Recently, a “RCGA” (aka recent college grad accountant) met me for a job consultation.  I don’t normally work with candidates with less than 3 years of experience, but this was a client referral.  Good candidate, with above average grades, internship experience, professional manner and appearance, interpersonal and communication skills.

You may have seen or heard of the movie Jumper, in which people teleport and move instantaneously and effortlessly from one place to another.  Well, there are jumpers in the employment world also, those people who change jobs every year or two.  Many employers shy away from them, at least when candidates are readily available. However, I am an eternal optimist and always want to meet them.  I want to identify their strengths and weaknesses, with the goal of correcting their weaknesses so that they can stay in one place for more than a few years.

Believe it or not making partner is not as random as the movie "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd, but wouldn’t it be great if someone told you how to make partner in your public accounting firm?  Check out these three vignettes, then pack your things for the corner office!

If you prefer fairy tales to articulate points then you will love this post. It is a tale about our hero Luke and Lord Pinnacle. It is set like most tales in a far away land, very long ago.  If you don’t have time to read the entire fable, please skip to the ‘Morals of the Story’ section at the end. 

As recruiters, we listen every day to candidates telling us what they don’t like about their jobs.  Some of them literally hate their jobs and have to drag themselves to work every day.  Here are two of their stories:

We’ve found over 12 years of recruiting that most candidates do not evaluate job changes and job offers systematically.  Instead, they use a gut instinct styled approach and can often over-focus on compensation and benefits. We recommend the following general approach which can be tailored to the individual candidate and job. 

Every once in awhile, you meet people so distinctive they stick with you forever.  Such is Tom, who was a candidate we placed out of a small public accounting firm into a large advertising conglomerate as an accountant at a salary of $35,000.  Over the next several years, I received regular reports from my staff that he was happy and progressing well.  All was good.

Obviously we are huge proponents for career counseling.  With that said though there is not a person out there that wouldn't benefit from expert career advice.  The CEO of our company is a prime example. He set a career course for himself while in college that after graduation he would go on to Harvard Law School.  He soon forgot about this goal after he graduated and experinced the joy of regular paychecks.  A career coach would have got him off this path of least resistance and helped him stay on track.  Guess that's Harvard loss. 

Early in my recruiting career, I regularly placed experienced staff accountants in the 2-4 year range, one every week or two, about 25 or so per year.  That doesn’t happen as much anymore, the jobs filled are higher paying but the number smaller.  Companies are much more likely nowadays to fill staff jobs on their own, but that’s not the biggest reason.  Instead, there simply are not as many of these jobs out there now.

Bill is one of my close friends since childhood.  He’s a great friend in that he’s easygoing, always up for whatever I suggest, and always there when needed.  He’s likable, and in high school was one of those few people that everyone seemed to gravitate to, and transcended all social group.  However, even Bill would say that nothing in his background predicted future success, in fact just the opposite.  He was average or just under average in grades, looks, sports etc.  College was more of the same, good but not great school, C+ average.  As he said, there was always something that came up, which made it hard to study.