Risks of overemphasising soft skills in junior auditor recruitment

The recruitment process is central for managing human capital and attracting staff that are motivated to pursue a career within auditing. In this article, we explore a challenge facing audit firms’ human capital management practices related to the recruitment of junior auditors. When focusing on soft skills during recruitment of junior auditors to secure long-term human capital, audit firms risk creating expectations that are not met during the first year(s). These unmet expectations risk creating negative attitudes about retaining within the occupation. Using longitudinal cohort data on university graduates entering audit firms, we show that perceiving soft (hard) skills being in focus during recruitment positively (negatively) affects the intention to leave the audit occupation and firm after having gained one year of work experience. The positive (detrimental) effect relates only to a perceived focus on soft interpersonal skills and not on soft intrapersonal skills. For a perceived focus on soft interpersonal skills, it is also evidenced that a mismatch of perceived employer skill focus over time drives turnover intentions and that a perceived employer focus on hard skills during the first year of work increases the effect of an initial perceived focus on soft interpersonal skills during recruitment.