Tips for Filling Accounting or Finance Positions

Filling your accounting or finance positions during The Great Resignation can be challenging. Many employees are leaving their jobs for opportunities that better align with their goals, values, and interests.

Fortunately, understanding what candidates are looking for in accounting or finance positions helps guide your approach to hiring. These suggestions can help.

Implement these tips for filling accounting or finance positions.

Be Involved in the Entire Hiring Process

Clarify exactly what you are looking for in a candidate. This provides a foundation on which other members of your hiring team can help source candidates.

For instance, assume you need to hire an accounting clerk. You might develop a list of the required and preferred skills as a guide for your hiring team.

Your list of required skills for an accounting clerk might include:

  • Knowledge of basic finance, accounting, and bookkeeping principles
  • Proficiency in mathematics
  • Ability to learn new technologies
  • Time management skills
  • Attention to detail

Your list of preferred skills for an accounting clerk might include:

  • Formal accounting training
  • Experience in administrative or accounting roles
  • Proficiency with budgeting and bookkeeping software
  • Collaborative work style
  • Strong communication skills

Stating exactly what you are looking for helps your hiring team properly source active and passive candidates. Narrowing down your pool of qualified candidates saves time when reviewing resumes and deciding whom to contact for interviews.

Build Candidate Relationships

Get to know active and passive candidates on a personal level. This increases their interest in filling your accounting and finance positions.

Learn all you can about a candidate’s education, skills, experience, goals, and interests. Find out what motivates them to work, what they like most and least about their jobs, and what attracts them to an employer.

Focus on how one of your opportunities fits with the candidate’s background. Emphasize what the candidate would gain by coming to work for you.

Focusing on your candidates’ wants and needs encourages them to want to work for you. This increases your likelihood of adding top talent to your team.

Ask Relevant Interview Questions

Pay attention to a candidate’s hard and soft skills and behavioral intelligence during an interview. For instance, if you need to hire an accounting clerk, you might ask:

How do you maintain quality control with your work?

Candidates should thoroughly check their work to ensure accuracy. Listen for cross-checking or strategies for quality control and attention to detail. Minimizing errors saves time and money.

How do you manage to work under tight deadlines?

Candidates should be able to juggle multiple projects and manage workflows while under pressure. They must work efficiently, delegate tasks, and request support when needed. Listen for a positive attitude while facing challenges, the ability to prioritize work, and effective time management skills.

How do you present financial data to nonfinancial professionals?

Candidates should feel comfortable sharing financial information in a calm, effective manner. Their audience should be able to understand and apply the information to their situation.

Need Help Filling Accounting or Finance Positions?

Being involved in the entire hiring process and building candidate relationships help source qualified candidates and encourage them to apply to your accounting or finance positions. Asking relevant interview questions lets you find the best candidates to add to your team.

For additional help filling your accounting or finance positions, partner with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Find out more today.

Chicago-Based Staffing Firm Casey Accounting & Finance Resources Wins Two ClearlyRated 2023 Best Of Staffing® Awards

 

The company received both the Talent Satisfaction and Client Satisfaction awards for service excellence

SCHAUMBURG, Illinois – Feb. 7, 2023 – Casey Accounting & Finance Resources (www.caseyresources.com), an industry leader in the recruitment of Accounting & Finance Professionals for direct hire and contract placements, announced they have earned ClearlyRated’s Best of Staffing® Client Satisfaction Award for providing superior service to their job candidates for nine years in a row. The company also received ClearlyRated’s Best of Staffing® Talent Satisfaction Diamond Award. Presented in partnership with presenting sponsor Indeed and gold sponsor Talent.com, ClearlyRated’s Best of Staffing® Award winners have proven to be industry leaders in service quality based entirely on ratings provided by their clients. On average, clients of winning agencies are twice as likely to be completely satisfied with the services provided compared to those working with non-winning agencies. Clients rated the company with 4.9/5 stars for service excellence and placed candidates rated the company with 4.7/5 stars for service excellence. This is the eighth consecutive year the company has won the Talent Satisfaction award and the ninth year to win the Client Satisfaction award.

Focused on helping companies find the right people for their job openings, Casey Accounting and Finance Resources received satisfaction scores of 9 or 10 out of 10 from 93.8% of their clients, significantly higher than the industry’s average of 46%. The company received satisfaction scores of 9 or 10 out of 10 from 64.7% of their placed job candidates, significantly higher than the industry’s average of 45%. The company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 93.8% for client satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 58.8% for talent satisfaction far exceeds the industry’s average of 31% for client satisfaction and 19% for talent satisfaction.

The company is proud of the trust and loyalty its customers and associates have in the Casey team to be able to earn this distinction as a leader in service excellence for nine (client) and eight (talent) consecutive years. Best of Staffing recognition validates our hard work delivering high-quality, relationship-building workforce management solutions for its clients and job seekers. The team is grateful that its culture of customer satisfaction is appreciated by all those the company serves and that they meet and exceed expectations daily.

Casey Accounting and Finance Resources was acquired by Cornerstone Staffing Solutions, one of the largest staffing firms in America, in December 2017 and operates as an independent division of Cornerstone. Altogether the Cornerstone Staffing Solutions family of companies have won 37 ClearlyRated Best of Staffing Awards.

“I am pleased to introduce the 2023 Best of Staffing winners alongside their validated service ratings on ClearlyRated.com,” said ClearlyRated’s CEO, Eric Gregg. “These firms have demonstrated a remarkable commitment to delivering amazing experiences, despite another year of upheaval and macroeconomic uncertainty. Hats off to these service leaders – it’s truly an honor to recognize and celebrate their achievements.”

#staffing #recruiting #bestofstaffing #bestofthebest #winners #customersatisfaction

 

Supporting Your Employees’ Goals in 2023

Supporting your employees’ goals in 2023 is more essential than ever. Employees are finding new employers with better opportunities at a rapid pace. As a result, employee retention during The Great Resignation is extremely important.

How you support your employees in reaching their goals impacts whether you are an employer of choice. This affects your ability to attract and retain talent. The following ideas can help.

Implement these suggestions to support your employees’ goals in 2023.

Prioritize Employee Mental Health

Most employees continue to experience mental health challenges that began during the pandemic. Increasing exposure to stress can lead to anxiety, depression, and burnout. These factors impact employee engagement, productivity, and performance. They also affect job satisfaction, employee morale, and retention rates.

You can help your employees reach their goals for positive mental health by providing additional support for overall wellness:

  • Maintain an open-door policy for your employees to privately talk with you about their personal and professional challenges. Emphasize that these discussions are free from judgment or consequences.
  • Encourage your employees to get enough sleep each night. This helps maintain emotional resilience and performance throughout the workday.
  • Remind your employees to use all of their paid time off each year. They need time away from work to rest and rejuvenate.

Encourage Employees’ Soft Skill Development  

Many employees believe their soft skills were impacted by the social isolation caused by the coronavirus. This is especially true for Gen Z, whose educational and career goals were difficult to achieve during social distancing and lockdowns.

Many members of Gen Z say their education did not effectively prepare them to enter the workforce. They missed out on developing the soft skills that are essential for career success. This includes networking, speaking to groups, and negotiating.

Employees from other generations experienced a lapse in their soft skills due to working remotely. The lack of in-person interaction significantly increased stress, exhaustion, and burnout.

You can support your employees’ goal of soft skill development by providing online skills training courses and opportunities to implement their learning. You also can match your employees with mentors to model and develop the soft skills required to advance within your organization. Plus, you can assign group projects that require collaboration among teammates.

Need Additional Guidance for Supporting Your Employees’ Goals?

Prioritizing employee mental health and encouraging soft skill development help support your employees’ goals in 2023. These actions increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention. They also lower your hiring, onboarding, and training costs.

For further advice on supporting your employees’ goals, get in touch with Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Connect with us today.

Are You Hiring for Culture Fit or Culture Add?

It’s still a struggle to find qualified candidates. We’ve talked about refining your long-standing hiring habits to improve finding qualified and quality candidates to fill your open positions. One area that seems to be getting a bit of airtime is “culture fit.” Oftentimes, we look for candidates that “fit the mold” of current employees – you know – finding candidates whose working preferences and values match the company. What may be happening inadvertently is an unconscious bias when you hire for culture fit. Some experts agree that you might want to consider hiring for “culture add” to not only widen your candidate pool but also improve the creativity, diversity, and thought-provoking dialogs in your department and organization.

Why Culture Fit Falls Short of Being Fair

According to Gallup, many assumptions can be made when hiring for culture fit:

  • It assumes the hiring decision-maker understands and role models organizational values, beliefs, and expected behaviors. Decision makers often come with their own values and beliefs that may not align with the organization’s, further creating hiring bias.
  • It assumes the decision-maker can make a fair, informed selection decision.
  • It assumes that an organization has a level of maturity in its culture journey.

Typically, if the candidate doesn’t fit the culture, they aren’t hired. You may be escorting a candidate who could be a great employee right out the door because of culture-fit hiring practices.

What is Culture Add?

Gallup defines culture add as “a fresh spin on the concept of culture fit. Rather than making hiring decisions that create a homogenous, familiar culture, culture add promotes hiring decisions that focus on the candidates’ unique and beneficial attributes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. It is what they bring to your organization from their distinct perspective and experiences.”

What’s the upshot of hiring for culture add? Gallup explains it like this. If the workforce is shrinking, the fundamental need is for organizations to recognize what they are hiring for and why it matters. The right hiring practices examine not only cultural needs, value systems, and technical competence but also factor in role-specific talent attributes and behaviors for high performance.

In today’s marketplace conditions, 85% of currently employed U.S. workers say they are considering leaving their jobs in the next six months, according to LaSalle Network. U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said in an interview at the CNBC Work Summit that he expects job growth should continue into 2023.  However, the demographic data on the U.S. working-age population is concerning, with baby boomer retirements expected to accelerate in the years ahead, compounded by a peak being reached in high school graduates by 2025, limiting both the total size of the next-generation labor pool and the transfer of knowledge between the generations of workers.

The thing to pay attention to here is recruiting and retention. If managers and employees are disengaged, and the statistics hold true, finding and keeping good employees will continue to be a challenge.

Does Culture Add Practices Even Make a Difference With Remote and Hybrid Work?

Some may argue that remote/hybrid work environments destroy a company’s culture. That’s not necessarily true. There’s a common belief that when employees are physically together, they develop important social bonds that simply can’t be replaced by email, Zoom, and Slack.

In fact, 23% of U.S. hybrid workers strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization. Only 20% of all employees strongly agree they feel connected to their organization’s culture.[1]

And leaders have good reason to care. Employees who strongly agree that they feel connected to their culture are:

  • 3.7x as likely to be engaged at work
  • 5.2x as likely to recommend their organization as a great place to work
  • 37% more likely to be thriving
  • 68% less likely to feel burned out at work always or very often
  • 55% less likely to be looking for a job[2]

Gallup’s data shows us that being in the office never equaled a great culture. There are many ways to create connectedness within teams and across companies. Here are some best practices for managing remote teams.

With remote and hybrid work being the preferred option for many employees whose job allows this option, a solution of culture add or a revision of culture fit may still make it possible to add employees who bring value that is lacking in the organization.

We Can Help

Be less concerned about culture fit and more interested in adjusting hiring practices to align with employee talents, competence, and aspirations. Choose that employee who helps move the organization forward. Also, continue to watch for managers and staff who are disengaged and talk to them about the value they bring to your organization.

Let’s discuss the challenges you’re facing. Contact Casey Accounting & Finance Resources today.

 

[1] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/401576/dont-confuse-office-culture.aspx?utm_source=workplace&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gallup_at_work_newsletter_send_2_october_10182022&utm_term=newsletter&utm_content=a_new_chapter_cta_1

[2] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/401576/dont-confuse-office-culture.aspx?utm_source=workplace&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gallup_at_work_newsletter_send_2_october_10182022&utm_term=newsletter&utm_content=a_new_chapter_cta_1