404: Skills Not Found — Closing the Technology Gap in Your Business With Upskilling

📋 Overview

The work isn't getting smaller, but the pool of people to do it is. New CPA exam candidates fell from about 42K in 2023 to 28K in 2024, a drop of roughly a third, and college accounting graduates have hit a 20-year low, so the pipeline won't refill any time soon. Hiring your way out isn't a realistic plan. The organizations pulling ahead are getting more from the team they already have by making people more efficient and effective with technology: the automation and cloud tools already on hand, and AI put to practical use in daily work. That only happens when people have the skills to use those tools well. This session shows how to find your team's technology gaps and close them with a practical upskilling plan. Upskilling works when it's treated like any other business project, with a clear goal, a plan, and a way to measure results. You'll learn how to assess where your team's skills stand against the tools you use, decide when to train, reskill, or hire, choose training formats people will actually complete, and keep newly skilled staff engaged and growing. You'll leave with a framework for building an upskilling plan and a short list of skills gaps to tackle first.

👥 Who Should Attend

Corporate controllers, CFOs, HR directors within the finance sector, and firm partners responsible for talent development and technology integration.

🎯 Learning Objectives

• Identify the causes and costs of the technology skills gap in accounting and business teams
• Assess a team's current technology and AI skills against the tools it uses or plans to adopt
• Compare upskilling, reskilling, and hiring to determine the best approach for a given skills gap
• Outline an upskilling plan that includes training formats, time commitments, and accountability
• Select measures to track upskilling results, including efficiency gains, and retain newly skilled staff

🚀 What You'll Walk Away With

• You'll stop relying on a shrinking hiring pool to solve your capacity problems.
• You'll map your team's current technical abilities against your actual software stack to find the real gaps.
• You'll choose the right training format for your culture so people actually finish the lessons.
• You'll outline an upskilling plan with clear goals, time commitments, and accountability.
• You'll identify which technology and AI skills will give your team the biggest immediate win.

📚 Major Topics

1. The shrinking workforce: why hiring alone won't close the gap
2. Assessing your team: mapping skills against the technology and AI you use
3. Building the plan: upskilling, reskilling, and training that sticks
4. Making it last: measuring results, career paths, and retention

🏷️ Topics

❓ Questions

✍️ A Note from the Author

I watched the number of new CPA candidates drop by a third in a single year and realized we can't hire our way through growth anymore. I wrote this course because I'm tired of seeing brilliant finance leaders struggle with outdated workflows while the tools to fix them sit idle on their desktops. We're going to build a bridge between the technology you already pay for and the skills your team needs to use it.