Hiring Decisions of Entry-Level Graduates: Does Professional Accreditation Matter? Perception Gaps between Accountants and Students

Abstract

This paper investigates the gaps between the expectations of professional accountants and the perceptions of accounting students in Hong Kong in the context of recruitment criteria for entry-level accounting graduates position. Adopting a quantitative research method, two similar sets of questionnaires with different demographic questions were distributed to professional accountants and students in Hong Kong. Students data were drawn from those studying accounting in ten higher education institutes in Hong Kong. Participants were required to rank the importance of a set of nine employment selection criteria for the recruitment of entry-level accounting graduates. Findings suggested that the ranks of each of the nine criteria (technical and non-technical skills) between those two groups are quite similar, but bigger gaps are found in Professional accounting examinations eligibility, ethics coverage, and smaller gaps found in communication and Energy, motivation, enthusiasm. Students consider that professional accreditation matters. Based on the findings, some key recommendations were made. These include a greater inclusion of non-technical skills in accounting education, especially communication, which is the most important criterion required by the respondent Accountants. This might require the educators to incorporate more communication-related studies in the accounting curriculum. It is encouraging that students rank ethics coverage more important than the Accountants do. Our future accountants perceive ethics coverage, a recruiting criterion, more important than their predecessors. The results may give a further idea on the developers of vocational-based programmes to include appropriate non-technical skills in their curriculum to help students adapt to this ever-changing world.