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It is human nature to resist change. Theoretically, as part of our CA course we study various management techniques about the need for change and how to manage the change effectively through change management techniques but do we ourselves have the adaptability needed to learn and grow constantly?
I qualified in Nov 2018 and I took a transfer from auditing to consulting. I was aware that there does exist a skill gap but I thought it was limited to me since auditing and consulting are two extremely different career choices with some overlap between them but as I spoke to my fellow CAs who had qualified between May 2018 and Nov 2018 and gone forward with joining a different kind of jobs, I realized I wasn't alone in the boat.
Luckily enough, I have always been proud of having a learning agility and being critical of my progress, so I accepted the facts and worked on my improvement areas. I have tried to break the skills in logical groups, which in my opinion are extremely important in any profession you choose to pursue.
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Towards the end, I will also share how I bridged the skill gap for myself.
I conducted a poll asking my fellow qualified CAs their views on the skill gap and I will share the survey responses as we go.
Please note that the survey was conducted among CAs who have done their articleship from the likes of the best of the firms across various departments. The sample size for the survey is small but I assure you the survey results aren’t an anomaly (SA 530).
The CA course helps us acquire basic knowledge about various subjects like Accounting, Financial Management, Auditing, etc. but we do need to understand that applying these skills in real-life business situations requires much more than basic knowledge.
Basic skills form the foundation but we need to adjust and upskill ourselves to create an edge over others in the job roles we want to take up.
For succeeding in the future, CA students will require a shift in mindset, skills, and capabilities:
How to upskill and prepare yourself for the future? The most necessary step is to be dynamic and build digital awareness and identify the skills that you will need to function in the ever-changing world.
Learning agility is the ability to continually and rapidly learn, unlearn, and relearn mental models and practices from a variety of experiences, people, and sources, and to apply that learning in new and changing contexts to achieve desired results
Let’s analyze the areas of focus in detail and see what we can do about them:
Every student who has attended MCS must have been a part of the debate “CA v. MBA” and we usually like to defend our course. To me, the comparison has always felt like comparing apples to oranges, since the course structure of the two courses is different in a lot of ways.
Nonetheless, for people who want to be the leaders of the future, we need to develop certain soft skills which will enable us to charter our career in the best way possible. All the skills can be acquired by putting in that extra effort.
Since most of us do our articleship in Audit and we are trained to be deemed auditors, we lack the solution mindset. Critical thinking and innovation are areas we need to work upon.
Not only as professionals but also as solution-driven members of the society, we require skills like emotional intelligence and empathy. The four pillars in this skillset are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management
Leadership or taking initiative is another parameter that employers want employees to have. That is what differentiates a great employee from a good one. In order to progress in the hierarchy, managers need to follow the “kingmaker strategy” which means only when managers train their employees to take up their position, they can move on to take larger roles for themselves.
For this the employees must be receptive and take charge of wider responsibilities as they progress. Going above and beyond and displaying a never-ending appetite to learn is your trump card to success.
The main skill that ties everything together is how well we articulate. All the hard work that has gone into building the above-mentioned skills will be futile if we don’t have the intention to use them or we are not able to articulate them.
It does all boil down to presentation. Good leaders are able to write and articulate well, which shows their ability to think clearly.
ICAI has taken steps to help build the virtual management and communication skills by putting in place the mandatory MCS training which does help to some extent but we need to take steps to help ourselves by being self-motivated and self-serving in this respect.
| What Is Taught In Today’s Ca Course |
What The Finance Employer Of The Future Requires |
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While the curriculum is comprehensive, it hasn’t been able to keep pace with the industry requirements. There is a digital revolution going on as we speak, and finance is the easiest target. Companies are always looking to cut their cost. Finance as a function cannot be eliminated but it can be automated.
More than 50% of the tasks associated with Finance can be automated and a lot of companies around the world and in India have been successfully implementing the changes in their process to cater to the future.
1. Be proficient at using basic management software like MS Excel, MS Word, etc.
2. Familiarize ourselves with the business processes and the various technologies like Data analytics, RPA, etc. that will affect these processes (Fun fact and food for thought: The process of procurement requisition to its accounting and to receipt of invoice and its payment can be fully automated, then why would we need to perform the steps of vouching and punch in details of the invoice in our work papers?
3. Gain an understanding of these technologies and how to effectively use them in our job roles
The idea is to eliminate waste and move towards efficient ways of working by building capacity and take up roles requiring analysis and judgment, backed by data of course.
Data becomes one of the major levers for automating any process. Automated workflows and robotics can work only on structured data. Tech capabilities like machine learning also enables these workflows and robotics to learn and process unstructured data.
Structured and standardized data can be put into customized reports which will then enable us to perform better analysis and take faster and well thought through decisions in the short term and long term.
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There is no doubt that specialization is soon to be the new mantra. Domain-specific knowledge along with the capabilities of a generalist will enable performing tasks quickly, efficiently and with more confidence and with a wider perspective.
As we go on to pursue careers in various fields like Finance & Accounts, Audit, Taxation, Advisory (M&A, FDD, consulting), VC & PE there are skills that will be specific to your chosen line of service.
The skills may vary from the kind of job profile you have but if you need to pave your way through any of them, along with the soft and technological skills that we spoke about earlier, you will need in-depth functional knowledge in the respective area.
For example: In Audit, in-depth knowledge of the applicable accounting and auditing standards + understanding of the compliances applicable on the organization, along with the watchdog eye to detect the frauds is what would form as the required functional skill. One can acquire these skills through different modes,
I would like to add that if you chose to continue in the same field as you have done your articleship in (Only ~40% respondents continued in the same field as per the survey), you may not feel the skill gap as wide as others, which makes total logical sense but since people do change their field after qualifying it is important to work on these skills and bridge whatever gap that we can.
There is no denying that the best way to build any of the skills is through on the job training but you may find yourself in a situation where you aren’t getting the opportunity to be on the ground and learn. In times like these, open sources like YouTube, online certifications etc become your and my best friend.
I was lucky enough to be a part of an organisation that has a stack of internal resources and learning material to help me. This helped me gain a thorough understanding of the work that is done and the best practice methodology to do it.
As for soft and communication skills, reading and conversing have always helped me. If you don’t feel comfortable in a certain language or you don’t feel like you are able to communicate and get your thoughts across then observation skills will help you come a long way. You observe and you reciprocate. It’s like “Fake it till you make it”.
For building technological capabilities, I took short courses that my organization had in a place like excel and PowerPoint courses and for gaining an understanding of the disruptive technologies like AI, Blockchain, etc. I resorted to YouTube and open source articles.
But the main ingredient to building these skills was accepting that there was something missing and adapting and learning to whatever extent it is possible.
Learning is a continuous process. Let’s start by being curious and by building the bandwidth to keep learning!
In conclusion, there exists a gap between the skills qualified CAs have and what employers of the future expect qualified CAs to have.
As per the survey, ~62% respondents agree to have experienced skill gap in their respective professions post-qualification
There is a very likely situation that after qualifying you may not have a trajectory that you may have assumed to be pre-set, leaving you to speculate for other career enhancing courses like CFA, MBA, etc.
Learning is of course a continuous process. You learn one thing, only to move on to the next. You evolve constantly and better yourself, which undoubtedly requires steady dedication on one’s own front.
But to be at leverage, I would highly suggest you think beyond your CA Final exams and analyze the weaknesses and/or the skills that you would need to pursue the career you have charted for yourself.
I will leave you with a few survey responses to decide for yourself how important it really is to take the wheel in your own hand and develop the right skills for the job…
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