What Hiring Managers Want - Business Services

Business Services, What Hiring Managers Want.

Some of the most common questions we get are around what hiring managers are looking for.

Over the past 10 years, I would have met 100’s of hiring managers and 1000’s of people working within people working within accounting and finance.

For the purpose of this I’m only going to discuss business services however the following applies to most service lines.

Within business services you should be assessing your current job on the following criteria:

• Size of clients;

• Staff management;

• Client management;

• Size of firm.

Size of Clients

When it comes to your clients, size and the type of clients you are working on matter for a few reasons, including:

Technical skill development - complexity of accounting and tax issues;

Stakeholder management - The type of stakeholders you need to influence;

Ability to influence - Exposure to advisory projects;

Within business services, the vast majority of people will be working on businesses 2-10M with a few businesses a little larger than that.

Part of the reason getting experience working on larger clients is important is:

• The larger the clients, the more likely you are to be doing business advisory work;

• The vast majority of business services teams work on 2-10M businesses so if you are not doing that, it will just mean fewer accounting firms will be interested in your experience.

Staff Management

By the time you are completing your CA staff management experience is essential if you want to secure a Supervisor position or above.

If you have completed your CA and you aren’t getting some staff management experience, be it review of work, or management of work flows, then moving to a larger firm or commerce if going to be tough.

There are a couple of reasons for this, however a big one is simply that CA qualified accountants will be earning circa 90-110K and if you are earning that kind of money then businesses expect that you can manage junior staff.

Client Management

Like staff management, to earn above a certain salary, the expectation is that you are going to be capable of managing client relationships.

There are several reasons for this, least of all how work flows to you.

To use an example, if your manager comes to you with a parcel of work, they have made the decision on what you are capable of doing, it is reactive.

Working directly with a client gives you have the opportunity to make a judgement on what you can do and take questions to your manager, allowing you to be proactive.

In addition, the accounting industry is moving away from compliance and towards advisory.

If you aren’t developing the softer skills of actually managing the relationship with a client, consulting with them, it will limit your ability to secure a position of Senior Accountant or above and it will make moving to commerce very challenging.

Size of Firm

Junior candidates seem to be obsessed with the size of firm that they work for and to a point it does matter.

The reality is that there are a lot of excellent 3-5 partner firms with 15-30 staff and there are lots of average ones.

There is an argument that 20-100 staff accounting firms are going to be better set up for training, there can be a positive social element about working at firms of that size and you will have more people at a similar experience level to yourself.

That being said, there are some excellent small firms.

If you are working at a smaller firm and getting all the other experience:

• Large clients,

• Advisory work;

• Managing staff and

• Managing clients;

Then the size of firm you are working for is not so important.

In Closing

If you have 3-5 years’ experience and are currently completing / have recently completed your CA you will never be in higher demand then you are today.

Once you have 3 years + experience the expectation is that you have managed staff and client relationships and will be able to provide advice on complicated tax structures.

The longer you stay in a role where you are not getting staff and client management experience, the harder it is going to be for you to change firms in the future.