Skills required of professional accountants

Abstract

Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to develop a further understanding of professional accountants’ attributes and professional skills required by employers. This paper analyses the requirements of the labour market of the Republic of Croatia using the framework derived from IFAC’s International Education Standard (IES) 3 from 2015 to identify the specific dimensions of professional skills in job advertisements. Methodology: This study uses a qualitative data collection method to analyse the required professional skills of professional accountants from the accounting employers’ perception. We have used Internet research to collect primary data and analyse job advertisements. Content analysis was used to analyse job advertisements. Results: The evidence suggests that employers mostly required professional accountants with attributes categorised as the organisational skills dimension. They were followed by attributes categorised as the intellectual skills dimension, the interpersonal and communication dimension, and the personal dimension. Taking into account the professional skills dimension, a professional accountant is required to possess the ability to use appropriate information technology (IT), teamwork skills, responsibility, the ability to work independently, be analytical and committed to learning, since those were most highly ranked attributes in the collected job advertisements. Conclusion: This study revealed a ‘profile’ of a professional accountant considering the requirements of employers regarding professional skills. Future research should take into consideration further analysis regarding the required skills using different data sources and explore the required skills within different accounting related professions and various sectors and sizes of accounting employers.