Canada Missing Skills from New Grads

[Steve-LevelUp]

Hello All

As you may know, I have been on the form for several months, and I am hoping that I can guage your opinion.

For those that work in the corporate accounting world (Controllers, CFOs, AP/AR Manager, etc) I wanted to know your thoughts on recent graduates.

What top 5 key skills do you find that new graduates (within 1-2 years) are lacking when they join your team that you think should be fundamental.

In my experience, the current education system teaches the depth of accounting skills, including higher end accounting concepts (ones that generally do not come up until you are a further along in your career). One example that I found is that I had to teach someone how deferred revenue works, something that I felt should have been fundamental to the accounting program (which it was included) but they failed to understand the compounding aspect of deferred revenue (eg, a subscription service).

So, what are your experiences? Do you think new grads are lacking the fundamental aspects of operational accounting? Do you feel they are perfectly suited for their role? What are your experiences?

Thanks very much for your feedback.

 

[bklynboy]

Broadly I find the following lacking:

Communication - especially written communication where they do not have a sense of proper grammar and business structure. May be all the texting the younger generation are used to. I am not old but see each year the new grads have less and less of this skill.

Consolidation - not sure why it is but consolidating is something I find myself teaching new hires all the time especially when we have less than 100% ownership.

Insurance - this is my field and has some specialized rules that I don't see being taught in colleges and can be somewhat baffling to new entrants (we do expect to train on this but wish it would get more attention in school).

 

[Fidget]

* Double entry

* Spelling/grammar

 

[Steve-LevelUp]

Spelling and grammar issues are definitely a challenge, especially for those where English is not a first language. Double entry accounting is surprising though.

 

[Fidget]

It's not so much debits/credits per se,... but there's a lack of understanding of what is taking place when a debit and credit happens.