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About Brad Ledford: https://www.dhg.com/people/userid/278?filter=bledford
Contact Brad Ledford: [email protected]
or https://www.linkedin.com/in/expertrecruiterbradledford/

DHG Search:https://www.dhgsearch.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:00)
Welcome back to episode 95 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Adam Larson, and I'm here to preview today's conversation and introduce our featured guest speaker, Brad Ledford. My cohost Mitch talked to Brad about the changing job market and the new norms and job seeking, interviewing and hiring. Brad is the President of DHG Search, where he provides advisory and recruiting services for candidates in finance, accounting, audit and tax. In this episode, he explains what recruiting looks like today and describe some new opportunities in the workforce to hear a great career-related discussion, keep listening as we head over the conversation now.
Mitch: (00:48)
So Brad, to start in broad terms, from what you've seen, how has the job market really changed over the last six months? How did companies change their approach for hiring? What did the overall job availability look like? You know, just from your perspective, what has this last few months done for the job market?
Brad: (01:09)
Yeah. Great question, and there's no doubt, it looks different. The one thing the unemployment rate has jumped from 2.4% approximately now up to 8.4%, and that's down to slightly where it was maybe just just a few weeks ago. So that, that right there in itself is a very good indicator of some significant change in the job market. And what I saw during that window, as COVID-19 started to impact the marketplace, were companies really pushing the pause button or, in some cases, opportunities just drying up. And really from that, I'd say that March to May or February to June window is where that started to really show,and of course, unemployment rates started to spike. You then saw in that same window of times, companies starting to lag their process or slow their process significantly. Even if they already had just started a search or recruiting process. So a lot of times individuals would be, in the beginning stages and all of a sudden feel like, Hey we're where did that search go? Where does that process, end up and companies were kind of, Hey, wait and see mode during that window. And then some just really were not interested at all in hiring, during this last six months. So you've seen a little bit of pockets in both areas where, you know, some companies are starting to come back, but, you know, from that last six months, we've, we've seen a big change and, and how, the market has been impacted. And then part is your second question, I guess, how the companies approach hiring and what does it mean to overall job availability? You know, I think companies started to realize there are some candidates coming on to the marketplace and then they started looking at their job profile and their role and what they needed. And what I saw was companies starting to add more boxes to the checklist that they needed. So instead of it being, Hey, at 2.4, under 3% unemployment, and if these people had these couple of things and then this good accounting skills or certification or background, it jumped to, wow, I need these 10 things checked and their background to consider them for the position. So it really did change how companies were approaching, hiring, and then also, you know, availability, job availability changed. Now I'll also say it was interesting that there was, there was some organizations that looked at this as a scenario of, hey, there's an opportunity to add resumes to their database or add connections or contacts. And so you may have still saw some folks, I guess, taking candidates, but it just, it just slowed significantly.
Mitch: (04:19)
So our listeners, accounting and finance professionals, they span many industries, and I'm just curious again, from what you've seen, are there particular industries that remain more active or even successful in hiring through this? And then I'd like to get your thoughts on the opposite as well. Are there any roles or industries that really suffered more because of the change in the hiring process and the availability and everything you just mentioned?
Brad: (04:47)
Yeah. Great, great question. At the firm, I'm part of Dixon Hughes Goodman, and the team I lead within DHG Search. We go to market as an industry and service specialists, of course. And so that industry piece was very important that we had a wide...

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA’s podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm pleased to bring you another bonus episode for my co-host Rouba Zeidan. For this conversation, Rouba talks with Asha Merugu, senior manager at EY. Asha explains her career journey in the finance industry and shares her perspective on how gender parody is being driven in many private and government sectors in India. Let's head over and take a listen to the full conversation now.
Rouba: (00:38)
So according to the Global Findex database released by the World Bank, roughly one out of two bank accounts in India remain inactive, which is about twice the average of other developing economies. What is the worst, you know, is notable in terms of the gender gap when it comes to this amount? So for example, 54% of women account holders report not actually using their accounts as opposed to 43% of male holders. Do you think that there's a need for financial education amongst women in order to render the more financially savvy?
Asha: (01:18)
No, it's a great question. Obviously, yes, right. So there has to be a financial education amongst women. There is no secondary view about it, but if you look at like in today's era, what is very important, is it just not awomen, like, even men need financial education, but of course they are considering, you know, I have gone in a very small region India and you know, so my mother is a working professional. She was, she is a doctor, and then I have seen as a kid, how challenging it is for working mothers to manage a finance and a home and a work. So finance was always in the hands of the father, right? Like the major decisions were made by fathers and anything to do with the major investments in India is always made by of, you know, father of the family. So that's how the most Indian families, which are traditionally like, you know, middle class and maybe a little bit higher upper middle class families would do except for some exceptions. But, but I agree with you, I think considering the way, you know, the India is going on. Oh, you're right. Like most of the wommen in India does not have active bank accounts. You know there could be majority of the reasons, like, for example, if you take working women, they do have bank accounts, right? So because salary gets credited to bank, but look at the number of transactions that happens in the account. Oh, I mean the service here sees that most women are not very, very, investment savvy. They don't really want to invest and take risks. This is like a majority of the mindset because it's, it's always a protective or culture that we have grown up. Right. We have been grown up as a kid that, okay, you have to save, you have to take care. You know, you have to, or you have to secure yourself, and this is how I think the education system in India works too. And this is what makes women very conservative, especially I feel in India. And most of the women though, they earn salaries and their bank account would be limited to the salary account. You don't find them making the investments, which meant there to make it aggressively. Right. They don't actually spend the portfolios aggressively. Now coming to the question of, you know, like how do you give this education to your question that, do you think there's a need for financial education? Yes. I think there's a very, very, very important need for financial education, especially amongst I think the middle class families and, you know, the working woman category, the Indian government is also doing quite a few things to get this education spread amongst the communities. In fact, I think if you look at Jonathan Yogendra that India, God, which makes every household to have an account bank account, you know, compulsory for the purpose of getting the pension or maybe for the purpose of getting any of the amenities, which our government is passing on, the government made it mandatory. I think that was a great initiative from a government perspective to get women data, at least as a concept of saving. And there's a concept of you having an account to get your money. That way the woman doesn't just take all the money and put it in the hands of men. In some families, I think it's very unfortunate that this will happen so that the government has done some initiatives by having this agenda huge now. And I think bringing some education, bringing all the schemes through which the small amount of the money reaches, right. It reaches through an account itself. So even though I think the report says a lot, gradually my view is that is India speaking up. You know, the people are becoming extremely, you know, now savvy about using the bank accounts, you know, using digital means and more so because of the COVID right. In the last six months, I think we have seen a great tran...

Contact Neta Meidav: https://www.linkedin.com/in/netameidav/

Vault: https://vaultplatform.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back for episode 94 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today I'll be bringing you right up to a conversation between my cohost Mitch Roshong and Neta Meidav. Neta is the Co-founder and CEO of Vault, a reporting platform designed to resolve workplace misconduct incidents. In this episode, she discusses the pitfalls with traditional internal reporting or whistleblower policies within organizations, and how technology such as her platform can enhance internal, ethical reporting moving forward. So without further ado, let's hear their conversation now.
Mitch: (00:45)
So we're here today to talk about alternative and innovative solutions to traditional whistleblower policies within organizations. I'd first like to set the stage for our listeners and kind of explain the why for our conversation. So can you share some examples of activities that would require employees to act as whistleblowers?
Neta: (01:04)
Sure, of course. I'm happy to do so. Maybe first it would be helpful to distinguish for the purpose of this conversation, between whistle-blowing and internal, reporting. I think it's important to explain that, the way we see it, whistleblowing is the act of reporting misconduct or ethical breaches externally. For example, to an enforcement agency of sorts like the SEC, whilst, internal reporting is really what, we want to be talking about today and the process which we want to fix and optimize, for, for everyone's benefit. So when we talk about kind of activities that would require employees to act as whistleblowers, I think that the past year showed how that category for internal reporting has it has expanded. So, we of course consider the traditional corporate and financial fraud and corruption issues that require people to, come forward and report, and only today, I, woke up to, the interesting article on the Wall Street Journal about, Volkswagen, which I'll, I'll come back to, later on in this conversation, because I think it's, it's crucial, but the things that happen in every organization, that require, to kind of surface up concerns and, and make management aware.
Mitch: (02:43)
So then in response to these activities and the various things that go on within an organization, what are some of the traditional solutions or policies that companies have in place, whether it is the internal or the external, like you mentioned, and what are some of those normal outcomes in your opinion?
Neta: (02:59)
Sure. So I think, you know, I think company’s are largely trying to do the right thing by saying, come forward to us internally. Speak to your manager speak to someone in the organization, speak to our compliance office, but if you cannot, here's a hotline for you, right. And that's the, the traditional mechanism that we've seen for decades that was, you know, became specifically popular, due to, the Sarbanes Oxley Act and the requirements on, on a third party operated whistleblowing platform that was put in place back in 2002. The issue with such legacy solution such as, third party hotlines is that number one, they don't really do much to build trust, right? They're not helping with building the internal trust that we need to see today, in every modern organization, because essentially what they're saying is if there's an issue, well, call this call center and report a problem, and the company will communicate with this call center and pick it up. But here's an intermediary for you and this is how you need to come forward because the act of reporting is just so scary and difficult, and so here's, here's a route for you. The second thing is if you look at the data and the statistics, they actually tell you that hotlines are in many cases, not only are there not the solution, but I would say that they're part of the problem, because if you look at, the global business ethics survey that was published this year, it talks about, the fact that only 6% of all cases that are reported internally in corporate America are reported to the hotline. In other cases, you find, so one of the biggest providers of hotlines in the world, I was talking about 11% of reporting happens to its platform. So that's a very low number, and that comes to show that people essentially do not really trust that option, and do not find it as a, as an optimal solution for when they are experiencing something that is in fact very difficult, to come forward and speak up about. And I think that is perhaps one of the reasons that we're seeing, the Department of Justice just published its guidelines a few mo...

Contact Jolene Lampton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolene-lampton-b40127164/

IMA's Ethics Center: https://www.imanet.org/career-resources/ethics-center

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host Mitch Roshong, and today you'll be listening to a bonus episode featuring a conversation about Global Ethics Day. Jolene Lampton, Professor of Management, Accounting, and Area coordinator for MBA and Accounting Programs at Park University, joined Count Me In cohost, Adam Larson, to talk about the significance of ethics and values. Jolene is also a member of IMA's Committee on Ethics and was kind enough to share her perspectives with us on this very important day. To hear more, keep listening as we head over to their conversation now.
Adam: (00:47)
Since we're releasing this podcast on Global Ethics Day, I wanted to start out by asking why is this day important, And what does it mean to you?
Jolene: (00:53)
On this global ethics day, I believe it is a day for all of us to search within ourselves, our beings, to bring our values to the surface as we think about a common set of values. People with high self efficacy have conviction within their beings to do the right thing. This in turn gives them confidence. They do not second guess their own intentions. They act in accordance with their convictions. People with high self efficacy can speak about it. They can articulate their values. This is called efficacy. It means you have the ability to produce an intended result. It is intrinsic. It comes from within one's being, your persona. With conviction, you feel willing or even compelled to speak your beliefs. This is a point where you can exude confidence to others, and this will show in your behavior. On the other hand, people with low self efficacy cannot do this. Rather, they doubt themselves. They are intimidated. When speaking with others about a situation, they do not feel confident on how to act on their own convictions. So you want to achieve high self efficacy. You want to feel good about yourself and be motivated and confident to take action accordingly. On this global ethics day, I hope you will examine your own values and start to speak about them.
Adam: (02:56)
So when we look at ethics from an organization perspective, how important is it for an organization to have its foundation rooted in those ethics?
Jolene: (03:06)
Your values are rooted in your internal beat. They come from within. Even before you go to work for an employer, you should check on their websites to see if their values align with your own. And if you can't find the employer's core values on their website, it's a great interview question. You should ask them what their core values are. When this alignment is achieved. That is the best fit for both the organization and the individual. It's an ideal cultural fit. You want to work for an organization with your same core values, your intrinsic values.
Adam: (03:57)
So you just mentioned that, you know, you want to work with an organization that has your same values and organizations are made up with lots of different people, and how can someone build the confidence to do the right thing and to speak up when they need to? So let's say they've done all that legwork that you said the organization meets up, but then they notice something that doesn't, that doesn't match up with their values. How do they build that confidence to do the right thing?
Jolene: (04:22)
Human beings have special abilities related to learning that sets him apart from other species. Social cognition theory says we learn by modeling and imitating others. Think about it. This is how your own youngster learn to walk and talk. They looked at you as a role model. Then you grew up and you mastered performance, gaining some morals and we acquire the ability to function independently, which is a good thing, and we gain the unique ability to self reflect, which gives us the ability to have self efficacy, which gives you confidence to do the right thing. Giving Voice to Values is an approach that will let this happen more readily. Giving Voice to Values was created by Mary Gentilly in 2010. This approach advocates that you will speak your mind when you know what is right. What you really should do is prepare and practice for actions and not just any action, but the difficult, hard, and risky intricate values-based actions. This is a first step to building ethical muscles, which will give you confidence to act on your own values. The habit of voicing one's values takes practice to make our values just come out instantaneously. So start by crafting y...

Contact Loutfi Echehade: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loutfi-echhade-5b3601/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
Hi everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of Count Me In. I'm your host Adam Larson, and this is the 93rd episode in our series. Today's conversation is between my cohost Rouba, and IMAboard member and financial advisor, Loutfi Echehade. Loutfi is a seasoned financial advisor to family businesses in Saudi Arabia and the region and joins Count Me In to talk about the implications of COVID-19 and the current economic landscape. For advice and how such owners can maneuver their businesses. During these times, keep listening as we go to their conversation now.
Rouba: (00:42)
So, let’s get straight into it. I’m excited to get your insights on the family business segment in the region. So analysts and economists consider family businesses to be the lifeblood of the Middle East region, and crucial to the region’s economic prosperity and stability. Why do you think that is?
Loutfi: (00:59)
Well I mean, you know, family businesses, as you indicated, I mean it represent at least 80 percent, some statistics say 85 to 90 percent of the economy is driven by family businesses. In our region, the largest family businesses are the most critical. They play e a critical factor not only in employment and number of employment, but in contributing to the local economies. So, they drive the whole business, you know, and this is not only in our region. Globally, family businesses really are the main drivers of economic developments, in most of the world.
Rouba: (01:46)
According to the Middle East family survey conducted last year, they found that 78 percent of family businesses report economic environment as their top challenge. How does such a limitation play out when you are facing one of the biggest challenging moments in the economic history since the 1930s, COVID-19?
Loutfi: (02:09)
Family businesses are just like any other businesses. They go through, of course, cycles and they face these kinds of challenges every once in a while. We had a financial crisis in 2007 and in 2008, before that we had the September 11 events, and before that there were a lot of events and major developments in the world. Family businesses, just like any other business, they were able to sustain and maintain their structure and business, primarily because they have certain features that allow them to do that. The flexibility, transparency, level of commitment, long term commitment. But still, they face external pressure, just like everybody else. I work on a number of family businesses in the region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, and the pandemic, COVID-19 has a significant impact on their operations. So they face the same thing just like any other business. If they are one structure, they can manage to go through these events, major events, and heavy burdens in the future, you know.
Rouba: (03:34)
How equipped are regional family businesses for this huge task and what are some of the best practices you have noticed from your practice?
Loutfi: (03:44)
By their nature, family businesses are family-oriented, family-directed. They have a clear strategic planning, they commit to the family values, the family culture. So there weree ups and downs for most of their lives, business lives. They go through a lot of turmoil, roadblocks, headaches, pressures. If they are really well managed, and have proper structure, and that’s where comes family governance. If they really have proper family governance, that unites them, that puts them together. As I said, they are not like the corporate world, like businesses for profit. They don’t focus just on the short term, they focus on the long term. There is also the level of loyalty. In family businesses you find a lot, of course, a lot of family members being united and being committed, but at the same time, there a lot of non-family members aligned, committed and work aggressively, even sometimes more than the family members. So, you have that combination of commitment to the long term, not to focus on the short term, the willingness, the desire, the interest, and the commitment to continue to the following generation. And then they have the loyalty part which also drives them into the future, and into the long term. The way I see family business, just to give you an example, there are a lot of companies now in our region and globally they are firing people of course. They put people on furloughs or extended long leaves and they cut salaries. The family businesses that I deal with face the same problems, but they manage, you know, in a way, to keep these employees with them because they have been with them during tough times, difficult times, as well as in good times. So they look at them as really p...