Could a different approach to recruitment help you find your next great employee?
Recruiting experienced accountancy staff is becoming increasingly difficult for many practices, with skills shortages and competition for good candidates pushing up salary expectations. But paying more isn’t the only option. Recruiting people for their attitude, communication skills and potential, developing existing employees and using accountancy apprenticeships to build skills can all offer a different approach. In this blog, we look at how practices can rethink recruitment, develop talent from within and find new people with the potential to become valuable long-term members of the team.
Recruiting experienced accountancy staff isn’t easy.
It’s something we hear regularly when talking to employers and accountancy practices. Good people are in demand, vacancies can be difficult to fill and, when an experienced candidate does come along, there’s a fair chance you’re not the only employer interested in them.
For smaller and mid-sized practices in particular, that can make recruitment challenging. You may find yourself competing with larger firms offering higher salaries, increasingly generous benefits and career packages that are difficult to match.
So, what do you do?
Pay more? Keep searching? Hope the perfect CV eventually lands in your inbox?
Sometimes one of those might be the right answer. But perhaps there’s another question worth asking:
Do you really need to recruit someone who can already do everything, or could you recruit someone with the potential to learn it?
What do you actually need on day one?
When someone leaves or a team is growing, it’s natural to think about replacing the skills you’re missing.
If you’ve lost an experienced member of staff, the obvious reaction is to look for another experienced member of staff.
But that can immediately put you into competition for a relatively small pool of candidates.
Instead, it may be worth taking a fresh look at the role.
Which skills does someone genuinely need from their first day? Which could be developed over the next six or twelve months? And are there responsibilities within the existing team that could be rearranged while somebody new develops?
For some positions, experience will absolutely be essential.
For others, it may not be as important as it first appears.
Recruit for the things that are harder to teach
Technical accountancy skills can be taught.
That’s rather the point of training.
Some of the qualities that make someone a brilliant employee, however, are much harder to teach.
Someone who is curious, enthusiastic and willing to learn can be incredibly valuable. So can someone who communicates well, gets on with clients and colleagues, asks sensible questions and isn’t afraid to say when they don’t understand something.
Then there are the seemingly simple things that matter enormously in a workplace: turning up, being dependable, taking responsibility and wanting to improve.
None of those necessarily appear under the Experience heading on a CV.
That doesn’t mean experience isn’t valuable. Of course it is. But if recruiting experienced people is becoming increasingly difficult or expensive, it might be worth thinking differently about the attributes you’re looking for.
Potential needs somewhere to go
There is an important flip side to all this.
You can’t simply recruit somebody because they seem enthusiastic and expect everything else to take care of itself.
If you recruit for potential, you need to give that potential somewhere to go.
That means having a good induction, support from the people around them and opportunities to gradually take on more responsibility.
It also means training.
A structured accountancy apprenticeship programme can combine the experience someone gains within your business with the technical knowledge and qualifications they need to progress.
And crucially, they are learning while working within your business.
They get to understand your clients, systems, processes and way of doing things from the beginning.
Over time, you’re not simply filling a vacancy. You’re developing somebody who can become an increasingly valuable member of your team.
What about the people you already have?
Recruitment isn’t necessarily the only answer either.
Before starting another search, it can be worth looking at your existing team.
Could someone already working for you step up with additional training? Could responsibilities be redistributed? Is there somebody showing potential who simply hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to progress?
Upskilling existing employees can create opportunities within the team and, in turn, open up more junior positions that are easier to recruit for.
Instead of trying to find one person who can immediately fill an experienced vacancy, you may be able to create progression through the business.
It can also demonstrate something increasingly important to employees: that joining your organisation doesn’t mean standing still.
The UK Government provides more information about employing an apprentice and how apprenticeship training works, including the responsibilities of employers and the support available.
Finding fresh accountancy talent
Of course, deciding you’re open to recruiting somebody at the beginning of their career raises another question.
Where do you find them?
That’s one of the reasons we’ve developed our Accountancy Talent Programme.
We work with people who are considering accountancy as a career, helping them understand what the profession involves and giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their potential.
For employers, that can provide another route to finding people who might not have years of accountancy experience on their CV but do have the attitude, aptitude and enthusiasm to build a career.
We’ve seen apprentices join practices at the beginning of their accountancy journey and go on to become highly valued members of their teams.
They haven’t arrived as the finished article.
They’ve grown into the role.
And that’s really the point.
Our thoughts
There will always be roles where you need somebody experienced who can walk through the door and hit the ground running.
We’re certainly not suggesting otherwise.
But when experienced candidates are difficult to find, the answer doesn’t always have to be offering more money and joining an increasingly competitive recruitment battle.
Sometimes it might be worth changing what you’re looking for.
Recruit the person with the right attitude. Look for communication skills, personality and potential. Give them structured training, genuine responsibility and a clear idea of where their career could take them.
Or take another look at the people already within your business and ask whether one of them is ready for their next step.
Because your next great accountant might not be the person with the most impressive CV.
They might be the person you give the opportunity to build one.
If you’d like to talk about recruiting and developing new accountancy talent, get in touch with the Accountancy Learning team. We’re always happy to have a conversation about what could work for your business.
Give us a call on 01392 435349 or email us at [email protected]
