THE COMPREHENSIVE SKILLS GAP FOR ACCOUNTING STUDENTS IN A REAL-­‐WORLD PROJECT Primary Author: Doris (Yue) Li Co-­‐Author: Shaikh Al Mamun SOFT SKILLS v s HARD SKILLS ABSTRACT As a language of business, accoun,ng has been a popular major for millions of students to choose. As long as there is business, it needs accountants. However, as ,me changes and technology popularizes, the current business en,ty needs more comprehensive people to handle their financial informa,on. Therefore, accoun,ng is no longer tradi,onal book keeping, especially for those who pursue a career in industry rather than accoun,ng firms. In this research paper, we would like to explore the comprehensive skills for accoun,ng major students based on our project experience, and some problems we have come across from previous experiences. The measurement is based on the top companies’ job descrip,ons in the finance industry. The aim of this project is to help accoun,ng major students in developing their comprehensive skills combined with the M.S Accoun,ng Program at Drexel University. Framework: •  Current M.s AccounSng Program at Drexel University Courses Schedule Expecta,ons •  Real-­‐world Project Experience and Job DescripSons in Finance Industry Project Experience Job Descrip,on •  Gap For AccounSng Students & SuggesSons to M.S. AccounSng Program at Drexel University Careers can be put into 3 kind of categories. 1) Careers that need hard skills and liAle soT skills (example: Physicists); This is where you see brilliant people who cannot deal well with people. They can s,ll be very successful in their career – look at Albert Einstein 2) Careers that need both hard and soT skills – many careers are in this category (example: Accountants, Lawyers – they need to know the rules of accoun,ng or law well but they also depend on selling to clients to build a successful career. Dealing well with clients require excellent soT skills like communica,on skills, rela,onship skills etc…) 3) Careers that need mostly soT skills and liAle hard skills (example: sales. A car salesman don’t really need to know that much about cars, just a liAle more than the consumer. His job is more dependent on his ability to read his customers, communicate his sales pitch, persuasion skills, and skills to close to deal. These are all soT skills) ACCOUNTING COURSES The courses are designed for students who hold bachelor’s degrees in non-­‐accoun,ng fields of study who wish to sit for the CPA exam and prepare for a successful career in accoun,ng It allows students to get a beAer understanding about the accoun,ng world and encourage students to be proficient in a financial accoun,ng profession, tax exper,se or audit profession Students gain the technical knowledge, analy,cal skills and communica,on exper,se required to lead as an ethical and effec,ve accoun,ng professional. Looking through the course list for the one year and the two year accoun,ng program, you can see that overall, there is a good balance of courses that gives students an overall understanding of Accoun,ng. One point to note here is that there is only one course requirement that is a finance course. This is the Financial Accoun,ng course. MoSvaSon As two graduate students who are expected to graduate this June 2015, we spend a lot of ,me on job hun,ng. Through this process we have learned that amongst the skills being taught to us in the classroom and through the courses provided in the business college, there are some skills that we are lacking. With this research, we hope to find the key points in order for students to bridge the gap between the skills taught in the classroom and those expected by poten,al employers. ExpectaSons Through this research, we hope to shed light on some areas where the courses can be improved in order to enhance the student experience and ul,mately help students in the job market. We want to highlight main skills and experience that employers look for in students gradua,ng from the Masters of Science Accoun,ng Program. These skills will then be given as a recommenda,on to the school of business in order for them to allow to incorporate it into the academic programs. Through highligh,ng the desired skills, we hope to be able to prepare students ahead of ,me of skills that they should improve on throughout their program at Drexel to beAer their chances of aAaining a job aTer gradua,on. With this research, we hope to improve the chances of interna,onal students who have come to Drexel University to aAain a graduate degree to beAer their chances of aAaining a full ,me posi,on once they graduate. JOB REQUIREMENTS J.P.MORGAN AM Global Real Assets Finance Analyst Skill sets: ·∙ Strong accoun,ng skills are essen,al. Ability to prepare and analyze financial statements. Ability to create journal entries and trace them through the general ledger and ul,mately to their impact on financial statements. Understand the flow of informa,on from opera,ons to the repor,ng of financial performance. ·∙ Strong wriAen and verbal communica,on skills. ·∙ Proficient in Excel and Word. ·∙ Well developed quan,ta,ve, analy,cal and problem solving skills. ·∙ Detail oriented and organized work habits. ·∙ Strong ,me management skills. Must be a self-­‐starter with the ability to manage mul,ple tasks and projects simultaneously. ·∙ Strong interest in real estate.
Financial Control Analyst Skill sets: •  Basic understanding of securi,es and deriva,ves products •  Comfort liaising with business and risk managers •  Ability to build and maintain partnerships within the various product aligned businesses and across other corporate financial, treasury, and accoun,ng groups •  Exis,ng rela,onships and networks within JPMorgan IB community an advantage •  Ability to understand business drivers and requirements and influence middle and front office partners to deliver solu,ons to business issues and problems •  Strong analy,cal skills: Ability to quickly understand workings of a complex processing system and general ledger systems across the infrastructure and their interrela,onships and dependencies. Technique Skills A combina,on of skills requirement in the both Finance Area and Accoun,ng Area, e.g. Financial Control Analyst job requires the skills of reconcilia,on that Finance major students might not have but analy,cal skills that Accoun,ng major students are not excellent in. Excellent excel skills (highly recommended) So[ Skills •  Leadership experience (highly recommended) •  Work under pressure (highly recommended) •  Communica,on skills COMPARISON Looking as the list of skills taught through the accoun,ng courses and the job skills listed in the requirements, it is evident that there are several areas where there is a gap. FUTURE WORK To further explore this work, in the future we propose a text mining exercise in which we can compare several accoun,ng job descrip,ons posted online and look for skills that are repeated several ,mes throughout the job requirements. Using this data we can comprise a list of skills that are the most important based on the repe,,on rate. Having this list of skills, we can make some recommenda,ons to LeBow College of Business to integrate some exercises to exis,ng courses / addi,on of courses that highlight and expose students to these skills. With the right prepara,on, interna,onal students will have an advantage when they complete their degree’s and will be able to have a higher success rate in terms of placement into top firms in opening posi,ons. If this research proves to be a success aTer implementa,on in the M.S. Accoun,ng program, we hope that other majors where students are having difficulty aAaining full ,me posi,ons will also implement this strategy. CONCLUSION Interna,onal students make up a large number of the student base at Drexel University. Having completed their degree, a majority of students are unable to aAain a job. With this research, we hope to beAer prepare the students increase the number of interna,onal students hired for a full ,me posi,on upon comple,on of their Drexel degree. Through this, Drexel will cement itself amongst the interna,onal students as an ins,tu,on that offers a great educa,on and superior chances of job placements compared to others.