No doubt about it! Competition for that post-college job will be tough. But thanks to insights gained from top PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) executives, LSBE accounting students will be better equipped with skills to compete head on.
Dean Kjell Knudsen, Interim Associate Dean Praveen Aggarwal and four accounting faculty met with PwC partners and national recruiting officials in late July to learn about some best practices used by other schools for preparing students for the global marketplace. While PwC was impressed by LSBE's innovative "Passport to Professional Accounting" and the active learning requirement in the Bachelor of Accounting degree, they encouraged further development of "soft" skills students must possess in the global workplace. Soft skills -- communication, social graces, time management, and other similar personal skills -- are not often the focus of a specific degree-centric course, thus other means of attaining these life-long career skills are important.
Al Roline, Chair of the Department of Accounting, says the next step is to implement this knowledge within LSBE. His goal is to develop a strategy to make our accounting majors even more marketable to public accounting firms and corporations by incorporating even more career-oriented programming to LSBE's "Accounting Week," which kicks off the annual recruiting season in September. One such program being given serious consideration is a "speed networking" event in order to give students practice in developing a smooth 3 or 5 minute "elevator" speech.
Additionally, ways to develop soft skills for all LSBE students is being explored. "In the coming year, LSBE is planning to explore multiple avenues, including starting a Toastmasters chapter in LSBE and extending the Passport Program to other majors to help students develop soft skills," noted Aggarwal.
PwC attendees were UMD alum, Ray Beier, one of the lead partners of PwC in New York; Jim Kolar, Managing Partner of the PwC Minneapolis office; Holly Paul, U.S. Recruiting Leader; and Alexa Hamill, National Sourcing, among others.