By Gary Hunt, CAE, OSCPA Communication Director

Like a program from the golden age of television, The Ohio CPA Foundation last week debuted a spinoff that was a big hit with accounting students from around the state.

The inaugural career fair presented by the Foundation and OSCPA drew more than 20 employers and about 100 accounting students to Columbus.

Rebecca Hixen, CAE, OSCPA’s director of student & young professional initiatives, explained that the event was once a part of the Foundation’s Accounting Careers Leadership Academy, which is held annually in May.

“We decided to host a standalone program in January because that is a more popular time for firms and companies to recruit interns and employees,” Hixen said.

The event was geared specifically toward accounting students and young professionals with less than ten years of experience. Mariane Conde, a junior majoring in accounting at the University of Akron, said she hopes to become a CPA and work in forensic accounting. She said the event will help her reach her short-term goal of finding an internship this summer.

“I’ve been able to visit different firms and learn about them,” Conde said. “It’s been good to be able to network and give out business cards.”

Hedy Zhou, a master’s of accounting candidate at Case Western Reserve University, hoped the event would help her get her career off to a fast start.

“I think it’s a great chance for me to find a fulltime job, because I am graduating in May,” Zhou said. “It’s been great talking to the professionals from all the different kind of companies.”

Hixen said the goal for the fair was to help connect young and aspiring accountants with potential employers and each other, and it quickly became apparent it had succeeded.

“We’re happy with the results, and the turnout is great,” she said. “We certainly plan to do this again and make it an annual event.”

OSCPA member Beverly C. Dowling, CPA, CIA, accounting coordination supervisor with the Marathon Petroleum Company, kicked off the event with a keynote address and predicted that artificial intelligence will become a professional employment category. She also discussed the business innovation at Marathon impacting accounting; for example, the company recently used robotic process automation to automate a cash reconciliation process for 27 accounts, reducing a process that once took eight hours to just 10 minutes.