We are living in a complex and dynamic business environment, for getting success in this competitive environment we must be keep updated ourselves and make a strategy according to environment changes and competition.
“MBA holder are biggest threat for CA student as many industry now days prefer to appoint MBA rather than Ca because they have much better communication and general management skills.”
I will discuss importance of communication skill for CA student with the help of two cases.
Case-1 importance while changing job after experience in industry:-
We all know about investment banking companies providing consulting services for merger and acquisition. The fees that investment banks receive from providing merger and acquisition (M&A) advisory services are large. According to the SDC Platinum database, M&A transactions completed in the U.S. during 2003 alone totalled more than $435 billion. Of these, investment banks acted as advisers on deals worth a combined value of $386 billion. The total amount of advisory fees that advisers earned exceeded $596 million, suggesting that investment banks derive a significant amount of income for providing M&A advice. Although advisory fees are of such substantial size, there has been very little research into the factors that determine the level of advisory fees paid. This is why it’s dream of many accounting and finance sector professional to work for a big investment banking company because they pay higher scale package to their employees. Front office department of investment banking companies are recipient of higher package than back office executive because it doesn’t Matter for them that what is real data and how complex is deal they need to finalize deal in favourable manner using their skills and experience.
One of my friend applied in a investment banking company for front office work in USA after two years working experience of back office work in a reputed investment banking company.
After seven round of interview he got rejected, in the advertisement of vacancy it was clearly mentioned that they need MBA holder having good communication skill or a chartered accountant having experience of working in the same area.
The noticeable point is here that fresher MBA holder having good communication skill selected for front office work and 2 year experience holder chartered accountant rejected.
We both feel bad about this incident, we all know that we chartered accountants are much expert than any other degree holder in the field of data analysing and decision making because of our training and education system.
We discussed the matter in our circle and tried to find out reasons behind this kind of difficulty in our profession.
We analyzed data of recruitment of big investment banking companies for both front and back office work and we finally find out result of analysis.
*First- the investment banking companies prefer to recruit a MBA holder from reputed international level college for front office work because HR department thinks that they are already trained to communicate and influence professionally and chartered accountants can work for the front office after presenting good results and showing great interest while working back office.
*Second- Front office executive/management uses analyst data to influence client by their communication and presentation skills.
We may conclude here that the main task is to analyze data and plan how to influence client performed by back office executive/assistant/management.
During our data analyzing we found that investment banking companies prefer to recruit chartered accountants for their back office work that’s mean they believe CAs have more data analyzing and planning capacity but not able to handle front office work because of lack of communication and management skill.
We can understand importance of communication skill in our profession and finance sector with the above example.
Case-2 importance of communication skill during first-time recruitment process.
First of all, I want to clearly mention here that Attempt doesn’t matter when it comes for deciding your salary. What actually matters is your skills, concept clarity and most importantly communication skills. It may be policy of company to recruit first attempt success or minimum three attempt candidate but for salary prospective it’s irrelevant. Industry can’t achieve its goal on academic record basis recruitment.
Ashutosh Agarwal from Jaipur was offered 76 Lakh Salary in CA Campus Interview. He is not a Ranker or a Topper. He Scored 404 Marks for 800 in CA final exams. This proves the concept of ‘Substance over Form’.
In 2015, Ms.Pallavi was offered Rs.58 Lakh Salary. She cleared CA IPCC only in her second attempt and passed CA Final without any Rank.
The reason for this high salary is Articleship exposure, Practical Knowledge and good communication skill. In a huge response, nearly 100 organizations including public-sector undertakings and banks, with their 175 interview teams participated and made offers to a total of 1,279 newly qualified Chartered Accountants.
As many as 8,770 candidates have registered for these Campus Interview program.
Olam International Limited offered the highest salary for international posting, i.e. 76.32 (FOREX) lakh per annum and, Arcesium India Private Ltd. offered the highest salary for domestic posting, i.e. 24.00 lakh per annum. ITC Ltd offered the next highest salary of Rs.21.00 Lakhs.
Ashutosh said in interview that he used to read minimum four English newspaper Daily to keep updated himself for financial and business sector changes and it was very helpful for him during the interview process.
Financial sector is dynamic and uncertain because of this reason interviewer Always want to know updating capacity of candidates.
Big business organization now days including more steps in interview process to examine communication skill, decision making capacity, leadership skills, capacity of working in unfavourable situation etc.
Following are some recruitment steps with their objective :-
1-Written test- to examine presentation skill and conceptual understanding.
2- Personal interview- to examine communication skill and influence capacity.
3- Group discussion- to know leadership capacity.
4- Rapid fire round( where candidate require to reply within ten seconds)-to check knowledge of current market changes and general knowledge with situation handling capacity.
We must be competitive and updated to achieve success. In this complex environment only holding a degree of chartered accountancy is not a certificate of success.
Source:- Campus placement report of ICAI 2016.
Ashutosh Agrawal interview with news paper.
Source:- Recruitment data of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs,Credit Suisse and citigroup.
Source:- Pacific basin finance journal T.S Walter 341.
CAclubindia
