The final exam: UAA accounting professor DJ Kilpatrick prepares students for the ultimate test

Since arriving at UAA in 2003, associate professor of accounting DJ Kilpatrick has been helping College of Business and Public Policy (CBPP) accounting majors have a leg up during Accounting Week, an annual fall event where students interview and jockey for coveted positions at local, national and international accounting firms.

Recently, Kilpatrick co-authored a paper with her University of Alaska Fairbanks colleague, Ken Abramowicz, titled, "A Behavioral Approach to Interviewing," which was published in New Accountant magazine.

Studying the industry's approach to hiring has been a career-long passion of Kilpatrick. She has incorporated her findings into her overall teaching philosophy to ensure her students are successful in their coursework, and to seamlessly bridge the gap from college student to professional.

"One of the unique things about public accounting is that they anticipate their hiring needs for the upcoming year and fill them well in advance," she said. "Nationwide, public accounting firms, government agencies and other interested parties come to campus for a week each fall to interview students for internships and permanent positions that will begin in the following year."

Accounting Week has been around for decades with thousands of accounting students running the gauntlet of putting their best foot forward in front of recruiters. But, according to Kilpatrick, it's not only a student's strong academic record that aces the interview. There are other factors at play, which is where Kilpatrick comes in to give students the inside scoop.

Nailing it

"Students often think if they have good grades they'll get a good job," said Kilpatrick. "And good grades are certainly important because they demonstrate mastery of accounting concepts and skills, but being a desirable employee in an organization depends on a lot more than just your knowledge."

She listed a handful of qualities, such as being dependable, responsible, having a good work ethic, and demonstrating leadership and communication skills, as examples of what she calls "soft skills" that accounting firms, and really any industry, are looking for when recruiting new team members. She stressed that these skills are part of an unwritten guidebook for nailing the interview and succeeding in your dream job. Soft skills are not necessarily taught in the classroom, but students are expected to have them when they begin their professional careers. She said some students know this intuitively, but a lot do not and expect that their degree and grades will do the talking for them.

"Each firm is different with respect to their clients, mission and goals, so they want to hire individuals who will be a great addition to their team," said Kilpatrick of what recruiters assess when interviewing students. "What they are trying to evaluate through the interview process is not only a student's technical skills, but also those soft skills."

Kilpatrick firmly believes her role as a professor is to not only teach her students the fundamentals of accounting but to also provide them with the building blocks to take that leap from the collegiate world to the professional one.

Practice, practice, practice

Over the course of Kilpatrick's career, she's seen hundreds of accounting students graduate and lead successful careers from Fairbanks to Anchorage and beyond. As she became more invested in teaching her students the soft skills they'd need to succeed in the professional world, she and Professor Emeritus Lynn Koshiyama developed an interviewing workshop where students could sharpen their skills on resume building and learn from alumni about how to prepare for securing their first professional position.

"Offered annually, the UAA Accounting Interview Workshop brings in alumni who engage in a panel discussion and talk about what it was like to interview, and what it's like to be an accountant out there in the real world," Kilpatrick said. "We get alumni who've graduated in the last three years or so, some who are just starting out, and some with one, two or three years experience. Some of them are in tax, while some are in audit, and they talk about what they thought would happen versus the reality."

Representatives from Anchorage public accounting firms present cover letters and resume tactics, as well as what to expect during the interview process. Kilpatrick said interviewing is an in-depth process that she and other accounting faculty help students prepare for. Often the hiring process involves multiple rounds of interviews before selections of which students to hire for internships and positions are made.

"At the end of the workshop, UAA alumni who work for IRS Criminal Investigation do a mock interview with a student volunteer," said Kilpatrick. "They are experts at interviewing, and it is usually a three-on-one interview, with three IRS criminal investigation agents interviewing a student."

Kilpatrick says the mock live interview provides some of the biggest insights for students on how to master all the important details of an interview, from eye contact and body language to providing good responses to questions.

"The student who volunteers always gets lots of points from everyone observing," said Kilpatrick, laughing. She recalled that one student did such a great job during the mock live interview, she had job offers lined up after recruiters watched her coolly handle an interview in front of 30 people. "It's really a fun workshop."

Paying it forward

As a first-generation college student, Kilpatrick said she had to learn a lot of the academic and soft skills she's taught her students on her own, so she's made it her mission to set her students up for success.

"The basic feedback we've gotten back from students is that the Interview Workshop has saved them a lot of time, and that they didn't know a lot of the information that we've shared with them," said Kilpatrick. "From the employers, the comments we've gotten are very positive, with one noting that during interviews they can tell who's attended the workshop and who hasn't."

Kilpatrick said all of this prep work is to make sure that UAA CBPP accounting students are ready for their biggest and final test - landing their first job.

"Being a faculty member is more than just a job, it's really contributing to people's lives and their success," she said, "which they, in turn, give back. We have seen it for years - our great UAA students become great UAA alumni who come back and give to our great UAA students. It is so fun, and I am very grateful that I get to be a part of it."

Written by Catalina Myers, UAA Office of University Advancement