Are You Getting Noticed? How to Stand Out in Your Job Search

Landing a job interview requires more than just a top-notch cover letter and resume. Your skills, experience, and qualifications likely align with other in-demand candidates.

This is why you need to add something that makes you stand out to hiring managers. They want to see how your contributions and results differ from other candidates’ contributions and results. Showing the unique value, you can offer a company increases your odds of being contacted for an interview.

Implement these tips to help secure your next accounting and finance interview.

Include a Pain Point Letter with Your Resume

Rather than a cover letter, submit with your resume a letter discussing a company pain point you noticed. Include a challenge the organization is facing and how you would solve it if you were hired. This shows you understand the company and are able to add value to it. Hiring managers appreciate candidates who are proactive problem-solvers.

Share Your Professional Portfolio

Create an online portfolio of your professional qualifications and work examples to submit with your resume. This may include a copy of your resume, transcripts, reference letters, or copies of your licenses or certifications. You also may want to add financial statements, variance reports, or financial analyses you created. Make sure your work examples tie in with the highlighted items from previous job postings you applied to. Change the numbers to avoid sharing confidential information.

Consider using information specific to the company you’re interviewing with to create financial documents. For instance, if the business is publicly traded, analyze the online financial statements to create different financial ratios and analyses. Then, use the information to prepare recommendations for the company. This may include paying down debt, reducing inventory, or increasing collection efforts. This shows proactive investment in the company’s success.

Secure an Employee Referral

Find out whether you know an employee at the company you want to work for. If you do, talk with them about referring you to the hiring manager. Include how your skills, experience, and qualifications make you well-suited for the role. Provide your resume as well. You’re more likely to land an interview with a referral than without one.

Partner with a Recruiter

Listing your skills, experience, and qualifications in your cover letter and resume likely isn’t enough to land an interview. You need to show how you stand out from the other candidates and can provide unique value to the organization. Submitting a pain point letter with your resume, sharing your online portfolio, or securing an employee referral can help.

You also can partner with a recruiter from Casey Accounting & Finance Resources to increase your odds of landing an interview. Contact a recruiter or submit your resume today.

3 Old-School Ways That Still Yield Recruiting Results

As recruiters, we utilize many recruiting sources to match the right candidate to our clients’ job order requests. Even though the economy is improving and more people are going back to work, we can have difficulty in finding the best candidate. With our years of experience, we have used a number of tactics to break through recruiting challenges. While job boards are helpful, we thought we would share some of the older methods that are still very effective.

Discover three old-school methods that still generate strong candidates.

Build Relationships

Create and expand on your connections. The more people in your sphere of influence, the more folks you can seek out when you are recruiting for your next open position.

Ask for Referrals

Our current clients are a top source for future clients and job orders. We ask for referrals from the clients who trust us to exceed their expectations. We often find commonalities with the referrals who may operate in the same industry, are the same size or need similar roles filled. You can use your existing professional relationships to help with candidate referrals.

Monitor Your Ratios

Your recruiting primary ratio shows how many candidate presentations you must give to obtain a quality candidate. Your goal should be no higher than 3:1. You may want to invest time in researching and planning to find the types of candidates you need. Additionally, match your primary ratio of quality candidates to send-outs. The lower the ratio, the better you are at matching what your hiring managers are looking for with qualified candidates. Pay attention to the job requirements, a fit to your company culture, and hiring goals and objectives to keep this ratio at 2:1 or better.

Work with a Staffing Leader

Enhancing client relationships and asking for referrals are two ways to widen the pool of potential candidates. Paying attention to your ratios and working to improve them also is effective.

When you need your accounting and finance job orders filled, reach out to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. We ranked on the Forbes 2020 top 250 Best Professional Recruiting Firms in America. Learn more about our services today.