Finance Salary GuideMN Finance & Accounting Compensation and Hiring Trends

Understanding the Finance & Accounting Salary Guide ................................................... 3

Retaining Top Finance & Accounting Talent...................................................................... 4

Finance & Accounting Hiring Trends in Minnesota............................................................. 6

The Evolving Labor Market: How to Recruit & Retain in a Candidate Driven Market......... 8

Finance & Accounting Salary Summary ............................................................................ 9

Meet the Team ................................................................................................................... 10

Talent and Job Search Resources ..................................................................................... 11

About Versique ................................................................................................................... 11

Table Of Contents

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The Minnesota Finance & Accounting Salary Guide from Versique is a comprehensive resource on compensation and hiring trends in the finance and accounting industries.

The information and figures inside are based on full-time placements made by our experienced finance and accounting recruiting professionals. Our finance and accounting recruiters work with hiring managers and job seekers throughout Minnesota each day, giving them unique andcomprehensive insight into Minnesota’s finance and accounting compensation and hiring trends.

In addition to our own data and recruiter insight, we’ve gathered information from hiring and finance experts to bring you the most complete guide to the finance and accounting industries. In each of our practice areas, we strive to bring you a salary guide as unique as our approach to recruiting.

Understanding the Finance &

Accounting Salary Guide

Understanding the latest salary trends and hiring outlook is integral to attracting and retaining the top finance and accounting talent for your organization.Our Finance & Accounting Salary Guide gives you the local insight you need to meet Minnesota’s emerging salary expectations in order to recruit, retain and engage your current talent and your future workforce.

Accurate, up-to-date finance and accounting salary data for the top full-time positions

throughout Minnesota

Expert recruiting and compensation advice for employers on how to attract top level talent

An in-depth look into the hiring outlook for finance and accounting jobs in Minnesota

This guide features:

Understanding the latest salary trends and hiring outlook is integral to attracting and retaining the top finance and accounting talent within your organization.

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Retaining top talent is all about engaging and motivating your employees, while making them feel valued in the organization. More than 40% of employers and CFO’s surveyed said that their biggest staffing concerns involves retaining their valuable employees and staff.

Develop an Employer Brand

One of the best ways to engage and retain your current top performing talent is to develop a cohesive employment brand that reflects your organization’s vision. Studies show that engaged employees have a 51% lower turnover rate and 18% higher productivity levels (iCIMS).

Retaining Top

Finance & Accounting Talent

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Qualities that make employers attractive include honesty, security and reliability. According to Entrepreneur magazine, the employers that highlight these attributes are more likely that have higher retention and greater acceptance of offers.

Employer branding is not just the responsibility of HR. The companies most effective at building a brand have the executives involved in telling the story. Have your executive population be active on LinkedIn and on your website. You will be amazed at the result. Reach out to your employee population and host focus groups to learn what characteristics are most important and valued by your constituents. Candidates want to see the culture in action. A few ideas to showcase your brand is having potential coworkers meet with candidates and create a "brand" video to show to potential new hires.

Know Your Employees

A recent survey by Hays found a discrepancy between the benefits employees consider importantand the benefits their employers offer (i.e. 45% of employers offer life insurance; however, only4% of employees consider it important).

In order to attract and retain top talent, organizations need to structure benefits in such a way thatemployees get what they really need, rather than what the organization believes they want. In theemerging economy, top performers look for an employer that understands their needs and worksto fulfill them to the best of their ability.

One of the best ways to engage and retain your current top performing talent is to develop acohesive employment brand that reflects your organization’s vision. Studies show that engagedemployees have a 51% lower turnover rate and 18% higher productivity levels (iCIMS).

Retaining Top

Finance & Accounting Talent

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Source: Harvard Business Review

In the years following the recession, the total number of finance and accounting employees in MN has increased by only 6%. However, the unemployment rate for finance professionals in Minnesota is less than 2%, which is well below the national average of 6%.

Overall employment in the Minnesota finance and accounting market is projected to grow faster than employment growth as a whole, with some positions increasing in demand by as much as 32% by the year 2020 [Minnesota Bureau of Labor and Statistics]. Much of this increase will be due to a demand for specific finance and accounting skill sets and the need to fill positions vacated by retiring baby boomers with 20+ years of experience.

Due to a short supply of these top professionals, job seekers can afford to be more selective in their employment search. Additionally, employers will have to shift their focus to the passive candidate market, recruiting professionals that are already employed.

Top Finance & Accounting Positions In Minnesota

Smithink founding director David Smith says, “The profession fundamentally is heading towards a big crisis of talent,” and the AICPA expects more than 75 percent of today’s CPAs will retire within the next 15 years, eligible as early as 2020. That’s one of the highest percentages of any subgroup within any other field over the same time frame.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects that employment of accountants and auditors will grow faster than any other occupation it tracks through the end of 2018. Between 2014 and 2024, there will be 142,400 new jobs. However, the 11 percent increase within the field will fail to address issues including millennial turnover, lack of experience, and enormous IT changes affecting the profession.

Finance Manager FP & ACorporate Controller

External Reporting Internal AuditIT Audit

Finance & Accounting

Hiring Trends in Minnesota

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Crisis of Talent by 2020

Employers may find it difficult to find finance and accounting professionals, especially accountants, auditors, and analysts with 2-4 years of experience, particularly, professionals with public accounting experience. Many organizations are prioritizing retention of Accounting and Finance talent because the cost of replacement is extremely high. Defining career paths, offering professional mentoring and development are key both for attracting and retaining top talent.

Sign on bonuses with commitments to stay for a period of time are becoming increasingly popular when hiring professionals. With this challenge in mind, companies that attract the attention of top talent and move quickly through the hiring process have a distinct advantage over those with lengthy evaluation processes.

In addition to the skills gap, the number of baby boomers becoming eligible to retire is a cause for concern with employers as years of experience leave with them. Employers will need to establish succession plans and consider the possibility of training in more junior talent.

In the current market, many companies look to utilize smaller teams and, therefore, look for degreed finance and accounting professionals who not only fit well into their culture, but add value in multiple areas of the business.

Many organizations are employing enhanced interview processes to insure cultural fit. Personality assessments are also gaining in popularity

Finance & Accounting

Hiring Trends in Minnesota

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The McKinsey Global Institute concluded in its report on global labor force trends that by 2020 there will be a global supply shortage of 83-85 million people with college degrees or secondary education. With an aging global population and declining birth rates among every country in the developed world, it is likely the answer will be in part technological and not entirely human capital replacement.

The accounting profession could be the first to reach the pending massive structural employment dilemma and the drastic need to implement proactive changes. In an era of increased importance on work-life balance and a drive towards homogenous career and life fulfillment, employers recruiting accounting talent must help shed the stereotype of cubicle number crunching. In a paperless, cloud based, client focused, and employee driven world there is a battle for accounting talent, and employers aren’t winning it.

Crisis of Talent by 2020 (continued)

Every day, an average of 10,000 baby boomers are retiring. The stock market has been strong and retirement accounts have been replenished. Baby boomers are retiring and there aren’t enough skilled millennials or gen-x’s to fill the void. At the beginning of 2017, there were an average of 1.7 job openings for each person unemployed.

To complicate matters, roles are evolving. It’s estimated that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030, haven’t yet been invented. From a candidate perspective, Continuous Improvement needs to be a core value and our formal education process needs to change. The challenge for employers will be; creating a culture that fosters an environment of employee satisfaction for all generations, retraining programs in partnership with educational institutions, and implementing successful succession planning programs.

The Evolving Labor Market: How to Recruit & Retain in a Candidate Driven Market

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Tips to Attract Top Talent: Tips to Retain Top Talent

Offer Workplace Flexibility

Drive Innovation and Strategy

Prospective candidates will talk to others having worked at your company. Protect your reputation by creating alumni who speak highly of their experiences while employed.

A thorough and transparent interview process to ensure alignment with existing or desired culture fit, for both the company and the candidate.

Foster a collaborative team environment in which everyone works towards a common goal.

Promote Staying Relevant A motivated workforce with the desire to get better at what they do with continuous improvement a core value.

Listen to Your Employees

Workforce craves the chance to contribute creatively and have their ideas heard. A company that fosters professional growth and values ideas from everyone is more likely to retain top Millennial talent.

Communicate Mission and Values Employees want to work at a company whose values match their own and are likely willing to take a pay cut to do so.

To both attract and retain top performing talent, offering workplace flexibility will be necessary to remain competitive.

According to Future Workplace, flexible hours and generous telework policies are more important to Millennial workers than salary.

Develop a reputation at a company that promotes staying relevant by embracing Continuous Improvement as a core value.

An authentic understanding of your culture and what motivates your employees, this is the only way a compensation and benefits strategy will be successful in motivating anticipated behavior.

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Finance & AccountingSalary Summary

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To the right are the average base salary ranges for various positions within the finance and accounting industry, broken down by overall function.

The salary ranges are based on full- time placements made by our executive finance and accounting recruiting professionals.

Note: As was mentioned above, these ranges represent the average base Finance & Accounting salaries across mid-sized companies in a variety of industries throughout Minnesota.

While there are a number of non-monetary benefits, which can cause salaries with the same or similar titles, to fall outside these ranges, due to companies varying compensation structures, the ranges at the right are based solely on employee’s base salaries and do not include any type of monetary or non-monetary incentives.

These types of non-monetary benefits can include compensation structure, retirement plan, tuition reimbursement, discounted parking, free coffee, company discount, work environment as well as a number of other non-monetary benefits.

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Meet the TeamWho We Are

Heidi Starck is an executive search professional specializing in mid to executive-level

Finance & Accounting search within the Twin Cities metro area. Working mostly with

privately held companies across a variety of industries, Heidi’s team differentiates

itself by acting as a consultative business partner throughout the search process and

delivering candidates that are a fit both culturally and technically for the role.

In addition to her strong business acumen, Heidi compliments her consultative

approach with a strong research and qualitative analysis skill set developed during

her studies and background in Anthropology, which transfers effectively to the

process of developing recruiting strategies and fostering client engagement.

Heidi Starck

Dee is an executive and progressive leader with over 20 years of experience in the

consulting, staffing and search services industry. With deep expertise in building

profitable consulting organizations and search practices, Dee is a an expert at

matching technical expertise with cultural fit while at the same time building

repeatable business connections with clients and candidates.

As the Sr. Search Consultant at Versique, Dee brings with her years of executive

search experience and existing network of connections that she will leverage to

contribute to Versique’s continued success in a collaborative environment.

Dee Lonn

Retained by Boards of Directors, CEOs, CFOs, VPs of HR, and top-tier investment

groups to fill critically important senior leadership roles. Joe has worked with

industries including Life Sciences, SaaS, Manufacturing & Distribution, and

Professional Services.

He has worked with companies at a variety of stages including public, private,

multinational, high-growth, turnaround, startup, and Fortune 500. He offers a unique,

streamlined, and proven phased approach to create unique solutions for each client’s

situation. With more than 10 years of executive search experience and 20 years in

relevant finance industry leadership roles, including CFO, Joe offers a consultative,

solutions based approach to each search engagement.

Joe Reardon

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Talent and Job Search ResourcesGet in touch and Stay Connected

Call today to find a new opportunity, or start the search for your team’s top finance and accounting talent!

Email: info@versique.com

Phone: 952-935-2000

Social Media: Follow us on LinkedIn for more career, recruiting and workplace advice.

Contact Our Finance & Accounting Team

Versique is a single-source talent acquisition firm specializing in both permanent placement and consulting services throughout Minnesota.

Our Finance & Accounting team places qualified candidates in roles including:

With a combined 350+ years of executive recruiting experience in our specialized practice areas, we utilize our unique approach to create meaningful connections and place the right candidates in the right roles. We work in a variety of practice areas including Finance & Accounting, Sales, Operations & Engineering, IT, Marketing, HR, and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG).

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)Vice President of FinanceController Director/Manager of AccountingTreasurerTreasury Manager/AnalystDirector of Finance

Director of Financial ReportingDirector of TaxFinancial AnalystAccounts Payable ManagerAccounts Receivable ManagerSenior AccountantStaff Accountant

About Versique

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