There you go again! And again!

 

The summer between my senior year in high school and freshman year in college my father impressed upon me a single mandate for that two-month stretch: Find a job!

Back then, it was far easier said than done.

It seemed no one was hiring – even the local quick-service food outlets were fully staffed. I interviewed for several positions including supermarket checkout, stock boy, store maintenance, but no luck.

But that was then, and this is now.

Today it’s difficult NOT to see an establishment with a “help wanted” sign. I wondered perhaps I was born 40 years too early. I mean where was this labor shortage when I desperately needed to stockpile some savings for my collegiate spending (read: drinking funds).

But I digress.

And anyone who owns and operates a CPA firm knows full well that the profession mirrors the overall job market in terms of seeking help. Each week, I hear horror stories from clients seeking to staff up, only often, no one is miraculously showing up in their lobby, CPA designation in hand to ease their labor shortage and succession problem.

And yet hope springs eternal. Often to the point of fantasy.

Does this lament sound familiar? “No, we currently have no one on our bench to one day assume leadership of the firm, but I’m looking to hire a few young CPAs whom we can hopefully mold into partner material.”

Yes, in today’s climate there’s as much chance of that happening as me dunking over Kevin Durant.

Whenever I hear that I must bring them down to earth and tell them to wake up and face north.

Sorry, but the cavalry doesn’t come over the hill anymore.

Some 50,000 accounting firms across the U.S. are in search of the same thing – young CPAs with or even without books of business. I’ve been regaled with vignettes of how firms have hired national placement firms without success, and some have even filed suit to retrieve their fees.

Whenever anyone in our company teaches CPE on succession planning, one of the primary objectives we try to instill in attendees is that finding young talent is 95 percent pipe dream and 5 percent reality.

Not that they want to hear that. Or listen for that matter.

Which is part of the reason we never run out of succession planning material.

For those keeping score at home, my high school job search ended ironically, the day before I was to leave for college. I got a call from a local supermarket requesting that I come in the next day for training.

Even my father laughed at that one.