Recruiting the Best: What CPAs Could Learn from College Coaches

The recruiting of college athletes may be more competitive than the actual sports they play. The race for talent has caused coaches to recruit much more aggressively. As The New York Times has reported, college coaches are contacting potential recruits at younger ages than they have before. And some athletes are receiving Division I scholarship offers before they even start the eighth grade. The competition for accounting students, while not as intense, shares some common issues. Prior to Sarbanes-Oxley, the best accounting students were typically offered internships for the summer following their junior year, and the same students were made full-time offers in the fall of their senior year. However, the competition for high-quality accounting students drove recruiters to make contact with students earlier in their academic career. Those who are hiring accounting students once wanted to speak to a classroom of college seniors; now they are pushing to speak to classrooms of juniors and even classrooms with sophomores. The AT CPA reports that public accounting firm hiring of accounting program graduates has reached record levels, with most firms expecting to continue or increase their levels of hiring. Companies and firms that want to recruit the best accounting students might benefit from learning how college coaches recruit in an ultracompetitive environment. IDENTIFYING TALENT Coaches can initially identify talent by looking at rankings provided by recruiting evaluation services and reviewing video highlights submitted by athletes. Accounting firms do something similar when they examine students' grades and resumes. Unfortunately, many coaches believe that recruiting services have inaccuracies that make their assessments useful but problematic. Those hiring for accounting positions face a similarly flawed system with grade inflation that continues to distort assessments of students. Coaches and accounting recruiters share another similar problem in that self-submitted videos by recruits often show the highlights and disguise the weaknesses of the athletes, not unlike the self-promoting resumes of students. College coaches go further than most accounting employers in identifying talent by attending games of athletes, holding athletic camps, and talking with high school coaches. It isn't feasible to attend a class with students or watch them perform on an exam, but the use of camps and speaking with high school coaches have some interesting parallels. Coaches host summer athletic camps where they can observe athletes firsthand. A few accounting firms have realized the benefit of observing students firsthand and put on case competitions. This is a great venue to observe directly how applicants might perform as well as how they work with others. The competitions are often based on real situations that occurred at the firm (with proprietary information deleted). These competitions can be conducted on campuses, in firm or company offices, or a combination of both. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] College coaches also work hard to develop rapport with high school coaches so they can get information about potential recruits. They realize that high school coaches get to see attributes that might not be picked up by a recruiting service or highlight video. A high school coach will have unique insight into character, work ethic, and leadership potential. The equivalent to a high school coach in accounting is the accounting student's professors. Often a professor will have insights about students that don't show up solely in grades. For example, the professor might know about a "B" student who is working 30 hours a week who is just as promising as an "A" student who doesn't work at all. A low-cost method for developing rapport with professors is to use information that you already have. College textbooks are frequently a little behind in cutting-edge pronouncements. …