The need to encourage younger and underrepresented communities to consider accounting careers was a prominent theme of the “Employee Recruitment and Retention of a New Workforce” panel at the Foundation for Education's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Conference on Jan. 25.

Changing the perception of what an accountant is and does can be a barrier to entry for some, the panel acknowledged. Asked by moderator Nadia Matthie, an audit and attest partner at Withum, about the challenges in recruiting and retention of diverse candidates, panelist Bill Bradshaw replied that “recruiting is always going to be an issue.”

“It narrows down to underrepresented talent,” said Bradshaw, Withum’s director of inclusion and diversity. “Right now, the struggle is getting students into the profession of accounting from an early career perspective.”

He added that the profession has to give people “access to firms and individuals that show that we are not [just] number 2 pencil pushers.”

“What do accountants look like?” he asked, drawing an analogy to the Maroon 5 video Girls Like You. “Anyone can be an accountant,” he said. For example, “If you like to race cars, if you like to fix cars, if you like to sell cars, you can be an auto accountant in the automotive niche.”

“We’re not just auditors of advisers,” he said. “We have a passion, [and] we have to match the passion with what we are trying to accomplish at out firms.”

Todd Cooper, senior director of channels at CPA.com, a subsidiary of the AICPA, said that he hears much about pipeline issues at conferences. “Seventy-five percent of our profession is eligible for retirement,” he said. Those under 24 years of age represent 5.5 percent of accountants and auditors, as opposed to 12 percent of the population, he noted.

To be more active in this recruitment, he said that the profession needs to “[get] out into the community and [go] to events, getting down to lower levels of higher education, even below high school, to tell people how cool this profession is.”

“This is way more than the ability to crunch numbers,” he said in speaking about recruiting the technologically savvy current generation. “We have technology that can do that.” The accounting profession is for “people who can apply financial data,” and seeks “entrepreneurial mindsets, financial professionals that can draw deep meaning from financial data, and use it in new ways. That is cool!”

Matthie agreed that the rebranding of what an accountant looks like is important.

“When I speak to young professionals, they say, ‘you don’t look like an accountant—you sound fun,’” she said. “Today, they’re looking for something more vibrant. Being an accountant is pervasive throughout business,” she said, using the example of accounting firms counting the ballots at the Academy Awards. “When I explain that the person in the back [is an accountant and] is certifying who wins the Oscars, their eyes light up and they say, ‘Really?’ It’s up to us in the profession to give them a look behind the curtain.”

In discussing her own experience, Matthie emphasized the importance of young professionals to join affinity groups outside of their professional environment.

When she joined KPMG in the 1980s, she was one of three people of color in a class of 800. A few years into her career, the firm sponsored her to go to a National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) conference. “I said sure, why not, not knowing anything about it.”

The experience was transformative. When she got to the conference, she said, “My eyes just bugged out because there were there were 200 people like me who did what I did.”

“There may be something outside of your firm. … Use that as an anchor to stay in your firm and in the profession,” she said, mentioning NABA, the Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA), and Ascend as examples.

Bradshaw seconded that notion, advising firms to send their employees to go these conferences just for the experience. “It’s the glue that keeps people where they are,” he said. “We want to keep them in the accounting profession.”

All of this is important for recruitment, retention, advancement and promotion, he added.

Cooper urged firms to live beyond their DEI mission statements, saying that policies in place need to be turned into action.

“Watch what your competitors are doing,” said Bradshaw. “If they’re doing it something and it’s working, do something similar; make it unique to you.”

“Start with the ground up, reach out to your staff, reach out to your employees, understand what their needs are, [and] what their challenges are,” Matthie said in her concluding remarks. “That’s the first step. The most important thing that we want you to take away from this session is that, if you don’t have it already, get started.  Because, if not, you’ll be one of the few that doesn’t have it and you’ll be left behind.”