Accountancy firm scraps education 'barrier'

dowie

dowie

dowie

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33759238

A leading accountancy firm is to remove all academic and education details from its trainee application process.
In a bid to boost workplace diversity, Ernst and Young (EY) will choose which applicants to interview based on their performance in online tests.
School-leavers have until now needed the equivalent of three Bs at A-level and graduate applicants a 2:1 degree.
Qualifications "will no longer act as a barrier to getting a foot in the door," said Maggie Stilwell of EY.
In May another major accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, announced it would no longer use A-level grades as a way of selecting graduate recruits.
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This might be welcome news to some on here - there seem to have been a few threads re: people wanting to train as accountants.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it, one one hand I would have assumed that, for example, good grades at A-Level would strongly correlate with good performance in professional exams and so would be a useful filter for a company with thousands of applicants to sort through. On the other hand A-level grades have become progressively watered down and degree subjects can very considerably - not all 2:1s are equal... Perhaps it is useful to be a bit more meritocratic and if they can design a suitable test that acts as a good indicator that someone will get through the process then why not. though if they're doing it purely for the sake of diversity and are just using standard IQ type tests then they might well find that they get slightly skewed performance with Asians doing well, Blacks not so well and Whites in between.
 
Not a big deal for young applicants (21'ish) - if you can get good A-Levels and a good degree then you'll be good at the online tests as well, whereas if you flunked your A-levels and/or didn't get a degree then in all likelyhood you'll flunk the online tests, so in the end you'll see the same applicants as before progressing through the process.

What is does open up the job market to older workers who have niether good a-levels and/or a degree but thier work and life experience should equip them well to pass the tests.
 
Deloitte have their Bright Start program which allows school leavers to enter the accountancy profession and train with them. Both are welcome alternatives to the degree route.
 
true, though I think the main group they're targeting with this are people who are naturally quite bright but just went to poor/failing schools - that group likely includes a lot of second/third generation immigrants from poor areas etc.. If they can identify the ones who are likely to succeed and ignore their A-levels etc.. then this is a good thing.

There are probably others too they could get value from - people who were bright but flunked uni because they dossed around etc.. though I'd wonder how well they'd fare with professional exams.

Yup older candidates, career changers get a better shot this way too. I guess there are opportunities with something like this for them to get talent they might not have looked at previously - how well they actually use this blinding process in practice though is still to be seen.
 
I don't think an online test taken at home is much use, imagine the scope for abuse.

And what group does Asian refer to? Indian & Pakistani descent, or China, Japan, Korea etc. (Oriental)
 
SpeedFreak said:
Deloitte have their Bright Start program which allows school leavers to enter the accountancy profession and train with them. Both are welcome alternatives to the degree route.
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accountancy firms have always been open to school leavers, that isn't anything new
 
SciNeT said:
I don't think an online test taken at home is much use, imagine the scope for abuse.

And what group does Asian refer to? Indian & Pakistani descent, or China, Japan, Korea etc. (Oriental)
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probably a timed test with a selection of questions chosen at random from a large pool?
 
SciNeT said:
I don't think an online test taken at home is much use, imagine the scope for abuse.
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that is easy to resolve - just have the candidates sit another test when you invite them in

And what group does Asian refer to? Indian & Pakistani descent, or China, Japan, Korea etc. (Oriental)
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either

both groups do well in those sorts of tests
 
This is interesting for me, i stupidly dossed around at uni so my degree isn't as good as it could have been. Something to look into over the next couple of days
 
This is a good thing for both sides in my opinion. I know whats its like to be fairly bright but so disillusioned with the school system that you don't try, its a foolish attitude but who makes good decisions when they're a teenager?

Of all the employers I've talked to most are far more interested in the person than their teenage test results, and as far as I can tell this will help to put the right person in the right job. When you look at the cost of training someone who will stay for 15 years over constantly rehiring trained staff the trainee is almost always the better option as long as they have a good chance of passing the training.
 
SpeedFreak said:
Not really the big four
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yes really

from links in this thread EY and Deloitte both do... though in the case of Deloitte (your link) they clearly do look at A-Level results and degree results where applicable - whereas the thread is about blinding results in the recruitment process
 
SpeedFreak said:
Not really the big four
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I work for a "big four" and there are lots of people on the school leaver programme here. The thing is that they have it in their contracts that they can't fail any of their professional accountancy exams more than twice (Inc. resits), so quite a lot leave before they fully qualify.
 
Good news for people like me who had no motivation during A-levels and had to apply to a smaller firm because I was auto-filtered out by the big four due to insufficient UCAS points, despite the fact I had a first class degree and subsequently out performed almost all of my 300+ UCAS point colleagues during my ACA and CTA exams. Always surprised me they wouldn't even consider a 21 year old candidate based on how he performed when he was effectively still a child at 16/17.
 
Good alternative. In my experience school leavers / college leavers can be better assets than university leavers. Cheaper, more driven, and not someone who thinks they know it all...

Well aware that this isn't always the case. But I have never understood the reason some firms just close their door to these groups of people. Just because they haven't got a piece of paper; one that is slowly becoming more and more worthless iro grading intelligence.

In my social circle those who are school leavers are generally in better positions than those with degrees bar one graduate who is flying.

Professional exams aren't exactly rocket science either (from my experience). They are usually around A-Level in difficulty once you get into the thick of them, earlier ones comparable to GCSE.
 
Good news,

I flunked half my education due to spending too much time drinking beer & playing in a band. I now work in an environment where a majority have masters or a PHD, but it's completely unnecessary assuming you are able/willing to do some study outside of work to prepare for a role.

Educational background from the candidates I've seem & interviewed seems to have very little correlation with performance in total honesty, I've seem people with masters doing averages of averages. :p A short conversation, some aptitude tests & the contents of a CV give a much better indication of ability of ability & performance than what degree they have.
 
dowie said:
yes really

from links in this thread EY and Deloitte both do... though in the case of Deloitte (your link) they clearly do look at A-Level results and degree results where applicable - whereas the thread is about blinding results in the recruitment process
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I know they do but my point was that it is relatively recent. As far as I know Deloitte launched their scheme in 20011/2012 and the EY scheme is new.
 
nope EY were recruiting school leavers back when I was at school over a decade ago

either way, it is off topic and not really relevant to the thread which is about firms blinding results - that is what is new, not the idea of accountancy firms recruiting non degree holders candidates (the profession has always been open to school leavers)
 
dowie said:
nope EY were recruiting school leavers back when I was at school over a decade ago

either way, it is off topic and not really relevant to the thread which is about firms blinding results
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Fair enough, I wasn't aware they practiced it that early, happy to be corrected.
 
just if you're interested in that BDO (5th biggest) has targeted non grads for a while too - their current boss was a non grad trainee himself a few decades ago
 
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