Demand for tech-savvy accountants with transformation project experience continues this quarter, while salary growth is slowing and counteroffers are being decided on base pay. For employers, the shortage is specific, and so is the way hires are being lost.
Finance Transformation Is the Defining Skill Set
Clients continue to seek accountants who combine finance expertise with transformation project experience. Implementing AI products in the finance department, alongside data analytics tools, is becoming more and more common, and companies are looking for this experience on both contract and permanent bases. This is not a speculative hiring trend. AI and analytics in finance are in a corporate scaling and integration phase, where tools are being embedded into departmental workflows and employers need people who have done that work before.
The hot skills list shows how the demand is distributed. Finance transformation, covering AI and data analysis implementation, sits at the top. Alongside it are two early-career profiles: finance staff with only one to two years' experience, and newly qualified accountants with one to two years' post-qualified experience. At the cold end, accounts payable, candidates seeking part-time roles, and Head of Finance and CFO positions are all well supplied or slow-moving, with less churn at the senior end. The pattern points to demand concentrated on transformation capability and early-career talent, not on senior leadership moves.
Slower Growth, and Counteroffers Decided on Money
Salaries in most accounting areas are still growing, but not at the pace of the previous few years. The slowdown is uneven. Managerial levels and above have plateaued, while junior and mid-level salaries continue to rise. That matches the hot skills picture: pay is still moving where demand is concentrated, among early-career and mid-level professionals, and has levelled off at the top.
Counteroffers are where hires are being lost. Some candidates stay put after an offer is made, and in our experience money is almost always the reason. An increased base salary to remain explains the decision 80 to 90 percent of the time. There may be other factors, but base pay is the dominant one. For hiring managers, the implication is direct: an offer should be built with the counteroffer in mind. Candidates who have accepted verbally can still be retained by their current employer, and a package that wins on benefits, culture, or progression but trails on base salary is exposed at exactly that moment.
Hybrid Is Expected, and One SME Is Investing Against the Trend
Candidates are almost always looking for some hybrid working. It is a standard expectation in interviews and not a differentiator, so employers who cannot offer it should expect to lose candidates early in the process. Because base salary decides counteroffers and hybrid is assumed, the combination sets a clear baseline: a competitive base salary, plus hybrid working, is the minimum to remain in contention.
The clearest example this quarter came from a conversation with an Irish SME with growth plans overseas. The company is creating a new senior finance role to replace an outgoing Finance Manager who sat at a much more junior level. In effect, the business is upgrading the seniority of the position it is hiring for, in what the manager describes as a challenging trading environment both in Ireland and overseas. That makes it a company bucking the trend on growth and expansion. It is also a reminder that senior roles reach the market less often, given the lower churn at that level, and when one does open because a business is investing in growth, it is likely to attract attention from candidates who rarely move.
The Takeaway
Accountancy hiring this quarter rewards employers who recognise where demand sits: transformation skills and early-career talent, with base salary and hybrid working as the baseline to win and keep a hire. Get in touch with our team for custom benchmarking on the accountancy roles proving hardest to fill in your business.
