Creating a Pipeline of Potential: A Strategy for Building New Talent Pools

Accounting has a talent problem: fewer students are majoring in it, fewer are sitting for the CPA exam, and the profession remains overwhelmingly non-diverse compared to the population it serves. A case study out of a major professional services firm lays out how one talent acquisition team built a new pipeline from scratch rather than compete harder for the same shrinking pool of candidates.

The core barrier identified was structural: becoming a CPA requires 150 credit hours, thirty more than a typical bachelor's degree provides. That extra year of school costs time, money, and opportunity, and it was pushing accounting-capable graduates toward tech, consulting, and other industries that hire straight out of a four-year degree. A second barrier was representation, with Black, Latino, and Hispanic professionals drastically underrepresented among licensed CPAs relative to their share of the population.

The response was a fellowship built in partnership with a university, offering a custom master's degree designed specifically for incoming employees rather than the general public. Key features of the model include:

• Fellows join the firm and start the master's program simultaneously, working a reduced schedule while earning a salary and full benefits
• The degree is tuition-free and takes twelve to fifteen months, with coursework timed around busy season so fellows take fewer classes during peak work periods
• Credit is granted for on-the-job experience through a capstone project, reducing the number of courses actually required
• Eligibility was opened beyond accounting majors to any business major, and extended to career switchers, not just recent graduates
• Sourcing moved beyond traditional recruiting channels into cultural and affinity clubs on campuses, employee resource group networks, and professional organizations serving underrepresented students

Recruiting internal buy-in mattered as much as recruiting candidates. Early rollout stalled because client engagement teams did not know how to schedule or deploy fellows around their coursework, so the effort expanded slowly, starting with a small group of business units, training interviewers specifically on how to evaluate fellowship candidates, and setting clearer expectations about how demanding the combined workload would be.

The program has since grown from a small first cohort to well over a hundred fellows, expanded its university reach several times over, and converted the large majority of participants into full-time hires, with plans to apply the same model to other skill shortages beyond accounting.