Hiring Trends to Anticipate in Accounting for 2015

As we begin 2015, companies are preparing their budgets for the coming year. One thing they are preparing for is hiring new employees. Within the accounting industry, there are a couple of hiring trends that employers should anticipate for 2015. We will discuss them in this post so you can prepare to hire the best talent available for your open jobs.

Hot Accounting Jobs for 2015

In 2015, the following jobs in the accounting industry will be hiring in large numbers, so be sure your company is ready to bring in the best talent.

  • Staff accountant: salary range of $46,220-$60,882 with an average of $54,257
  • Accounts payable manager: salary range of $53,994-$95,575 with an average of $74,030
  • Payroll manager: salary range of $59,612-$102,132 with an average of $80,433
  • Collections specialist: salary range of $24,175-$42,828 with an average of $33,048
  • Tax accountant: salary range of $38,633-$59,592 with an average of $48,774
  • Mortgage loan processor: salary range of $39,252-$60,352 with an average of $34,623
  • Auditing director: salary range of $94,803-$180,574 with an average of $133,183
  • Compliance manager: salary range of $75,567-$95,467 with an average of $79,889
  • Financial reporting supervisor: salary range of $77,420-$124,639 with an average of $99,519
  • Business data analyst: salary range of $45,156-$70,331 with an average of $58,325

Salary Increases in Accounting

Within the accounting industry, there are a handful of jobs that are expected to see significant raises in salary once 2015 arrives. Those jobs and salary increases include the following:

  • Audit/Assurance Services at a midsize firm: Any professional in this position who has held the job for three years will see a raise of 2.9 percent, which is a range of $56,750-$74,750.
  • Tax Services Manager at a midsize firm: Any professional who works in this profession can expect to see a raise of 3.9 percent in 2015. The salary range will increase to $88,750-$123,250.
  • Management Service Professionals at large firms: People who have worked this job for at least three years can see a salary increase of 3.1 percent in 2015. The salary range will increase to $65,750-$82,500.
  • Senior Manager/Director in Audit/Assurance Services at a small firm: These professionals can see a 3.6 percent salary increase that will move the range to $94,250-$134,500.
  • Bookkeepers at firms of all sizes: Raises of 3.0 percent in 2015 are expected for these professionals to increase the salary range to $40,750-$61,250.

As you prepare your budgets for 2015, you need to prepare for all of the hiring trends within accounting so you can bring in the proper talent for your firm.

Salary Expectations for Illinois Accountants and How to Negotiate Yours

Are you preparing for a job as an accountant in the state of Illinois? If so, this post is for you because we will discuss the salary expectations for accountants working in Illinois. We will also help you negotiate your salary, and it doesn’t matter if you are right out of college or preparing to make a move well into your career.

Accountant Salary Rates Rising in Illinois

The national average for an accountant’s salary is just over $47,000 per year. In Illinois, there are just nine major locations where an accountant’s salary is less than the national average. There are 21 major locations where the salary is more than the national average.

If you want to work in Chicago as an accountant, you can expect to make roughly $2,000 more than the national average for the position. The same can be said for those who want to work in Evanston and Orland Park.

If you want to work in Peoria, you can expect to make roughly $5,000 less than the national average. The same can be said for those who want to work in Springfield and Rockfield.

How to Negotiate for the Best Salary

After looking at the numbers for an accountant’s salary in Illinois, it is now time to figure out how to negotiate your own compensation. The first step in this process is putting together a list of your top priorities for the job. Write down 401(k), vacation time, benefits, base salary, bonuses,  scope of responsibilities, frequency of performance reviews and more.

Ask the hiring manager what the base salary for the position is and then provide a counter offer. In some instances, the offer made by the company will be the final dollar amount. In other instances, you will be able to negotiate the salary to a level that you think is acceptable.

One thing you must do prior to negotiating your salary is research. You need to figure out what the company has paid for the position in the past, what competing companies pay and if you have any degrees or certifications that would increase the salary paid to you.

As you prepare to work in the accounting field, you need to make sure that the salary is in line with your experience and prior compensation levels. A little bit of research can help in your negotiations for a higher salary at a new company.

Referral Programs DO WORK!

We know!  We are actively seeking referrals for our positions.  For every referred candidate we place through the 1st quarter of 2015, we will provide a $100 referral bonus.  We realize our success comes for our candidates and clients!  Our Referral Program is a small way we can give back to those who help us succeed!  In addition to the referral bonus, for every candidate we place, we will make a donation to provide 216 meals through the organization “Feed My Starving Children”.

There is nothing more powerful in recruiting than having a candidate referred to you.  A candidate who is looking, but may be on more of a passive search, combined with an employee who is familiar with the skills and abilities this person can bring to your company is a superior way to have candidates surfaced for your job openings!  

Look at the advantages a Referral Program can bring to your organization:

  • Your employees become more engaged in the success of your company as they understand that attracting top talent is important to the success of the organization.
  • Although money may not be the key motivator, employees want an opportunity to help their friends.  Having a Referral Program gives these employees the ability to help others through this program.
  • By providing a template of job openings to your employees, they can easily share this information on their social networks.  Making it easy for the word to get out on social media outlets will ramp up the success of the Referral Program and surface more applicant referrals from your staff.
  • In addition, this is a quick way to get job opportunites out to colleges through your well networked employees sharing information with college friends.
  • An employee who refers a candidate, who is then hired, will have a vested interest in helping this person get acclimated and potentially mentor the new hire.  This helps the new employee get up to speed quickly in their new role.
  • Referral new hires typically have a better retention rate and often are a better culture fit.

Are you familiar with any candidates we can help?  Please forward them to us by sending their resume or profile along with your contact information to info@caseyresources.com.  We look forward to assisting these candidates in their job search!   Happy Holidays and Best Wishes to all in the New Year!

How to Sell Your Company to a Prospective Candidate

When it comes to attracting top talent for your company, things are so competitive in the market that you need to put out all the stops to impress the most qualified candidates. Convincing a strong candidate that your company is the best option for their career will not be easy, but if you can do it, your company will reap the benefits immensely.

Explain What Sets The Company Apart

In order to sell your company, you will need to have plenty of information at the ready for the candidate. You need to explain what is happening at the company right now and how it is working towards meeting its goals. You need to explain the corporate culture, why a prospective employee would want to work at your company and how the open role will impact all of the above. You should also provide the candidate with the short-term and long-term goals of the company and how the open position fits into those plans.

Showcase The Opportunities Of The Open Position

The next thing you need to do is provide the candidate with information about the job. Be as specific as possible when telling the candidate what the job responsibilities will be so they can fully understand what they are getting themselves into if they accept an offer of employment.

You should also discuss the goals of the position. Provide goals that can be met in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and beyond. Let the candidate know how he or she will fit into the current team and why the company needs to fill the position. You need to be as honest about this last part as possible. If the previous employee was promoted, fired or left for another company, the candidate deserves to know.

Share A Strong Benefits Package

All prospective job candidates want to know what their compensation and benefits will be prior to accepting an offer of employment. When you call a candidate to offer him or her a job, be prepared to discuss salary, benefits, vacation time, potential for raises, time period for promotion and much more. Once you offer up all of this information, you should allow the candidate time to think about what they have been offered. Let them consider the offer for a period of 48 hours so they can speak with a spouse or do a little more research about your company.

Selling your company to a prospective candidate does not have to be impossible. When you can sell your firm to a qualified employee, it makes the process of finding and retaining top talent much easier.

5 Skills to Highlight in Your Accounting Resume

As you prepare to write a resume for your accounting career, it’s important to consider what to include or omit. Your resume will look different depending on whether you are right out of college or have been working for 15 years. Use the tips below to develop an outstanding accounting resume so that you will get noticed by the right hiring companies.

Discuss Technical Skills

One of the most important things you need to include on your accounting resume is that of your technical skills. Technical skills include proficiency in SAP, Oracle, Sage, and other high-level tools. Any financial software you know how to use should be listed on your resume in order for you to stand out from the crowd.

Include Accomplishments

What have you achieved in your previous employment? Show that what you have done in the past. Highlighting your accomplishments shows that you can take on more responsibility and be able to generate results. You won’t settle for doing average work.

Quantify Your Success

To tie in with those mentioned accomplishments, how strong was your success? Being able to show that your work resulted in an improvement of performance or a decrease in expenses for an organization shows that you will increase efficiency and be able to keep everything running smoothly.

Ability to Prepare Financial Statements

Another skill you should feature is the ability to prepare financial statements. Financial statements have many different segments and you need to discuss all of them on your resume. You need to show that you can handle the income statement, the balance sheet, the statement of retained earnings and the statement of cash flow.

Financial Analysis

The most successful accountants out there today are able to explain how well they perform financial analysis. When you work in financial analysis, you need to be detail oriented. If you want to find a job in the profession, your resume will need to have just as much detail, if not more. If you cannot properly define this skill on your resume, it will be difficult to land a job.

As you build a new resume, you need to highlight the skills mentioned above if you want to impress the hiring manager and receive an offer of employment. Work with your recruitment representative at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources to create an accounting resume that will work for you.

Top 10 Reasons To Bring On A Temp

When trying to fill open positions in your organization this holiday season, you might be debating how long to have someone with your company. Should  you hire them in a regular full-time position? Or should you hire someone temporarily?

Consider the latter. There are many reasons to consider a temporary worker! Here are 10 of them:

  1. Congratulations – you have recognized a top employee with a promotion and need someone to backfill her old position!
  2. Great news, your company is growing!  Hire a temporary employee to help you with your growth!
  3. One of your staff members is taking a leave of absence.  A temporary employee will help to keep the work current until your staff member returns.
  4. Special Project?  Bring on a temporary employee for the special project or have a temporary employee fill in for your internal staff member who is assigned to that project.
  5. Another implementation?  You are going through an implementation and need someone to help in the process.
  6. On no!  Someone just resigned.  Bring on a temporary employee to fill in while you search for a replacement.
  7. Outstanding!  The temporary you hired to fill in for an employee who resigned has a great work ethic, works well with the team and it a star contributor.  No need to look anymore since you can bring on the person on a temporary to hire basis!
  8. Overload!  Are your employees ready to jump ship?  Be an employer of choice by getting the help your employees desperately need and hire a temporary employee to get things done.  Your employees will thank you!
  9. Seasonal work?  Hiring a temporary employee to fill in during your peak work periods helps you to be properly staffed during slower work periods.
  10. Too many open recs for hiring staff?  Bring on a temporary recruiter to help fill your positions quickly and efficiently!

We at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources can help place outstanding temporary workers with your company. Fall under one of these? Contact us today!

Interviewing a Financial Analyst? Here Are Some Good Questions to Ask.

As you prepare to interview a financial analyst for your company, you need to prepare some tough questions to ask the candidates. These questions should challenge the candidates and also help them exhibit their knowledge and experience within the industry. The last thing you want to do is hire a candidate who is less than stellar when it comes to the financial world. We will discuss the best questions to ask a financial analyst candidate in this post.

What do you want to learn from this position?

One of the first questions you must ask a candidate is what they want to learn from the position should they be hired. This is an important question because you will be able to gauge the interest of the candidate and what they already know about the industry and the job.

Describe a time when you had to meet a deadline, but failed to do so.

This is more of a request than a question, but it is still very important to discuss with the candidate. You need to discuss this subject so you can find out how honest the candidate is and whether or not they were able to handle the adversity that was presented to them by the missed deadline.

Have you ever made a bad financial decision?

Another important question you should ask every candidate is if they have ever made a bad financial decision during their career. You do not need to base your hiring decision solely on the answer to this question, but it should be taken into consideration. You should follow up by asking the candidate what they learned from the mistake.

What are financial models?

Any good interviewer knows that a financial analyst candidate must be asked this question. If they cannot answer this question immediately and explicitly, then they might not be the right person for the job.

More Important Questions to Ask:

– What is the importance of a monthly sales report?

– How does a company calculate its monthly cash flow?

– What programs do you use to create graphs, charts, and spreadsheets for data?

– How do you monitor industry development?

– How do you handle a financial analysis project?

– What types of profitability models do you use?

-Which profitability model do you think is best and why?

As you can see, when interviewing financial analyst candidates, the questions you ask should be challenging. This will help you gauge their experience within the industry and whether or not they are a strong fit for your company.

The Benefits of Using a Recruiter

Recruiters are becoming very popular these days with people who are looking for a new job, or their first job right out of college. In this post we will discuss the pros of using a recruiter for your job search.

The Benefits of Using a Recruiter

One of the most important pros that job seekers enjoy when using a recruiter is the fact that recruiters know many people and they love to help improve people’s lives by moving them into new career opportunities by performing their job of finding talented people for companies.

In most situations, recruiters will have a direct connection to the hiring manager at a company or organization. This means your resume and cover letter will make it to the top of the list when a trusted recruiter calls to tell them about you.

Another pro is it is an excellent use of your time. When you perform a job search on your own, you might get to talk to only three companies in the span of a week. However, when you work with a recruiter, he or she has access to many companies that potentially might be looking for someone with your job skills that the recruiter can reach over the  same time span.

One of the most popular pros to using a recruiter is that you may go on fewer fruitless interviews. This is because recruiters will be able to whittle down the jobs for which you are qualified. This prevents you from interviewing for jobs that you do not have enough experience for or for which you are overqualified.

One Final Pro of Using a Recruiter

There are some additional plusses when using a recruiter to find a job. Consider that you want to land with a company that can offer you more than just a salary. A recruiter has established many networks around the industry and region in which you work and live. They have connections with a good number of people who may never otherwise hear about your talents. When you work with a professional recruiter, you can tap into this benefit instead of hoping to be in the right place at the right time.

Featured Candidate: A/P, A/R Expert

We at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources pride ourselves on providing our clients with the best job candidates available in accounting and finance. Here is one of our featured candidates, an A/P and A/R expert based near Chicago, IL:

  • Vendor invoicing, coding, posting to GL, created batching, expense reports, vendor coordination, national accounts.  MS Dynamics AX vouching, TSS, Oracle. Customer cash application, Credit cards/PayPal reports. ACH wire transfers. Posting, processing of bills, vendor information. Matching of purchase orders with shipping/receiving documents. Extensive Excel skills, extensive software knowledge.
  • Available for:  Temp to hire or direct hire.
  • Location:  Chicago IL and near suburbs.

Like what you see? This is just one of the great candidates we have to offer. Contact Casey Accounting & Finance Resources today and let us place the right accounting and finance worker with your company!

Featured Candidate: Financial Analyst, Sr Accountant

We at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources pride ourselves on providing our clients with the best job candidates available in accounting and finance. Here is one of our featured candidates, a financial analyst and senior accountant based in Chicago, IL:

  • Demonstrated success in project management, accounting, IT projects related to finance and supply chain, general management, and operations. Fortune 500, mid and small companies, as well as new business startups. Experienced in accounting applications and functions; evaluated and streamlined processes, cost and efficiencies; and detailed business analysis in engagement and project work. Extensive knowledge of SAP and Oracle. Advanced Excel skill sets include pivot tables, v-lookups, and if-statements. Candidate for the CPA exam.
  • Available for:  Temp to hire or direct hire.
  • Location:  Chicago IL 

Like what you see? This is just one of the great candidates we have to offer. Contact Casey Accounting & Finance Resources today and let us place the right accounting and finance worker with your company!