The Tax Manager market has changed enough in the past few years that hiring approaches which worked before no longer produce the same results. Here's what's actually shifting.
A Structural Shortage, Not a Temporary Dip
The pipeline replacing retiring CPAs has shrunk by roughly a third over the last decade, driven by declining accounting degree completions and a more than 30% drop in CPA exam sitters since 2016. Most industry analysts treat this as structural rather than cyclical — it's not going to correct itself with one strong hiring season.
What's Changing in Candidate Expectations
- Remote and hybrid flexibility has moved from a nice-to-have to a real factor in whether a candidate engages with an opportunity
- Candidates are asking more directly about a growth path — Tax Manager to Director of Tax to VP Finance — not just the role in front of them
- Compensation expectations have risen faster than many job postings have been updated to reflect
How Companies Are Adapting
- Broadening requirements to consider strong non-CPA candidates with equivalent depth of experience, rather than requiring the license as a hard filter
- Revisiting compensation ranges against current market data instead of last cycle's numbers
- Working with recruiters who specialize in the role rather than posting broadly and waiting
Tax Manager is one of our three flagship searches. If your posting has been live for a while without the response you expected, it's usually one of the three factors above — worth a conversation before you rewrite the job description again.
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