We are committed to increasing diversity in the accountancy and finance profession and have a number of entry routes available to the ACA qualification.
Recruit students
To ensure a robust pipeline for your recruitment we recommend that you consider more than just job adverts. There are so many initiatives that you can take part in, some of which we have shared in the document below.
Recruit Gen Z
Generation Z (Gen Z) has a new set of skills, values and motivations that will shape the future of our businesses, professions and economies. It is vital that employers understand Gen Z motivations and – where possible – align recruitment opportunities accordingly. Those that don’t risk losing out on top talent to the competition.
So what does Gen Z look for? And how can you attract them?
ICAEW Training Vacancies
An exclusive benefit to ICAEW Authorised Training Employers, Training Vacancies allows you to promote your job vacancies to a pool of potential trainees and recruit high-quality candidates at zero cost. Training Vacancies also features a CV search allowing you to view a list of partly qualified students looking for a training role.
Employer Blogs
Read our latest articles on topical issues impacting employers covering recruitment, retention and more.
Engaging with students
The ICAEW Early Careers & Student Recruitment teams' delivery a variety of activity.
Rise
Rise brings together employers of all sizes in the UK with the overall aim of improving social mobility by helping young people develop the skills that businesses need. You can support this by volunteering to take part in workshops in schools.
Access accountancy
Access Accountancy is a collaboration of more than 26 organisations and professional bodies dedicated to improving access to, and progression within the accountancy profession in the UK. This is being achieved via a variety of methods, including by organisations committing to providing meaningful work experience opportunities.
In your workplace
Work experience
If you can, then offer meaningful work experience to either local schools, or colleges. You can partner with specialist organisations to help you with this. Work Experience needs to be structured and meet certain criteria. You won’t always have to set up your own programme you can partner with the Careers and Enterprise company or specialist agencies, some of which are listed below.
Internships/ Placement Years
If considering offering internship or placement opportunities, we recommend that they are paid. Most Universities already have schemes in place to help you recruit and usually this is under a no obligation to hire agreement. This is also a chance for you to develop supervisory and first line management skills in your team.
Insight days
You can offer these in person or virtually and can give potential applicants an in-depth view of you as a company and what being employee will really be like. We find that students want to find out more about your culture, values and the working environment, this is a great way to do this. If you are offering this as an in-person event, consider how attendees will get to you and if you are able to reimburse travel costs.
Student recruitment agencies
Depending on your budget you can also enlist the support of various agencies in the UK. The below list is not necessarily an endorsement but just examples of who you can build pipeline activities with.
Career teams
Contact the Careers and Employability service at your local University or College, they will have a variety of ways that you can promote your company and your vacancies directly to students. This can include jobs boards, targeted emails to student groups, as well as a range of sector specific events. They will often have incentives for offering internships and placements and for SMEs there may be funding available to help with onboarding.
Requesting resources
As a part of our commitment to being carbon neutral we no longer produce printed material, or send out goody bags, however our latest brochures are available online as well as many more resources and information.
We would recommend, if possible, to have a laptop or tablet on your stand open either on the Careers homepage, or with the digital brochure already loaded and encourage students to sign up for our newsletters. We also have some great short videos introducing the ACA and about School leaver routes which might also be of interest. These videos often get a better response from students than lots of slide decks. Students want to hear about real experiences, what does a typical day actually look like, what will they actually be doing, what is the culture and environment like, so talking about your own career journey, the route you took and the skills you’ve gained as a Chartered Accountant will be hugely valuable to them.
The Early Careers Team are continuing with our virtual events programme, interested students can sign up to attend a variety of bite sized employability events for free. Dates are added monthly.
We have recently signed the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance Pledge and have committed to changing our approach to events, with no plastic, no giveaways and 100% recyclable events stands, as well as making changes to the way we travel.