Big guns of accountancy fight dirty in battle for new talent

A
shortage of qualified accountants has triggered a recruitment war among the UK’s
top accountancy firms, according to industry experts.

All
of the big four – KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and Deloitte
– aim to recruit thousands of new staff members at all levels to deal with the
onset of regulation and the arrival of international accounting standards next
year.

However,
there are not enough experienced accountants looking for work and so the big
four are having to conduct
aggressive recruitment tactics, including targeting each other.

Nicola
Grimshaw, a director at
recruitment firm Michael Page, told Accountancy magazine: "The big four
are fighting each other for new recruits. They are asking for multiples of
candidates and clearly we have got to that pressure point where there aren’t
enough people to go around at the newly qualified level."

By Daniel Thomas

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