I met one Allen Blue, one of the founders of LinkedIn, at the Association Digital Now Conference last April and was fascinated with how he was positioning the company to help professionals. He said they had identified five universal needs of business professionals. I think he is right.
Here are the top five things every CPA needs to be good at:
- Staying up to date in your profession.
- Managing your career (yep, you have to take charge of your own career).
- Doing the work (research, productivity, communication).
- Interacting with your peers and colleagues.
- Becoming a leader in your field.
So what?
Allen will tell you that LinkedIn can help you in all of these areas. I think social media tools, including LinkedIn, can greatly enhance your productivity in these five areas. Start learning today at our self-guided learning site, www.cpalearning2.com,
You can watch Allen's presentation here,
Want to learn more? Join us for our webcast Web 2.0, Less Hype, More Help on Friday, Aug. 14 from 12:30 to 2:20 p.m. ET featuring our own Bill Sheridan.
I would suggest the list is actually 4, because if you are doing 1 - 4 you are in fact accomplishing 5. Very well said!
Posted by: Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, MCSE 2003 | July 28, 2009 at 08:06 AM
Nice post and comment by Patrick.
I certainly agree these five items are very important to all professionals, particularly CPAs in public accounting. Many CPAs are very good at one or two of these items but most do not do all five well.
I was meeting with a managing partner of a local firm recently and he referred to "soft skills". When I inquired into what he meant by that he told me most CPAs were good at doing the work and staying up on the latest technical issues (items 1 and 3). But many were not good at developing their business development and communication skills.
John R. Ezell, CPA
ProHorizons Network, Inc
www.prohorizons.com
800-729-3242 ext. 12
Posted by: John Ezell, CPA | July 31, 2009 at 02:30 PM