Finding the Right Accounting or Finance Candidate
Interview between John Cotton and John Downes from #CriticalFewActions™ on finding the right accounting or finance candidate.
Transcript
JD: John, how do we actually find the right candidates?
JC: It’s mainly through networking. LinkedIn has been a God send to the recruiter and a lot of people are found on LinkedIn. One tip is to have your LinkedIn profile up to date, be quite verbose about what doing. Just don’t say, Senior Accountant at Pricewaterhouse, explain what you’re doing at Pricewaterhouse, explain that you’re in Audit, explain that you’ve been working on financial services companies, or explain that you’ve been working on retail industry customers or something like that, because different things like that, are the things that people pick up.
JD: LinkedIn is prime hunting territory.
JC: SEEK used to be really good. I actually think SEEK is probably better for, what you would call lower end jobs, the labouring type jobs, or maybe in my side, the bookkeeper.
But professional services, the accountant, the tax accountant and auditor. The candidate is expecting you to come to them. People aren’t looking as hard as what everybody seems to think. The great resignation is not really happening here in Australia.
People are moving, but they need to be coaxed. The reason why people are moving now is that, salaries have increased slightly, and people are saying, “I can move here for another 5, 000 dollars or another 10, 000 dollars”. And then there are some extraordinary stories of, people getting double what they were, previously.
If you put an advertisement in SEEK, you don’t normally get many responses as a recruiter: 4, 5, 10 responses, of which 8 of the 10 are probably from overseas. And they haven’t got permanent residency or a visa that enables them to work here in Australia.
They’re hopeful for sponsorship and you go, well, in this case, they’re not a valid candidate at this point. You feel that you’re wasting 300 dollars every time you advertise on SEEK to a lot of extent.
SEEK is good for a recruitment firm publicity to put you out in the marketplace. Anybody looking for a role goes, Oh, Barnaby recruitment. they do accounting roles, so I’ll go to Barnaby recruitment if I’m looking for a role, but they don’t normally respond that much to Ads on SEEK.
JD: It sounds a bit like print advertising for real estate agents.
If I was looking for, an SME general manager or a senior manager role, would that be more of a LinkedIn type thing or would that…
JC: Yes, it is. It’s LinkedIn, but it’s also connections that you’ve made and maintained over a number of years.
I may be recruiting for a senior manager role. You’ll probably known that person since they were a senior accountant with three, four, five years experience. You know, now they’ve got 8, 9, 10 years experience, and you’ve kept in contact with them for 3, 4, 5 years. They, know, like, and trust you, they’re prepared to have a conversation with you.
JD: The power of your network is absolutely golden. Is that right?
JC: Yes, exactly. You build it over time as a recruiter.
JD: Gotcha.
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