The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) has launched an online career and talent-management platform for accounting and finance professionals, recruiters, employers and service providers.

Career Suite, which went live on March 26, aims to provide professional-improvement and self-management tools to guide finance professionals through their careers, not only allowing them to post their curriculum vitae (CV) on the platform and update them but also putting them in contact with potential employers and service providers to manage their careers.

The portal also provides recruiters, employers and industry service providers with access to that pool of talent.

“Our vision is not to develop bean counters, but responsible leaders,” says Saica CIO Rakesh Beekum.

With Career Suite, the institute aims to help local finance professionals manage their careers, further their aspirations and showcase themselves as leaders. Beekum believes this can be accomplished by using the newly launched portal.

Saica has made Career Suite available to members and nonmembers as part of the institute’s transformation and growth strategy to engage talent at all levels. The platform is, therefore, also freely available to all account-ing, audit, tax and finance professionals.

Subscribers have access to a range of career- development tools, including career-management and planning assistance; self-assessment tools to identify areas of improvement or suitable career fields; a professional CV presentation tool, with three different formats; and access to online job postings from member corporates and recruitment companies.

Beekum hopes that Career Suite will be conducive to continuous professional development and lifelong learning and that it will help finance-industry professionals understand their strengths and weaknesses and improve them.

Saica also aims to help users promote themselves as professionals and build a personal brand, which it has conceptualised as Human Resources for Chartered Accountants, or HR for CAs.

As part of this concept, Career Suite users can upload a photograph and a 30-second video to market themselves, in addition to posting their CVs on the site.

Users also have access to more than 500 articles on career management and human-resource and strategy videos, which are also available on the Career Suite smartphone application.

The career portal also features two competence tools. Mint is a career-management tool that enables users to control their own development, as the tool provides resources for and helps users clarify their career path and the competences they need to develop their careers.

The second tool, Next, was developed by the Gordon Institute of Business Science and offers a career-mentoring service and guidance navigation system customised for the individual.

Users pay a fee for further value-added services that are available on Career Suite. “While there are many free tools on the site, we had to find a way to diversify our revenue and upsell our services,” explains Beekum.

Saica developed HR toolkits for small and medium-sized practitioners without HR divisions that, for instance, would require a performance-management policy or grievance procedure. These toolkits will be sold at a nominal rate.

The portal allows recruiters to conduct talent searches through search criteria, thereby iden- tifying appropriate candidates for positions.

“We developed intelligent search criteria with a weighted functionality for recruiters or employers who are looking, for instance, for a CA who passed the board exams for the first time or a black economic-empowerment candidate,” says Beekum.

He explains that the intelligent search criteria ensure that only specified candidates will be identified during a recruitment search, saving recruiters and employers time and money.

Recruiters will also have access to Saica’s 9 500 trainee accountants once the trainee accountants’ contracts expire.

Saica has also developed a platform for service providers as part of the HR for CAs concept.

“We’ve developed a one-stop-shop for users looking for performance-management, change-management or recruitment-installation specialists and mentors or coaches,” says Beekum.

Meanwhile, Career Suite also caters to finance professionals in top management positions who are unlikely to use a career portal for their next career move.

Beekum urges these types of candidates to upload their CVs for corporates wanting to appoint board or committee members.

Alternatively, these candidates can make themselves available as mentors to provide guidance for younger finance professionals.

Saica CEO Matsobane Matlwa points out that, in the current economic climate, finding work and managing a career are quite challenging for many people, which is why Saica has committed itself to ensuring that it adapts to the changing needs of society.

“We recognise the need to be innovative to remain relevant for our members and society,” he says, adding that launching Career Suite is in line with the institute’s focus to consolidate and expand the influence of the Chartered Accountants of South Africa, in South Africa and worldwide.

He adds that Saica wishes to ful- fil the country’s demand for responsible leaders “which South Africa so desperately needs”.

Employment services provider Adcorp labour economist Loan Sharp commends the launch of Career Suite, adding that the portal helps bring together qualified job seekers and businesses that want to employ skilled employees.