The MSI Global Alliance Perspective

New graduates - bleak prospects or a buyer's market?

With the winter evenings drawing in, final year undergraduates should now be beginning to think of life after college.  But with many of the last batch of graduates still unemployed - or at least working in temporary, unskilled jobs, just to make ends meet - today's students could be forgiven for dreaming of another post-graduation Gap year to allow them to delay coming into the jobs market for a year or so, by which stage things will surely be better ...

Does this make sense, or is such a view simply evidence of an ostrich-type approach to life?  It would, of course, be possible to rationalise either position, and many will inevitably do so.

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that professional firms will continue to seek to recruit strong candidates, even if they cut back on the overall numbers.  This message should sound alarm bells for those bright candidates.  Only the best will be recruited, but many of the routine tasks will not go away.

Candidates looking at different types of firms would do well to remember that smaller and mid-sized firms tend to be more nimble-footed and adaptable, and are able to identify and respond to the needs of individual staff members, thereby creating great opportunities for the right candidates, even in difficult economic times.

Never before has it been more important for candidates to make the right choices.

James Mendelssohn (jmendelssohn@msiglobal.org)

The changing face of the professions

Coverage of the US Presidential Election provided welcome respite from more gloomy news on the economic front.  Behind all the headlines, though, the credit crunch is still there and its impact will be felt by many who would not be considered to be in the frontline today. 

Looking at the two professions within MSI, the accountancy world will, undoubtedly, have questions to answer.  It is all very well for the large firms to assert, as they do quite correctly, that the role of the audit is not to provide a forecast of risk.  But others argue that an audit opinion should also be capable of being used as a forecasting tool.  The lay observer will most likely have sympathy with the latter view - but only time will tell whether the standard setters and regulators take this point on board.  They are, however, unlikely to ignore it.

The lawyers may be less in the firing line, although the impact of the credit crunch on their businesses will be significant too.  Large city firms that have depended on high levels of M & A work will see certain revenue streams dry up - and redundancies are already being announced.

But there are opportunities, too, in today's market.  With clients being forced (at last, do I hear myself thinking) to focus on levels of service and value available from their professional advisers, there appears to be a growing trend for entrepreneurial businesses to review their arrangements and move to a more cost-effective and responsive team of advisers.

At the recent MSI conference in Beijing, I was expecting a few long faces and gloomy forecasts for the year ahead.  But, although there was an undeniable recognition that times are tough, there was also a strong feeling that for mid-sized firms, and their clients, the current market can open up all sorts of opportunities, particularly for the nimble-footed.

Every cloud has a silver lining - even if today's cloud is rather large, and the silver lining is rather small.

James Mendelssohn (jmendelssohn@msiglobal.org)