing every success, every failure, every key relationship, every performance appraisal, and every method of achieving results. Following the topgrading interview, the candidate organizes reference checks with a minimum of all bosses in the past ten years, and get this: 90% of those references talk, if the candidate is an A player. As Mark Sutton, former Chairman of UBS North America said, "how can a one-hour competency interview compete with a tandem, 4-hour topgrading interview?" What was Jack Welch's innovation? I designed the chronological topgrading interview for GE and trained managers to use it, but Jack initially was a bit disappointed in the quality of reports by GE interviewers. Asked what could improve quality, I said, "simple - use two interviewers rather than one." Topgrading professionals do not need a tandem partner, but for all other leaders, two heads are truly better than one. Jack didn't hesitate to approve the tandem interviewer method, and to this day it is used at GE. Over the years the word got out that "Jack Welch uses the tandem chronological interview," and hundreds of companies have embraced the approach. Do psychological tests work? No, not for hiring upper level managers. There are now 20 topgrading professionals, and we would love to have any test that would add even a little incremental value to the interview. However, most of us are psychologists who used to use tests, and we've all tossed them overboard. With two interviewers, that four-hour interview consumes eight managerial hours, and is it worth it? Our research indicates that the average cost of mis-hiring someone earning $100,000 is $1.5 million. Calculate your own costs of mis-hiring someone; we have yet to hear of a conclusion that the 25% successful competency interview is more cost-effective than the 90% successful topgrading interview. Topgrading companies like those mentioned use the topgrading interview to assess people and systematically ratchet up talent; their stock performance reflects it. The main obstacle to topgrading is the B and C players, Non-As. Our research indicates that in most companies only 25% of the managers are A players or A potentials, and the 75% of the Non-As fight topgrading with more creativity and energy than they ever showed on the job. It takes the courage of a CEO to drive the A player standard, to hire and promote people who turn out to be As, to develop Bs and even Cs to become As, and to redeploy those who fail to become As. CEOs of companies who have topgraded have learned these essential lessons: 1. Topgrade from the top down. A players tend to hire and promote As, Bs favor Bs, and Cs choose Cs. Topgrade your top team, enable them to topgrade the next level, and A players will gradually permeate the organization. 2. Constantly reinforce the A player standard. An A player performance rating should not be for "outstanding performance," but "meets performance expectations." Don't permit slippage in performance reviews, hiring, or promoting. Don't let managers give three and four chances to Non-As. 3. Permit only A players to hire and promote people. Non-As should know they fall short and only when they become As do they get the authority to select talent. In practice that means you conduct tandem topgrading interviews in your organization until you can delegate it to A players. 4. Strive for 100% A players, but be satisfied with 90%. There is always a bit of slippage. For example, a key customer might demand full attention from an account representative, and you want to delay assigning someone until an A player is hired. If you delay any longer, you lose the account, so you put good 'ol Charlie, a B player, on the account because he will keep them happy until an A player is recruited. 5. Measure assessment success. Only 5% of the 600 senior HR executives I've assessed actually measured hiring and promoting success. Topgrading companies assign small teams to carefully judge whether the person hired/promoted turns out to be an A player. As topgrading methods are more broadly used and success grows, peer pressure will assure topgrading methods will be used. Similarly, it takes about half an hour to informally guess at the cost of mis-hiring someone, and companies that go through that exercise conclude, "when we cut corners on topgrading methods we mis-hire more people, and it is very costly!" 6. Train all managers in topgrading methods. There are books, DVDs, and other tools available so that managers don't have to "wing it." In a Six Sigma world, companies have progressed from 100 underperforming parts per million (ppm) to 6, 5, and even 0. And yet those same companies tolerate 750,000 underperforming people, or 75% mis- hires and mis-promotions. There is absolutely no reason for such massive waste and human pain. Any A player manager willing to team up with a tandem partner and conscientiously apply the tandem topgrading interview methods can enjoy a more successful career and a much happier work life working with an A team rather than a mixture of As, Bs, Cs. And their employer will enjoy a talent advantage over the competitors. Brad completed his doctorate in Industrial Psychology at Purdue University, entered consulting, and for more than 25 years has been in private practice as President of Smart & Associates, Inc., based in the Chicago area. Brad is frequently acknowledged to be the world's foremost expert on hiring. He has conducted in-depth interviews with over 6,000 executive. He is author of seven books and videos. Brad has helped companies topgrade by assessing and coaching teams, conducting topgrading workshops, and providing books, handbooks, and videos to help clients topgrade on their own. The resulting improvements in company performance have been featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal and in many Fortune articles.
 
Not Getting Called for Interviews? Investigate Why
by Peter Vogt MonsterTRAK Career Coach Sometimes, it's painfully easy to figure out why you didn't land the interview. Case in point: The 1991 cover letter I wrote to one Mr. Wooward instead of the correctly spelled Mr. Woodward. He sent it back to me with a circle around my fatal mistake. Most of the time, though, it's much more difficult to pinpoint why you're not getting called for interviews. But if it keeps happening, you've got some detective work to do. Here are three key suspects you'll want to investigate, either on your own or with the help of a counselor at your school's career center: Your Resume and Cover Letter Maybe your resume and cover letter aren't laced with mistakes, but if employers find even one or two errors, you're toast. And maybe your resume and cover letter are grammatically perfect, but they won't get you anywhere if they're not persuasive. Examples and specifics are crucial, as are an eye-pleasing design and details regarding your key skills and accomplishments. Finally, if you've been sending out the same resume and cover letter to every employer, you might as well stop wasting your time. In many cases, employers will quickly toss one-size-fits-all documents. The Jobs You're Applying For There is such a thing as aiming too high. If you don't have the skills, experience and credibility a particular job requires, you'll be dismissed from consideration -- quickly. For example, if you're 22 years old and just finishing your bachelor's degree in journalism, you're not going to land an interview for the head writing job at a major daily newspaper. (You guessed it: I foolishly attempted this in 1991.) The Way(s) You're Applying "Consider your channels of distribution," says award-winning speaker and business columnist Elizabeth Freedman, principal of Elizabeth Freedman & Co. and author of The MBA Student's Job Seeking Bible. "For example, are you only applying for jobs on campus or online? If so, you're making things tough on yourself, because when you only apply for jobs through these passive channels, you're competing against lots and lots of people for a single opportunity." You'll be far better off diversifying your job search instead of constantly competing with hundreds or sometimes thousands of other job seekers by restricting yourself to online or print job ads. Remember: It May Not Be You You'll boost your own psyche by remembering job search rejection can be utterly beyond your control. Once in awhile, a company will opt not to fill an open position after all. Sometimes a company already has an internal candidate for the position but is running an ad to cover its bases legally. And much more often than you might realize, rejection isn't so much a case of you not measuring up as it is too many others being exceptional. "It's such a numbers game that sometimes there are lots of ‘perfect' candidates," says Brad Karsh, a former recruiter for advertising giant Leo Burnett and author of Confessions of a Recruiting Director. "It wasn't uncommon for me to get 400 resumes for one job at Burnett. I know there were probably 50 candidates who could do the job, but I could only pick a handful to interview." You can increase your chances of being among this handful of chosen candidates by critically evaluating your job search tactics and tools -- and, if necessary, changing your ways.
 
U.S. staffing stocks dip as jobs report disappoints
Last Update: 10:08 AM ET Jul 7, 2006 NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. job-related stocks fell early Friday after the June jobs report came in well below expectations. The Labor Department reported that the economy added 121,000 jobs in the month, well below economist forecasts for growth of 174,000
 
IPO activity pops in first half
Thu, Jul 6, 2006 2:00 PM EST IPO activity surged in the first half of the year, according to a report released Thursday, with income trust offerings still enjoying popularity. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, almost $4 billion worth of initial public offerings were made on the benchmark Toronto Stock Exchange in the first six months of 2006, representing an increase of almost 50 per cent from $2.6 billion in the comparable period of 2005. The jump came during a period that saw strong market growth sputter and stall in May and June. In terms of the number of IPOs, the first half of this year saw 36, compared to 34 a year ago. Income trusts continued to be popular, accounting for more than half of the total at $2.2 billion, an increase of 22 per cent from the year before. In the first half of 2005, the total value of new income trusts was $1.8 billion. However, the number of offerings did slip, from last year, to 18 from 20. Ross Sinclair, national leader for IPO and income trust services at PwC, pointed out that the value of income trust activity was roughly consistent between the first and second quarters of 2006, which bodes well for the year as a whole. "Improved market conditions, particularly in the income trust and resource sectors, could push the IPO market to new records," Mr. Sinclair said in a statement. "The continued popularity of income trusts not only confirms the important role these vehicles play in the capital markets, it suggests the IPO market for income trusts may be even more stable than the traditional equity market." The PwC report also noted more and more Canadian media and technology companies are looking at the U.K.'s Alternate Investment Market (AIM) as either an alternative to the TSX and NASDAQ or a joint listing with the TSX. This comes as no surprise to Ottawa, where tech titan Terry Matthews pursued a dual listing on the TSX and the AIM for March Networks in the spring of 2005 and a single listing on the AIM for Ubiquity Software. It is no secret why Mr. Matthews favours the AIM exchange and the PwC report suggests other executives share his sentiments. "The AIM market is being considered because of reduced regulatory requirements and strong valuations," said Ben Kaak, national technology practice leader for PwC in Canada. "While the values are small at this stage, it is a trend to watch," added Mr. Sinclair. The Addax Petroleum Corp. IPO dominated the list of new corporate issues in the first half at $409.5 million, followed by Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. at $133 million. Corel Corp.'s return to the public markets, despite its lacklustre reception, did rank third at $120.8 million. The largest new income trust in the first six months of 2006 was the $700 million issue of Teranet Income Fund, followed by Jazz Air Income Fund $235 million) and Resolve Business Outsourcing Income Fund ($225 million).