EY boomerangs
This Bloomberg interview with EY's Mark Weinberger covers — what else? — keeping Millennials happy. There are only a couple things worth noting: 1) Mark Weinberger proudly wears the company swag: "[O]ur purpose is 'EY, building a better working world'—I wear a shirt that says that right on it."
And 2) there's a new attitude about people who leave EY:
In the old days it was like: If you leave, you’re dead to us. I don’t think you can operate that way today.
Weinberger left EY three times before becoming global CEO, so it's not a ruse, although I'm not so sure most people who leave EY (or any other firm) want to return.
Occasionally, we'll see boomerang threads in Open Items, but for a lot of people, I think when they leave a public accounting firm, that chapter of their career is closed. Firms talk a great game about how they listen and have adjusted etc. etc. but it's really hard to know how much the culture of these firms has changed unless you've actually experienced it. The problem is that most people don't want to stick around to find out if the firm actually gets around to it.
Elsewhere in EY news, the firm signed a lease to move to Hoboken and acquired Bellevue, WA-based Society Consulting.
Pokémon Go get some CPAs
Here's an idea:
The mobile game Pokémon Go has been grabbing the attention of young people ever since it was introduced last month, bringing together gamers in search of Pokémon characters, but could it also entice young employees and clients to the accounting firms that desperately need them?
The trouble with most accounting firms is that they don't really try anything interesting. If you are trying something interesting, then by all means, get in touch to let us know, but we don't really hear about firms doing anything all that interesting, least of all using Pokémon Go to lure recruits. Firms experiencing a talent crisis could do way worse than this:
[I]f a firm wants to build awareness, whether to attract new business as a provider of accounting and tax services or to compete for game-obsessed Millennials, creating a PokéStop or Pokémon Gym is not a bad way to get some attention during the summer doldrums.
Honestly, your firm has nothing to lose. The only trick would be to get them to stop playing once they're hired.
Previously, on Going Concern…
Jim Peterson started a three-part series about Martin Ford's Rise of Robots and how it relates to accountants. And over in Open Items, someone is dying (not literally) in an internship.
In other news:
- Illegal in Massachusetts: Asking Your Salary in a Job Interview
- Make Your Career ‘Mulligan’ Count
- Regulatory equivalency – bad for investors
- "If you trust your accountant or tax preparer so little that you feel compelled to go get a second opinion on their work, perhaps you need to re-evaluate your relationship with that person." (via Joe Kristan)
- Wanted: thick Scottish accents.
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