Hiring the right person is essential to the success of your business and hiring the wrong person can cost you more than just money. When it comes to talent recruitment, the two main drivers for outsourcing in the accounting function are picking the best talent and cost-effectiveness. We also found this consistent among business owners in our network when we polled them (results below). In this post, we’re sharing the risks of not hiring the best talent, how to ensure you’re securing high calibre talent, and our tried and tested process for success!
But many don’t realise just how much it can cost you if you don’t pick the right candidates.
The Department of Labor in the US once published findings that the cost of a bad hire is at least 30% of the first year’s salary of the employee, but the cost is likely to be much higher.
Accounting Outsourcing: The Risk of Outsourcing the WRONG Talent
It’s more than just the financial costs involved in a bad hire. Between onboarding, training, licensing, and managing that is a lot of wasted time and energy being spent on someone who is either not receptive or not suitable to your business.
In outsourced accounting, there are also other challenges including disruption of the team dynamic and morale. The impact of bringing someone into the team who doesn’t gel or fit with your existing culture can impact long after they have left, and in certain cases, damage the working environment for otherwise loyal staff.
While you’re hiring, rehiring, and spending your time with the stresses and headaches of bad outsourcing, you’re also not focused on what you do best, or your client delivery. And chances are this means a loss of potential income from opportunities you haven’t seen while dealing with this crisis.
In our experience, poor talent recruitment can leave a negative experience that even transfers over to the next applicant. That’s why we’ve spent a lot of time, effort and resources getting this process right!
Our Robust Talent Recruitment Process
We’ve refined our process using years of experience to ensure we place engaged, high calibre applicants through our robust process. Here’s what it looks like when you work with us for accounting outsourcing.
1. Candidate Sourcing
We use a variety of channels to ensure we’re reaching the best talent. This includes online job advertisements on job boards, internal referrals, database searches and external recruitment agency partners.
2. Screening
Next, we review CVs to match candidate experience against our open vacancies. Then we follow up with a phone call from our internal recruitment team to further understand the experience and suitability for the role.
3. Technical Screening
We require the completion of an Accounting Skills Assessment test to check basic accounting knowledge, attention to detail and numeric reasoning.
4. Recruitment Interview
Candidates have a 1:1 meeting with our Head of Talent to determine communication skills and cultural fit to the workplace.
5. Technical Interview
Meeting with an internal Technical Manager to further deep-dive technical capabilities and determine the technical fit for the role.
6. Psychometric Testing
We perform online testing to understand how a candidate thinks, makes decisions, and behaves. Benchmarking is done against the desired high performing profile for each position.
7. Client Interview
During this last stage, the client meets with the candidate to determine how they will fit into the team.
Read more: Why Traditional Outsourced Accounting Isn’t Enough For 2022
We’ve learnt a few things along the way, so here are our top tips for expert talent recruitment in accounting.
3 Additional Tips to Secure a High Calibre Candidate in Talent Recruitment
We’ve learnt a few things along the way, so here are our top tips for expert talent recruitment in accounting.
1. Understand the total person you’re looking to hire
You can’t find the best candidate if you don’t truly understand the role you’re hiring for. This doesn’t just mean the basic tasks they will be completing but also the heart, mind, and soul of the candidate. How you need them to think and make decisions, their preferred working style, and strategic requirements. It is helpful to consider these before initiating recruitment so that it can drive a more targeted search.
2. Clearly articulate incentives
The talent joining your team are people, with lives, ambitions, and drivers. If you want longevity and loyalty from your new starters then make sure that you can articulate the incentives or progression opportunities, or ideally both. This could be through validation, upskilling opportunities, progression pathways, and perks like flexibility and hybrid working.
3. It’s more than a salary
Probably the number one mistake in recruitment is hiring talent based on salary alone. You don’t make all your business decisions on money alone, which is why you shouldn’t do it with your candidates either. Your candidates must fit into the values and culture you’ve created for your own business which is more than just a salary number.
If you want to avoid the risks of poor accounting outsourcing and want genuine talent-as-a-service for your accounting and finance function, please reach out to us to see how we can help. We want to put the right people, in the right job, at the right time.
