Recruit, retain, repeat: Top tips for talent

June 30, 2023 3:14 PM

Magnet for staff or employees concept art — Business Lead And Customer Generation Magnet Pulling Figures

It's not getting any easier to find and keep talent in accounting firms (as our new feature story shows) and that means leaders in the profession need to stay flexible and adapt to the latest best practices and market trends as they arise.

Below are a double-handful of the most important strategies and approaches firms need to take if they're hoping to remain competitive in the white-hot market for staff.

(For more individual tips on recruiting and retention, see "20 Days to a Better Firm.")

Accentuate the positive

stokkete - Fotolia

Accountants at all levels need to stop telling war stories to potential recruits. Veterans of the profession take a certain pride in having made it through all those crazy tax seasons, or in the number of times they failed the CPA exam before ultimately passing, but it's not making accounting sound attractive to high school and college students and interns.

This will be particularly important as firms reach out to younger and younger groups of potential accountants, as CLAand UHY have recently done.

Look in other pools

Photographer: Andrey Popov/Andrey Popov - Fotolia

Looking for high school students to help fill the pipeline is one angle — but firms can also look beyond the traditional pool of accounting students to help fill positions. An extraordinary amount of the work done at the average firm doesn't require a CPA license, or even traditional accounting skills. A theater or psychology major might be better at client relations; someone with project management training might be better at managing workflow; people with industry expertise might offer unique perspectives in a niche advisory service.

(And while we're here, it's worth remembering that not every job needs to be done by an employee — offshoring and outsourcing are currently enjoying a boom — or even by a human being ... .)

Make it a team effort

Business team working together in a skyscraper

Everyone has a role to play in recruiting, starting with serving as positive ambassadors — whether literally, with partners going to job fairs or speaking at schools, or just in general, putting the best face on your firm to everyone you meet. The marketing team should be deeply involved in promoting the firm to potential job candidates with sophisticated, widespread messaging that differentiates you from all your peers, and whoever handles the firm's social media should be making sure it is represented wherever young job-seekers are looking this week. And of course, referrals bonuses can incentivize everyone to get the word out.

Always be interviewing

This may be easier for larger firms, but HR experts often recommend bringing in job candidates for interviews even when you don't have specific job openings. Top talent isn't always available at the exact same moment that someone leaves your firm, and turnover rates are such that you're likely to have opening soon anyway!

Find your ‘Wow’

With so many people competing for the same candidates, firms need to have what Jennifer Wilson of ConvergenceCoaching calls the "wow" factor — one or perhaps two characteristics that really differentiate them from all the other firms out there.

Wilson threw out some examples of genuine differentiators:

How about not tracking time (though this won't be a differentiator for long, as more firms are forced away from the billable hour)?
Or being deeply committed to alternative career paths that are customized for each employee?
Or guaranteeing that staff will never work overtime?
Or offering "Summers off" for the staff you need for tax season, but don't have as much work for after April 15?

Hybrid vigor

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

A recent Deloitte survey found that Gen Z and millennials overwhelmingly prefer hybrid work environments to either fully remote or fully in-office work. That means they can work at the office, or at home, or anywhere else, for that matter — whatever makes sense for their circumstances. The point, it turns out, is that flexibility and choice are what matter, and more and more job candidates are making that a must-have.

Cultivate a sense of purpose

Rising generations in the workforce are particularly interested in finding meaning in doing work that makes a difference. Fortunately, accounting firms are in a perfect position to offer meaningful experiences helping clients reach their personal or business goals, working with nonprofit organizations, enabling or attesting to environmental, social and governance goals, and much more — but they need to highlight that when they're out recruiting. (For more, see Sandra Wiley's article, "

"Making work meaningful."

)

Meet the table stakes

There are a number of standard benefits and retention tools that you more or less can't do without:

Offering salaries that are market-level or higher;
Serious policies around work-life balance;
"Dress for your day" policies;
Lots and lots of free food, particularly during busy season;
Wellness programs (for both physical and mental health); and,
Opportunities to socialize with colleagues and family members (paying particular attention to make sure remote employees don't feel excluded).

Keep up with the latest trends

In the war for talent, there's a perpetual arms race around developing new benefits to stand out from the crowd. One year it may be offering standing desks, another year it could be bringing in puppies during busy season, and the year after that it could be giving staff a lump sum that they can apply to one of a wide range of approved benefits.

Some of the more recent trends include:

Expanded parental leave;
Daily reading periods, where everyone at the firm spends 15 minutes at the start of their day from a selection of meaningful books or articles;
Offering pet insurance; and,
Offering sabbaticals of anywhere from one to three months for staff who've been with the firm for a long period of time (usually at least five years).

Look after their careers

Different career paths to advancement concept

Sergey Nivens - stock.adobe.com

Taking a deep interest in staff members' careers — including helping them figure out the path that's right for them, even if it leads away from your firm — is a key strategy. Helping an employee discover out their aptitudes, supporting them in pursuing their CPA license, offering individualized training to build their skill sets, mentoring them along the way, and even carving out entirely new career paths for them are all ways to help keep staff on board for longer.

Talk to them

media reporter with microphone making journalist interview for news

Kadmy - stock.adobe.com

One of the most common attributes of firms with low turnover is that they are regularly communicating with staff in a wide variety of ways. Their managing partners post blogs about the state of the firm or hold regular meetings with small groups of employees; their HR teams conduct "stay" interviews with talent they're particularly eager to keep around; the partners share details about the firm's strategy and position in town hall meetings and other regular updates; and they routinely survey staff about how they're feeling, what's working for them and what isn't, and what matters most to them — and then they act on that information.