In Pursuit of Profit
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If done well, your new hires will feel important, supported, and immediately motivated to do their best work for you and your organization. When left as an afterthought, however, new employees may end up feeling undervalued, unsupported, or even ostracized by the rest of your team.
Surprisingly, one of the best experiences that I’ve had with onboarding came from a backpacking trip with my daughter. These are the critical lessons I can take away from my experience. She knows the ins and outs of the company’s accounting software, which isn’t perfect, but it works well enough for ABC Company’s needs right now. Sharon really doesn’t make mistakes – she is fastidious in the work that she does and has a system for everything. But, even with the quality work that Sharon is doing, ABC Company knows it needs to bring someone else in to help her because there is simply too much work for one accountant to handle anymore. Plus, Sharon is getting close to retirement age, which means that they will need to bring someone in to replace her when she decides to retire in a few years to follow her dream of traveling around the country in an RV.
How does ABC Company bring in help for Sharon without offending her? How do they convey that while they are happy with the work Sharon is doing, they need redundancy in case Sharon gets sick or is out on disability leave? How does ABC Company put the right personnel in place now so that they have continuity when Sharon decides to retire? How do they hire a senior accountant or controller to help implement a new accounting system to grow with them as their needs change and evolve? There may not be a Sharon at every company, but every business can benefit from learning how to tactfully bring in senior accounting staff. Taking the right approach in the hiring process is crucial because it can truly mean the difference between success and failure. When done correctly, a new hire can complement and elevate your existing team. When done incorrectly, a new hire can lead to resentment and distrust, poisoning the team culture and fueling needless turnover.
Employers need to realize that they may not find an accountant that checks every one of their “nice-to-have” boxes, but if they work with an experienced accounting recruiter, they will find someone that fits their “must-have” needs. And, the sooner they can figure this out, the better because having an open role costs an average of $98/day, and rehiring an accounting employee after letting go of a bad hire costs over $50,000 on average! Therefore, to minimize hiring costs employers need to rethink their expectations around work flexibility, compensation, accounting improvements, and training when looking to fill a role.
Using a company with a niche financial recruiting focus ensures that they will understand the specifics of what you are looking for and have a pipeline of qualified job seekers to tap into. Furthermore, accounting and finance recruiters are more likely to have access to the right kind of connections to approach candidates that are not necessarily actively looking for a new role but would be open to the possibility of making a change.
That figure is staggering but let's focus on your individual calculation. There are many different ways to calculate Cost of Vacancy (COV), but it’s not just the dollars and cents of salaries and benefits that need to be considered (although that is certainly at the forefront of hiring managers’ minds). You can also put real numbers behind morale, burnout, turnover, overtime, and the overall attitude of an accounting or finance department.
Similarly, the recruiters at The ASP Team follow a process to help their clients find the right candidate who fits with their available accounting and finance position and culture – a work match!
The Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) publishes an annual report detailing accounting program enrollment and graduate hiring trends. In their most recent report, they provided data on a problem that the accounting industry has been facing for the last decade. The problem is that fewer people are choosing accounting as a career. Our conversations with colleagues have yielded the same kind of feedback. It seems that fewer people (even those majoring in accounting) are going into accounting these days upon graduation. The AICPA backs this observation with data showing that from 2019-2020 the number of accounting graduates dropped by 2.8% at the undergraduate level and 8.4% at the graduate level. Furthermore, the hiring of new accounting graduates in 2020 decreased by 10%.
12/12/2022 Controller or CFO – Which Do You Need?At this stage, companies are feeling the limitations of their existing accounting personnel and are evaluating what their next move should be to keep the company moving forward. But knowing whether to hire a Controller or a CFO is a big decision, because, contrary to popular opinion, the roles are distinctly different.
As Kevin Briscoe, the CEO of CFO Selections, explains in nonprofit leadership podcast, “A Controller is ‘walls-in and rear-facing’ and a CFO is ‘walls-out and forward-facing’.” He goes on to explain that a controller analyzes what the company has done already while a CFO evaluates where the company is going next.
Why? Well, it is an irrefutable fact that there was a drop in the number of accounting degrees being obtained between 1998 and 2008, which caused a ripple that is still being felt across many organizations. On top of that, the Great Resignation made finding senior-level accounting and finance professionals more difficult because of the surge in career changes and retirements.
But what is more controversial is the possibility that employers themselves may be to blame for the tight hiring market in accounting and finance. Yes, we said it. Those of you in search of a unicorn candidate may be partially to blame for the sentiment that there is no one qualified enough for the role you are looking to fill. Let us explain… While outsourcing overseas used to just be a cost-saving measure, many accounting firms are now facing labor shortages that are forcing them to take this step out of necessity, not of their own choosing. The Washington Post declared that “The remote revolution could lead to offshoring Armageddon” and though that is likely an exaggeration, it demonstrates how desperate many employers are these days to find personnel to do the work that needs to get done.
CPA firms, large employers, and companies with complicated ongoing financial needs are in a pinch. They need skilled employees to do the work that keeps their businesses running but with a dearth of qualified candidates available, their options are limited. However, offshoring is not the only solution! It is often a far better option to upskill your existing employees to assist with this work than to send it overseas. |
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