Investigating the CPA Managers’ Hiring Preferences in the Selection of Accounting Professionals in Davao City

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the attribute preferences of CPA managers in the selection of accounting professionals in Davao City using conjoint analysis. The study is conducted to get an understanding of the expectations of CPA managers that can help provide guidelines to accounting professionals in acquiring good employment opportunities. Based on the conjoint analysis technique, a questionnaire was designed, and responses were recorded for the 55 CPA managers who answered by rating the hypothetical designs based on their perceived attractiveness for employment.

Results show that CPA managers find integrity to be the most important Attribute related to employability, followed by ethical skills. Even though the sample respondents have varied preferences on what is considered as the most and least attributes in selecting accounting professionals, they still prefer applicants to have the highest levels of attributes. Results of the Levene’s test showed that the test of assumption of homoscedasticity is not violated for each demographic variable. However, Analysis of variance and Independent samples t-test results show that respondents whose age bracket 30 to 39 have significantly higher preference compared to other age brackets. It is therefore recommended that accounting professionals improve their integrity to acquire good employment opportunities and for the educational institutions to develop employability skills of their students. Additionally, further studies should be conducted to appropriately determine the preference in terms of employability skills, especially those involving higher survey participants.