2018 Hiring Trends │ Accounting and Finance

FINANCIAL SERVICES

We expect the demand to increase for JCPA and USCPA license-holding candidates, especially those with in-depth technical knowledge. In addition, an increasing number of financial professionals – FP&A specialists in particular – are being recruited in the insurance and real estate finance sectors. The robust business performance among insurance, real estate, and asset management companies can be attributed in part to the negative interest rates in Japan. Auditing companies are also now experiencing more expansion in Asia, so we predict a further increase in the trend for such companies to approach multilingual professionals who are proficient in languages such as Chinese in addition to Japanese and English.

Demand for junior-level candidates is extremely high, particularly for candidates in their mid-30s or younger. Provided they have the necessary qualifications, even a jobseeker in their mid-30s who has frequently changed jobs can expect to have access to multiple job opportunities. Professionals with accounting qualifications can also significantly expand their career options by improving their English proficiency.

For finance/accounting/auditing specialists in the financial sector, 2017 has seen a notable migration of these professionals from foreign affiliated companies to Japanese companies. Increasing globalisation has enabled bilingual professionals to fully utilise their global perspective and English proficiency at Japanese companies, and these companies are now engaging in more business involving cross-border M&A and foreign exchange.

Many professionals have also been drawn away from foreign-affiliated banks due to their stagnating business performance in Japan, and some have been returning to Japanese companies that often place a greater emphasis on work-life balance.

We have also seen a slight increase in the rate at which financial controller roles have been offshored to alternative regional locations, and the majority of searches for these positions are conducted on a replacement basis.

COMMERCE

Recruitment of finance/accounting specialists is increasing, particularly among healthcare, manufacturing, and IT/online-related companies. Continued growth and expansion has led more companies to create additional positions in these sectors and increased recruitment is expected to continue in 2018.

Job openings are expected to increase for FP&A specialists and remain relatively steady for accounting/auditing/tax accounting specialists. There has been a recent increase in hiring by companies requiring experience in specialised areas such as sales finance, marketing finance, and plant finance, but as demand for financial professionals greatly exceeds supply, companies are forced to continue to offer increasingly competitive salaries. Given the shortage of FP&A professionals, many companies are also actively recruiting young and dynamic auditors from major accounting firms to learn and grow into their FP&A positions.

We are witnessing many cases of companies operating in a fast-paced environment to recruit FP&A professionals from the financial services industry. These companies are appealing to potential candidates by offering not only attractive salaries and promotion programmes, but also improved employment conditions to enhance the work-life balance of employees such as flex-time and the option to work from home. While we have also seen some foreign-affiliated companies moving to offshore general accounting functions, there has been an increase in the number of Japanese companies hiring bilingual professionals, especially in the areas of FP&A, accounting, M&A, and corporate planning. In many instances, these companies are hiring non-Japanese professionals who are proficient in business level Japanese.

Although the salary levels of FP&A specialists can increase by as much as 10% when switching jobs (20% in the case of particularly talented candidates), overall salary levels are seeing only slight to moderate increases. Young and talented FP&A specialists are benefitting from the significant demand for their skill set and they are often receiving job offers from multiple companies.  The same trends are seen in Kansai.

CONTRACT

Temp-to-perm positions in finance/accounting departments are increasing. One reason for this is that more companies are now considering promoting employees to permanent positions after evaluating their suitability over a certain period based on factors such as performance and compatibility with company culture. In addition, companies are always looking to increase their chances of retaining high performing employees, and hiring on a temp-to-perm basis is an effective way of doing so.