​According to recent data, 76% of companies report that attracting well-qualified candidates is their biggest hiring challenge, making recruitment a serious concern for most businesses.

Hiring a recruiting firm is the best way to find top-notch candidates for your open positions. While some recruiting agencies use a retainer model, others use a contingency agreement. How do you decide which approach is best for your needs?

With contingent recruitment, the recruiting agency only gets paid when they find and place a qualified candidate into the role they are hiring for on behalf of their client. Contingency recruiting fees are typically structured as a percentage of the candidate’s first-year base salary and can vary widely from one recruiting company to another based on geography, industry, and position level.

Why Use Contingency Recruiting?
Unlike retained search, where recruiting fees are typically paid in installments at the beginning and throughout the process, contingent recruiting is based on the idea of only paying once results have been achieved. Many companies prefer to work with a recruiting agency that uses a contingency model because it is often much less expensive, and the fees are easier to understand. It is reassuring to hiring companies, especially smaller businesses, to know that they will not be paying a recruiting fee until after a qualified candidate has been hired. 

The possibility of business fraud is the dirty little secret that business owners tend to ignore. Unfortunately, there will always be unscrupulous individuals that try to take what is not theirs, even during hard times. Recent reports of bookkeeper fraud serve as a reminder to business owners that fraud never stops, even when businesses are down on their luck. In fact, a global fraud study found that, on average, companies lose 5% of their yearly revenue to fraudulent activities.
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While it is easy to imagine fraud occurring by faceless cybercriminals or strangers sneaking in to rob your company of cash and valuable assets, most perpetrators have deep ties to the business, and many are first-time offenders. Many times, the people you least expect are the ones responsible for fraudulent activity – long-time employees, close friends, and even family. These bonds can make it difficult to spot the warning signs, causing fraud to go undetected far longer than it should.

We see it every day – businesses that put off hiring an accountant for too long. By the time they come to us, they have finally hit the breaking point, and now they need someone immediately to get their books in order and implement strategic financial planning. They ask questions about how quickly an accountant can be onboarded and approach the hiring process with panicked urgency.   

It is not a secret that many professionals have side hustles doing what they do for their day job (whether their employers know about it or not). When employees had a reasonable level of job security and still felt fulfilled going into the office every day, these side hustles remained just that – on the side.
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However, in the current economic recession, a lot of side hustle jobs are serving as interim primary jobs. They will likely transition toward becoming full-time jobs over the next year. Labor experts say the country is poised for an unprecedented shift in the employment landscape across myriad industries.

While many professionals use some form of free online accounting software to keep track of their side business finances, this type of solution often cannot scale when your side hustle grows. Just using QuickBooks is not enough either. You should hire a bookkeeper any time your business experiences significant growth, is looking for funding, starts hiring, when time is constrained, or if knowledge gaps limit the quality of work you can put into it yourself. 

Starting a new business is one-part passion and two-parts paperwork.
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Entrepreneurs can quickly get overwhelmed by the vast federal, state, and local requirements in place to regulate the formation of new businesses. Furthermore, focusing on requisite steps can distract new business owners from asking astute questions and doing critical market research to hone their business ideas.