In recent years, professionals in the Accountancy and Finance practice have faced tremendous challenges as compared to their peers decades ago. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it has brought many changes to the skills and processes in this practice.
This article is written by Sammy Zhu - Manager, Accounting & Finance. She has over 13 years of experience in Search and Consulting services.
General Trends
Professionals are no longer administrative and are required to know technical accounting. Not only that, team structures have also evolved from the traditional accounting & controlling to the current FSSC (Financial Share Service) combining with the Commercial & Corporate FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) team. Inevitably, the biggest change has to be how technology has been used to replace manual work. Digital workforce built with RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is introduced to replace the manual work to work less and achieve more.
Labor Market Overview
As of today, the Accountancy & Finance practice strives in area of Hi-Tech, Healthcare and Education in China. In addition to that, talents in this practice are preferably required to have CPA/ACCA/CMA certifications even for some of the junior accountant positions. To make it even tougher, it will be even better to be from the 985/211 university with big-4 background.
From our experience interacting with clients and candidates, we found out that many clients are willing to provide a higher compensation package to MBA candidates and MT (Management Trainee) candidates. Tapping on the economic globalization trends, candidates who are bilingual or even multilingual will definitely have an advantage over others.
Candidate Requirement Trends
- FP&A candidates with strong commercial sense
- Finance candidates who have experience in the e-commence business
- Accounting experts with strong internal control or process improvement experience
- Finance experts with the integration exp. or skilled in systems
- Compliance candidates expertise in Healthcare or Financial Service
- CFO with Pre- IPO exp. in local or global stock market
Speak to us if you have any insights on this industry!
Sammy Zhu – Manager, Accounting & Finance. She has over 13 years of recruitment experience hiring for the Accountancy & Finance practice in Healthcare, Consumer, Automobile & Chemical industries.
