by
2018-04-06
There is a shortage of accounting and finance talent in the United States. Regardless of what industry you’re in, if your business doesn’t have the right people handling your money, the impact on your bottom line can be disastrous. Given the current shortage of financial talent, getting the right people in the door is trickier than ever. So what can you do to attract top financial talent? Whether it’s a CFO, Controller, Staff Accountant, or Financial Analyst, you can follow these steps to get the right accounting and finance professionals in the door (and keep them)!
1. Develop A Strong Company Brand
You may think that applicants and candidates are the only ones who have to “sell” themselves throughout the interview process, but you also have to convince the candidate that your company is the best one to work for. You can start this process before you even post a job opening by developing a positive company brand. Use your social media presence to highlight employee achievements, company celebrations, and new innovations. Creating a company people actually want to work for—and sharing that with the public—will help you develop a positive “brand” for your company, making it easier to sell that to prospective finance and accounting talent when they apply. Good candidates will look you up online…what will they find?
2. Utilize Your Current Employees
Using your current employees can be one of the best talent sourcing techniques out there; ask your employees for referrals of potential candidates. Your current employees can act as positive company ambassadors, explaining the perks of working for your company first-hand and what their position would be like. Word of mouth and personal experience can be some of the best recruiting tools around. You can offer your current employees a referral bonus if the candidate gets hired, too, enticing them to tap into their network and see who might be looking for a new position.
3. Find Someone Who Fits Your Company Culture
When you finally get to the interviewing stage where you’re meeting with prospective candidates, there’s one thing many people forget to assess. During the interview process you naturally want to ask about someone’s background and experience, but you also want to assess whether or not they’d mesh well with your company culture and values. What is their work style like? What are they looking for in a company? What motivates them to stay with a company? These are all things you should try and determine throughout the interview process.
Why? Attracting the right talent is one thing, but retaining talent it is another, and if someone is not a good culture fit for your organization it quickly becomes apparent. It may even cause them to leave their new role quickly—forcing you to start the talent attraction process all over again. In fact, studies show that as much as one third of employees leave a new job within the first six months. This means that hiring people who will fit in well with your company culture and share similar values and working styles is your best bet.
4. Ask Questions To Identify Solid Leaders
Especially when you’re looking to hire a CFO or Controller, you need to look for someone who can lead your team with confidence and expertise. When interviewing candidates, identify people with a solid track record of strong leadership. Have they managed teams, set quantifiable goals, and met them? Can they draw insights from raw data? What experience do they have navigating change and surviving financial challenges and hardships at a company? What growth have they helped promote? Get examples of how your potential hire has developed employees into top performers. They’re not a strong leader if no one is following them to success.
5. Work With A Recruiter
A good recruiting firm can help you identify and attract the finance and accounting talent you need. Not only do they have their finger on the pulse of the talent market, but a good recruiting firm will have an expertise at matching both the skill sets you are looking for and the cultural fit. A great recruiter will help you evaluate talent and separate those who truly excel from those that just look good on paper. A great recruiter will also match the opportunities at your company to the candidate’s career goals, which increases the long term potential success. A great recruiter that you can truly partner with can save you time, money, and plenty of headaches when you need to find, attract, evaluate, hire and retain the best finance and accounting professionals for your business.
If your company needs help finding the right finance and accounting talent, find out how Veritas can help, contact us today.
