A guest post from Jen Girard at CFO Selections

We get this request all the time. A small non-profit needs to hire a new Finance Manager. Sometimes they call this person a CFO or Controller, but whatever the title, the role is a Superhero who wears multiple costumes and does it all!

How do you find (and afford) this person? Find out how other non-profits are doing it:

Are ecommerce accountants different than regular accountants?
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Should you have an accountant that has previous ecommerce experience for your online business?

These kinds of questions are becoming increasingly common with the dramatic rise in ecommerce business. In 2020 alone US ecommerce grew by more than 32% as traditional brick-and-mortar companies made the transition online and new ecommerce businesses started up in record numbers. 

Pre-pandemic many companies successfully used job boards like Indeed to hire high quality accounting and finance candidates. Due to their heavy advertising during this time, what I like to call the “Indeed Effect” emerged. Companies turned to job recruiting boards like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and LinkedIn in droves to meet their recruiting needs.

Like you, I was seeing the impact of this first-hand: many companies in need of external recruiting help were quickly, easily, and cheaply able to find highly qualified candidates by posting an ad on an online job board. And as time went on, the results got even better as job board technology continued to evolve. The big names in recruiting became extremely transformative to the hiring process during this time, continuously refining their technology to improve the search process. As a result, even recruiters like myself benefitted from the phenomenon, often receiving high quality applicants to our job posts as well. Using these tools became an integral part of our recruiting process.

Fast-forward almost two years and the tide has almost completely changed. 

Networking is usually a prescriptive topic. Resources will tell you what to do in concrete terms, like practice your elevator pitch, make eye contact, and send a follow up email after meeting someone.

And while these tips are not bad advice, they do not address the underlying question of, “Why are you networking?” As a result, they are very little help because they provide obvious advice that even entry-level professionals already know. They also fail to customize the provided advice for a specific industry or individual. So, instead of being redundant and just providing the same information that you can get anywhere online, we wanted to put together a resource that would actually help accountants to network with other accounting professionals.

We asked our team how they network these days, and these are their top tips:

When your controller leaves, the logical next step is to find someone to fill the vacant position. Right?

Maybe not.

Simply hiring another controller may not actually be the best decision for your business.

We work with companies everyday who are looking for accounting and finance leadership roles and it is not uncommon to have clients tell us they need a controller and then listen to them define the role only to discover that what they are looking for is a different position entirely.

Now, some organizations we work with are, in fact, in need of a controller. However, others have needs that better align with more senior financial leadership like that of a CFO, while others have requirements that fit better with a mid-level management accounting position.

Instead of jumping right into hiring a controller, take the time to understand what kind of role will be the best fit for your company.

​After another difficult year, savvy employers have come to realize that supporting their office staff needs to be a top priority to combat labor shortage woes as financial uncertainty continues. With 85% of employees open to new job opportunities (even if they are not actively looking), employers understand how important it is to proactively work to retain employees.
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As the year comes to an end, organizations are asking themselves, “How can I support my accounting and finance staff next year?” 

Business leaders asking themselves the question “Do I need a CFO or Controller?” are typically in a good position – one where growth has necessitated that they bring in financial leadership.

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.

We talk to people every day that are looking for accountants for their companies. And being in the business of staffing organizations through both full-time hires and outsourced accounting services, we have noticed a trend in people’s thinking…

Business owners and hiring managers typically categorize their hiring intentions into one of two buckets: a part-time bookkeeper/bookkeeping service or a full-time accountant hire. But many business leaders overlook the value that a part-time accountant (or “fractional accountant” as they are referred to in the industry) can provide to their organization.

Whether the organization is for-profit or not-for-profit, a fractional accountant can be brought in for a variety of reasons to provide the same level of expertise of a full-time, dedicated accountant. While a fractional accountant from an accounting service provider may work on a less than full-time basis, their experience-level is as high (if not higher) than your average accountant.
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The reason a fractional accountant may bring a greater breadth of experience the role is because they work with a variety of companies across a different industries and lifecycles simultaneously, which requires that they be well versed in a wide variety of accounting topics and stay abreast of all the latest news. As a result, fractional accountants may offer more accounting acumen at a much lower cost than their full-time counterpart.

An article from our Accounting and Finance Recruiting Team
 
With our professional and personal lives becoming more blended than ever and younger members of the workforce feeling less of a need to compartmentalize the two, social media has become a territory ripe with both risk and opportunity.

These days everyone knows that what is posted on social media is fair game, and voicing unpopular opinions, sharing inappropriate content, or being hateful online can cost a job seeker the job. And while people posting or sharing those types of things may not be concerned with how they will be perceived, most job seekers do care what a prospective employer may think of them.

This is especially true in more buttoned-up industries like accounting, finance, banking, financial planning, and business consulting. Career-focused professionals looking for their next role will ask questions like:

• Where are recruiters and hiring managers looking for information about me online?
• What do they want to see? And what are they hoping not to see?
• What can I do clean up my social media profiles?
• How can I stand out from the crowd to get the job?

​Our accounting and finance recruiting team answers these questions regarding how your web presence affects hiring decisions:

“Finance” is a broad term every business leader has heard, but it can mean many different things.
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Businesses have banking relationships, investments they need to track, fundraising and financial analysis needs. Corporate Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), the work performed by Financial Analysts, is a complex specialty within Finance that all successful businesses need in some degree. There are multiple FP&A components of which every business requires a different combination. This complexity makes hiring to satisfy your FP&A needs difficult. To make matters harder, many accounting and FP&A functions can overlap.

So how do you know if you need to hire a dedicated Financial Analyst or a hybrid accountant? It helps to first understand the components of Corporate FP&A, the value each adds, and how much time each activity should take.