AT&T Woos Accounting Students, Bypasses Big Four Training Ground

AT&T Inc.'s top accountant is confronting a competitive job market by rethinking the company’s traditional reliance on large CPA firms as a training ground for new hires, taking her recruiting pitch on-campus instead.

Sabrina Sanders, AT&T’s chief accounting officer, is targeting graduate students for the company’s two-year-old, in-house training program. It’s a shift in strategy from the telecom giant’s past practice of hiring alumni from the biggest accounting firms, where young accountants often start their careers before turning to corporate jobs that typically offer higher pay and more predictable schedules.

“With our world rapidly changing, it’s just one of the ways that we’re trying to respond to everything going on across the industry,” Sanders said in an interview with Bloomberg Tax. She’s spent more than two decades at AT&T, steadily working her way up to the C-suite from a role as an accounting manager.

AT&T’s recruiting drive is among efforts by industry leaders to address an accounting workforce that has shed 340,000 employees since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. An industry task force is expected this month to release a plan to address the tight labor market as fewer younger workers choose an accounting career and Baby Boomers prepare to retire.

Despite the promise of technology like artificial intelligence to automate and even eliminate manual data analysis, major employers still need a bench of accountants with technical expertise and real-world experience translating business deals and transactions into financial statements or tax returns.

Sanders is planning for accounting leadership roles the telecom company will need to fill a decade from now. The Dallas-based company launched a development program with the goal of building a slate of skilled accountants who will one day fill those positions.

AT&T’s initiative offers summer internships, a 20-hour work-study, and a two-year paid training program. Twenty participants have taken advantage of the program so far.

Over the course of the paid program, trainees will rotate across roles tackling technical work such as revenue recognition or tracking the company’s lease portfolio of telecommunication towers and retail stores. They’ll also work with the company’s business units and with its internal controls team, Sanders said.

The range of work experiences should help the company attract top accounting graduates that typically would join the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, KPMG LLP, and Ernst & Young LLP.

“We have really, really strong tenure,” Sanders said. “If they want positions in leadership in accounting here, they need to have a wide variety of experiences and knowledge.”

Big Four firms are hanging on to their younger workers longer, offering up fewer experienced accountants to fill corporate roles. Companies have taken a page from the Big Four playbook by offering internships to freshman, said Mithu Dey, associate accounting professor at Howard University.

“Corporations have gotten smarter and they are trying to recruit our students from early on,” Dey said.

Scarce Resource

US corporations face unique threats from the reduced accounting labor force, including the departure of seasoned accountants. Lost institutional knowledge poses risks to everything from calculating revenue to maintaining sound internal safeguards meant to deliver reliable reporting to investors.

A “very high retirement rate” has pulled veteran workers out of the market, adding to the hiring demand for accountants, said Katie Birkelo, senior vice president at recruiting firm Randstad US.

Nearly 25 million Baby Boomers will hit retirement age by 2030, according to federal population figures—a trend that will affect accounting as well as the US workforce more broadly. At the same time, entry-level accountants are also harder to find as graduation rates from accounting programs have tumbled 18% since their peak in 2016.

Interest in accounting careers has waned amid competition with other fields and the high cost to enter the profession.

Pay for entry-level accountants has risen 7% on average, according to Randstad data. Compensation increases can be higher for more experienced workers or those with a certified public accountant, or CPA, license.

Candidates with a few years of experience at a public accounting firm plus their CPA credential remain the gold standard for employers, although some are willing to hire other majors or workers with an associate’s degree, Birkelo said.

“We are still seeing companies having not caught up with the reality that this talent pool is becoming more and more scarce,” Birkelo said.

Closing the Gap

Outsourcing accounting work or CFO services can help close the staffing shortfall, said Zach Donah, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs.

To attract new recruits, accounting’s largest professional group has spearheaded a program that allows students to continue their education online while working for companies, non-profits or CPA firms. Thirty-eight students joined the program for its initial semester that began in January, according to the American Institute of CPAs.

The program aims to close the gap between a traditional four-year degree and the 150 college credit hours needed to earn the CPA license.

Meanwhile states are exploring different career paths beyond the current strict rules to qualify for a CPA license. Apprenticeships are one option Massachusetts is exploring to boost support staff and introduce more candidates to accounting careers.

“You’ve really got to work for it when you’re looking to recruit new talent,” Donah said. “A lot of companies and certainly firms in our network are stepping up to do that.”