According to Handshake, that all-purpose job site for interns and recent college graduates, companies are posting 15% fewer internships than reported just two years ago. Why? Some of the downturn is attributed to economic uncertainty, but others are pointing to AI’s role in handling junior-level tasks that young professionals used to perform.
At public accounting firms, internships and hiring are still hot. Recruitment firm Robert Half reported that the top skills in demand in this field are business knowledge, leadership and communication skills along with a self-starter mindset.
So how do young professionals jump over entry-level skills into the management skills that will help them oversee AI functions and lead companies and organizations?
Based on recent accounting jobs trends that discuss the role of AI in entry-level training, we recommend these three strategies to explore in your career advancement.
1. Mentoring
The traditional apprenticeship model for public accounting jobs will not work long-term. The tasks traditionally used to train interns and entry-level professionals will be handled much more quickly and efficiently with AI agents. It won’t make sense to hire people for that work.
Instead, interns and entry-level employees must be assigned an internal or external mentor who can train them in management skills and analysis for business use cases. Intellectual capacity will be commoditized by AI, and therefore humans will need to improve their interpersonal and human-centered analysis for applying technical data.
Pairing junior-level professionals with partners and consultants will build a mentoring cohort that fills the current and pending management gap at accounting firms.
2. Structured Learning Scenarios
As AI agents grow in efficiency and intelligence, there will still be failures in consultative accuracy and judgment. Just as CPAs and accountants make judgments to interpret standards and tax law for their clients, they will need to interpret the results of AI.
For example, rather than spending time understanding the technical nature of lease accounting standards, junior accountants will receive insights from AI on the standards and applications. Then they will practice scenarios for how these insights should be applied to fictitious clients. The same is true for forecasting; while AI agents can quickly forecast debt or revenue based on past history, professionals will need to identify economic outliers or business plans that impact the data.
This non-billable, structured learning will hone a young professional’s analytical and business skills. That way, they can manage AI agents with the right prompts while using accurate data effectively for clients.
3. Experimentation
During their training, junior staff should be encouraged to try new ways of doing their work, ask questions and innovate through internal “failure” exercises. Experimentation and prototyping can improve critical thinking and resilience for the entire team when it’s handled in the spirit of learning rather than strict performance reviews.
For this reason, firms may consider hiring AI-specific trainers who oversee these innovative internal exercises. This approach will place safety rails and proper security on the curriculum. According to a Thomsen Reuters survey, 85% of accounting firm respondents believed that new AI specialists would be needed in the firm to handle the legal, risk, technology, implementation and training requirements for employees using AI and working with AI agents.
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See Also: Are Accounting Jobs Recession Proof?
