The demand for skilled talent remains high in 2024 for Canadian’s within the finance and accounting profession. To meet their hiring goals, companies must continue finding innovative ways to attract and retain both long-term and short-term talent.
Finance and accounting hiring managers are encountering significant competition for talent, particularly in financial planning and analysis, financial reporting, and budgets and analysis, accounting operations, and bookkeeping skills. This trend underscores a growing demand at a time when the national unemployment rate for business and finance occupations is 2.5 per cent. With a tight talent pipeline, finding candidates for these business-critical roles is especially challenging.
Approaches such as offering above-average compensation, promoting opportunities for career advancement and engaging recruiters to help you tap into the pool of passive job seekers are more important than ever. In addition, attracting skilled talent is increasingly about how well a company can provide a healthy work/life balance.
The latest report sees Canadian finance and accounting job trends pointing to a limited supply of candidates looking for a job change. This will impact companies looking to hire. As an alternative to consider, almost a third (31 per cent) of hiring managers in finance and accounting are seeking contract professionals to help with financial planning and analysis projects.
To combat hiring struggles, businesses should look at offering flexibility in when and where employees can work. According to the latest Robert Half Canada Salary Guide, 43 per cent of finance and accounting hiring managers lost out on a strong job candidate because they could not accommodate their flexible work expectations. If you are able to meet this key demand, not only will you attract candidates but you can boost company recruitment and retention efforts for the long-term.
Don’t underestimate the power of pay transparency. 71 per cent of finance and accounting job candidates say the inclusion of a salary range in a job posting is an important consideration when evaluating whether to apply. Keep this top of mind when you are recruiting for roles in 2024.
Finance and accounting managers have indicated their hiring plans for the first half of this year:
42 per cent are hiring for new permanent roles49 per cent are filling vacated permanent positions95 per cent are struggling to find skilled talent
In 2024, Canadian finance and accounting teams will be primarily focused on:
1. Planning, budgeting and forecasting processes
2. Finance technology upgrades
3. Data and analytics
4. AI implementation
5. Close process optimization
An emerging trend for the finance job market in 2024 is a greater number of contract roles. 55 per cent of finance and accounting managers plan to increase their use of contract professionals, especially in these areas:
Financial planning and analysis
AP, AR and bookkeeping
Financial reporting
Few finance and accounting employees are considering a job change in the first half of 2024. Current job search sentiments among finance and accounting workers are as follows:
18 per cent of finance and accounting professionals are considering a new job.
Another 17 per cent are actively seeking new opportunities.
And 64 per cent are content and not looking to change jobs.
With most professionals in the finance job market and accounting job market inclined to stay in their current roles, the challenge for companies to recruit skilled talent intensifies. To attract these passive candidates — those not actively seeking new opportunities — employers must offer competitive salaries, flexible work arrangements and opportunities for career advancement. These incentives are critical to enticing professionals who are content but might be swayed by an offer that aligns more closely with their career and work-life balance goals. Working with a recruitment firm like Robert Half, can also help employers access a group of passive job seekers who can be swayed to make a career change.
The Demand for Skilled Talent report by Robert Half is an authoritative source providing essential insights into 2024's employment trends. This report has offered a deep dive into Canada’s hiring landscape for over a decade, spotlighting challenges and strategies to attract and retain talent in today’s job market. It explores what employees seek in their careers, identifies common recruitment errors and suggests solutions. The report spans sectors like finance, technology, marketing, legal and human resources, proving crucial for business leaders and managers.
Data methodology
This report's in-demand role data is collated from Robert Half placements, Statistics Canada information, and job postings TalentNeuron. It encompasses over one hundred thousand new positions from hundreds of independent job boards and company websites, including over 8,000 placements from Robert Half Canada. Positions are categorized to over 350 job titles within Robert Half Canada’s 2024 Salary Guide using a proprietary mapping methodology that employs state-of-the-art large language models. This dataset includes roles across the administrative and customer support, finance and accounting, human resources, legal, marketing and creative, and technology professions.
