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The recession has altered the career track for many ambitious finance and accounting professionals. Some took more junior roles in finance after losing their old positions. Others, unable to find a suitable replacement post, ventured into fields outside the finance world.

While there’s no good calculation of finance professionals in those unenviable positions, one expert claims that they accounted for as many as 25% of impacted employees. Mid-level pros, says another expert, were more vulnerable than their entry-level or senior-level colleagues.

These days, though, the finance job market has largely stabilized, and may indeed be growing. According to the Department of Labor's May unemployment report, the finance activities sector -- defined as occupations that include accountants, auditors and loan officers -- remained unchanged at 6.8% compared to a year earlier (considerably better than the overall unemployment rate of 9.1%.) CFOs, too, seem a bit more optimistic in their professional staffing plans for the third quarter, according to Robert Half Finance & Accounting. Its latest survey finds 7% of CFOs indicating they plan to add full-time employees, while 6% expected staff shrinkage -- for a net gain of 1%, slightly higher than the gain in the second quarter.

[For more discussion, see "Behind the Finance-Hiring Pickup."]

And, say the experts, any professionals making a reentry can take certain steps to help improve prospects for matching their skills to the available positions.

Staying Connected

To their benefit, experts note, recruiters and managers are aware of how many candidates were uprooted from finance by the economy. When encountering a career diversion in the recruiting process, most who are hiring "have a much higher level of understanding than maybe they would have [had] several years ago," says Katherine Spencer Lee, a senior district president for staffing firm Robert Half International. Thus, for example, employers would grasp that a small-business controller may have wound up working at a supermarket because the previous employer hit hard times, rather than because of any fault of the finance professional’s. 

During prosperous economic periods, employers sometimes confined their approach to reviewing a candidate's background, and looking for "a chronological history of what they'd done in the industry," she says. But no more.

Today, recruiters and corporate managers confronting candidates returning to the industry may demand candor about your recent career path, along with evidence that you have stayed connected somehow to the financial universe, even if you no longer work directly in it.

"Did they keep their relationship with the AICPA current? Did they keep their CPA current?” Spencer Lee asks rhetorically. Managers doing the hiring “will look to see what the person did to stay involved in the profession, although they might not have been working in it."To employers, maintaining skills eliminates any perception that a professional might be "coming back in [to finance] and starting all over again," she says.