2 min read August 2022 — Hiring an experienced CPA has become so difficult that John Gonella, regional market leader of Cherry Bekaert LLP, told Invest: that his firm’s best strategy is to recruit on college campuses a long time before students are even close to graduation.
What have been the primary highlights for your firm over the last 18 months?
One of the highlights for our firm has been the breadth and size of services that we’ve been able to offer to clients. We were able to expand and diversify our services. We have built out teams able to provide consulting services outside of the traditional tax and audit compliance related work. The consulting services cover such offerings as digital consulting, risk advisory, assistance with Employee Retention Credits or navigating the PPP program forgiveness process. We saw a sharp increase in client needs for ancillary support services.
There has also been an increase in money being invested in companies in the market, so being able to assist these companies with exit strategies or acquisition strategies was fun for us, and it just shows the relative strength of the economy here in the triangle.
Do you think the diversification of your service offerings is going to continue for the long term?
With the current state of the market, you would think that companies would pull back on budgets for needed services, but we haven’t seen that. To support the local market needs we have continued to invest in building specific expertise and services focusing on the technology sector as well as the healthcare and life sciences sector.
There has been a lot of investment being made in life sciences in the market. We’re seeing acquisitions on the biotech side and a lot of private equity investment in the services side, whether that be rehabilitation or physicians practices.
How has the influx of people and business to the triangle region affected business?
From the standpoint of opportunities, there is still a lot of outside investment moving into the area. We have had a lot of talks with international companies who are setting up subsidiaries here. For years that’s been the case, and a lot of it has been because of the local college system or for sales opportunities because it’s a great, centralized location. We’ve seen more manufacturing coming into the market as well. We’re having a lot more conversations with clients that are committing to infrastructure to do some manufacturing.
The significant investments are coming from international or from larger companies here in the U.S. who have continued to expand their reach to the triangle. All the service providers and ancillary businesses that help support those organizations all get a boost. It has increased the ability of the middle market to continue to grow here in the triangle as well. We have not slowed down with the number of people that want to move into the area for business and personal reasons.
What has been the effect of that growth on the local infrastructure?
We’re going to have to be ready from an infrastructure standpoint, and by infrastructure I don’t mean just the brick and mortar of real estate but also people capital. The biggest thing I’m seeing in our profession, in general, is the talent shortage. I don’t think there’s a single client who has not mentioned how hard it is to find people. There are tons of business opportunities if you can find the people to be able to service those or to be able to provide the company the man hours needed to take advantage of those opportunities. That has been at the top of the list of everybody’s pain points.
Our university system, from community colleges up to the public and private universities, are seeing growth, but we’ve got to build infrastructure to be able to bring the people to the area and keep up with the growth.
What are your talent acquisition strategies?
The CPA firms in the market are much more competitive with regard to new hires out of college, especially with the internship programs, leadership programs and programs to foster building from the bottom. Going out in the market for an experienced hire is extremely difficult in the current time.
You are seeing investment in recruiting at an earlier stage. It used to be that you would go on campus and meet the firms that do on-campus interviews, typically at the point where someone was in their senior year getting ready to graduate and then potentially going into their master’s program. Now you see firms that offer internships that are going out earlier than ever before in a lot of cases. The name of the game now is to be very early in the recruiting process as it relates to students.
What are the concerns that your clients have raised when it comes to inflation, interest rates and the current economic situation?
The talk about interest rates started to crop up this summer. The biggest concern before interest rates was the supply chain, the ability to get what you need in the market. The companies that are thriving are the ones who can acquire resources and supply products, but it is becoming more and more difficult. The lack of stability on a global scale because of the Ukraine conflict and other circumstances around the world have made it difficult for some companies to be able to grow and provide services and products as quickly as they had in the past. I’m sure the rising interest rates are going to become more of an issue, but we haven’t seen a slowdown yet.
How do you advise your clients regarding a possible economic downturn?
As far as a potential downturn in the economy, one of the things that we’re always looking out for is how we can help clients with what they are doing now and moving forward. As accountants, we just don’t deal only with the audit from last year, with the tax return. Where the value comes is in the discussions regarding 2022-2023 and beyond and what we see coming out from a regulatory perspective, what we see coming from an income tax change perspective and how people can prepare for that.
What are the priorities of your firm over the next three to five years?
I think part of it is going to be supporting the existing companies that are here already with our services, and hopefully those services allow our clients to function better. Our focus is to assist and to evolve our practice to be more advisory, to have more bench strength on the advisory side for that cost benefit to the client
Another priority is industry specialization within the firm and the practice. There was a time when a regional firm was kind of a ‘jack of all trades.’ And over the past few years and continuing, we have put a large emphasis on developing majors within an industry group. We want to increase our knowledge of each industry, our ability to help our clients outside the traditional services and be able to focus on industry and the individual level within the firm.
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