In this podcast episode, we discuss the best recruiting methods for the hiring of accountants. Key points made are noted below.

Base Recruiting on the Desired Result

When figuring out the best recruiting method, first determine the result that you want to achieve. Which is not only a high-quality group of candidates, but also not having to wade through a thick stack of resumes. It’s that second item that drives me to be pretty specific about how to recruit. I really don’t like digging through masses of resumes when 99% of them are clearly not what I want, and then I have to do too many screening calls and interviews to arrive at a couple of good people.

Negative Recommendations

So here are some negative recommendations. Don’t post any accounting job on an on-line job search site. When you post a job on these sites, you’re simply going to get dumped on with masses of resumes. Instead, look for recruiting methods that cut out those candidates that won’t fit.

Tailored Recruiting Solutions

A single recruiting approach doesn’t work for everyone in the accounting department. If you’re looking for a senior position, like a controller or assistant controller, the recruiting is not the same as what you’d use for a lower-level position, like a payables clerk. The reason is that the quality of candidate needs to be very high for the senior positions, and there aren’t very many of those people around. At the lower levels, there’re many more qualified people, and they’re somewhat easier to find.

To fill a senior position, ask the company’s auditors. They may have someone in-house who wants to go to the private sector. In addition, they have connections with all of their other clients, and they may know of someone. The auditors value their relationship with the company, so they have a strong incentive not to send over the resume of a weak candidate.

Second, call a recruiter. The best ones have hundreds of contacts with people who may not even be looking for a job right now. They can match up my requirements with who they know, and pre-screen them, and then send over just a few resumes that are probably close to what I need. So this is an efficient recruiting method.

A few thoughts on recruiters. When the economy is hot, lots of new recruiting firms open up and try to get my business. I don’t use them, because they haven’t been around long enough to have built up a network of contacts. Instead, I use the recruiting firms that have been around the longest, and the people within those firms that have also been around the longest. And then I always stick with the same firm. That way, if they have someone really good, I hear about it first. That means giving them an exclusive on a job search.

I don’t contact the auditors for lower-level positions. They don’t have anyone on their staffs who would want to transfer into a clerical job, so there’s no point in contacting them. Instead, set up a referral bonus, so that everyone in the company is looking around through their networks for candidates. The people who are referred this way tend to be fairly good, since the person doing the referring is essentially pre-screening them. If there’s a company newsletter, post the jobs in there, and the employees will take over the job search.

Other Recruiting Options

Set up a jobs page on the company website. If someone is energetic enough to bookmark this page and then keep checking it, they may have the makings of a good employee – so this approach will winnow out those people who can’t be bothered to check the website. Also, don’t bury the jobs page deep down in the website. Make it one of the major links on the home page.

Use the same approach for social media sites. Post job openings on the company’s LinkedIn and Facebook pages, and issue notices on Twitter.

Once there is a pool of good candidates for a job, ask them where they heard about it. This tells you which recruiting methods worked, and which ones can be dropped.

Here are some recruiting options that are a bit less mainstream: First, if anyone has left the company who was really quite good, keep in touch. Contact them maybe every four months. These people may find that their new job wasn’t what they expected. If you’ve maintained contact, there’s a good chance you can get them back.

The same principle applies to candidates who interviewed for a job, but were not selected. If any of them looked promising, then enter their resume and contact information and interview notes in a database, and call them back if something comes up later. In this case, it helps to enter into the database the position that they’d be good at, rather than the one they originally applied for. So for example, someone was too inexperienced to be the controller, but would be a great payables manager. If so, make a note of it. This is better than conducting a new search from scratch, because you’ve already interviewed the person.

Maybe someone wants to retire. If so, offer them a part-time position. That way, they can gradually transition into retirement, and make some money on the side. This keeps you from having to recruit a new person, at least for a while.

If you need someone for a junior position, consider bringing in an intern. They need supervision and a lot of training. Even so, you have a chance to view their work and how they behave for a couple of months, so it’ll be pretty obvious if you should hire them.