Explore our Demand for Skilled Talent report to see what specializations employers need most.
The demand for skilled talent remains high in 2024 for Canadians within finance and accounting. To meet their hiring goals, companies must continue finding innovative ways to attract and retain both long-term and short-term talent.
Finance and accounting hiring managers are encountering significant competition for talent, particularly in financial planning and analysis, financial reporting, accounts payable/receivable/bookkeeping and budgets and analysis. This trend underscores a growing demand at a time when the national unemployment rate for business and finance occupations is 3.5 per cent. With a tight talent pipeline, finding candidates for these business-critical roles is especially challenging.
Approaches such as offering above-average compensation, promoting opportunities for career advancement and engaging recruiters to help you tap into the pool of passive job seekers are more important than ever. In addition, attracting skilled talent is increasingly about how well a company can provide a healthy work/life balance.
There continues to be a limited supply of candidates in finance and accounting, leading to 85 per cent of hiring managers facing challenges to find skilled talent. As an alternative, nearly half (48 per cent) of hiring managers in finance and accounting are seeking contract professionals to help with financial reporting, planning and analysis projects.
To combat hiring struggles, businesses should look at offering flexibility in when and where employees can work. According to the latest Robert Half Canada Salary Guide, 43 per cent of finance and accounting hiring managers lost out on a strong job candidate because they could not accommodate their flexible work expectations. If you are able to meet this key demand, not only will you attract candidates but you can boost company recruitment and retention efforts for the long-term.
Don’t underestimate the power of pay transparency. 71 per cent of finance and accounting job candidates say the inclusion of a salary range in a job posting is an important consideration when evaluating whether to apply. Keep this top of mind when you are recruiting for roles in 2024.
Finance and accounting managers have indicated their hiring plans for the second half of this year:
47 per cent are hiring for new permanent roles
48 per cent are filling vacated permanent positions
85 per cent are struggling to find skilled talent
In 2024, Canadian finance and accounting teams will be primarily focused on:
1. Planning, budgeting and forecasting processes
2. Finance technology upgrades
3. Data and analytics
4. AI implementation
5. Close process optimization
An emerging trend for the finance job market in 2024 is a greater number of contract roles. 48 per cent of finance and accounting managers plan to increase their use of contract professionals, especially in these areas:
Financial planning and analysis
Finance
Financial reporting
The Demand for Skilled Talent report by Robert Half is an authoritative source providing essential insights into 2024's employment trends. This report has offered a deep dive into Canada’s hiring landscape for over a decade, spotlighting challenges and strategies to attract and retain talent in today’s job market. It explores what employees seek in their careers, identifies common recruitment errors and suggests solutions. The report spans sectors like finance, technology, marketing, legal and human resources, proving crucial for business leaders and managers.
Data methodology
This report's in-demand role data is collated from Robert Half placements, Statistics Canada information, and job postings TalentNeuron. It encompasses over one hundred thousand new positions from hundreds of independent job boards and company websites, including over 8,000 placements from Robert Half Canada. Positions are categorized to over 350 job titles within Robert Half Canada’s 2024 Salary Guide using a proprietary mapping methodology that employs state-of-the-art large language models. This dataset includes roles across the administrative and customer support, finance and accounting, human resources, legal, marketing and creative, and technology professions.
