Finance recruitment is a growing and prosperous industry and the process of hiring skilled financial workers that are a good fit for your institution or company has changed a great deal over the years. In the past, most accountants and financiers were pencil pushers who mostly performed data entry jobs and managed company finances. Modern candidates—most Millennials—are more interested in learning the ins and outs of the industry and honing their skills in a variety of facets. To guarantee that you’re hiring the right candidates for your company, you need to make sure that their professional values are directly aligned with the needs of your company.

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Here are a few useful tips to help you find accounting candidates that are a good fit for your company and will help propel the success of your business into the future.

Create a Strong Employer Brand

When it comes to qualified finance staffing, it’s important to always keep in mind the fact that your prospective candidates are vetting your company just as much as you’re vetting them. It’s a two-way street, which means they’re just as interested in finding out what you have to offer them as you are in figuring out how they serve to benefit your overall business. To attract the appropriate applicants to work for your company, you need to create a clear, concise, and palatable professional image that showcases everything your company stands for and what you have to offer to potential employees.

Leverage Social Media

Plain and simple, you need to make sure your brand has a strong and impenetrable online presence. Your web site needs to be completely up-to-date at all times and your social media posts should be relevant and on-point. These days, any company that doesn’t have a strong online presence is behind the times and will easily be forgotten. It’s a proven fact that most candidates who are actively seeking new jobs thoroughly examine company web sites, read online reviews, and even scroll through a company’s social media accounts to see how well they communicate with their customers. Even candidates who aren’t actively seeking new positions will always make it a point to browse through a company’s web site and social media accounts to get a feel for what they’re all about. If they happen to like what they see, then there’s a greater chance that they’ll consider working for those companies.

Make Diversity a Priority

Candidates need to be able to directly envision themselves working for your company and allowing them to witness diversity in your workforce gives them a firsthand demonstration of this. Diversity means so much more than hiring candidates of different ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, genders, and economic dispositions (although those factors are all included); it also means hiring employees that showcase a wide variety of necessary skill sets within the growing financial field.

These days, diversity in recruitment means looking for candidates that are able to seamlessly adapt to different situations that they may be faced with on the job. IT skills and working with CRM software and its derivatives is a huge asset in the financial industry. This was a skill that wasn’t necessary to have decades ago, but is now integral to any accounting role.

Evaluate Soft Skills

Many employers underestimate the value of soft skills in their employees. Soft skills are a combination of personal, interpersonal, and social skills that most people naturally possess. No amount of technical training, education, or on-the-job training can account for the type and amount of soft skills a person develops. These are skills that either naturally exist or must be personally honed over a long period of time. Some people have these skills instilled in them naturally, whereas others must learn to cultivate them throughout their lives.

Either way, soft skills such as strong communication abilities, having a positive attitude, social intelligence, and strong problem solving acumen among many others is an indisputable advantage for any business that involves providing top-of-the-line customer service, which accounting does.

Always Consider Employee Referrals

Overlooking employee referrals is a major mistake that a lot of employers tend to make throughout the accounts hiring process. A candidate may look excellent on paper, but you won’t actually know how good of a fit they are for your company until they start the job. Asking for referrals and consulting with their past employers will help you get a good and accurate sense of how much of their resume is based on fact and fiction.

Showcase Your Company Culture

By openly demonstrating what your company culture is like, you’re essentially providing potential candidates with a clear vision of what it’s like to work for your company. As mentioned, candidates are scoping out your company as much as your company is vetting them and this means they need the proper tools to truly envision what a long-term job working for your company actually looks like. Candidates who are able to picture themselves working for your company for a long time are more likely to work hard to retain their position and help propel the success of your business because they have a personal stake in it.

Highlight Opportunities for Growth

Another important factor most candidates look for when applying to new jobs is the opportunity for upward mobility. After all, nobody wants to feel like they’re stuck in a dead-end job. Therefore, you need to prove to your most desirable candidates that they’ll be presented with opportunities to climb the corporate ladder with your company and that there will always be ample opportunities to improve their work-related skills and make more money down the line.

Let the Experts at Resolve Recruit Inc. Do the Hiring

Mississauga-based Resolve Recruit Inc. has been matching highly qualified accounting candidates with their ideal jobs for well over 20 years. We not only understand what financial institutions are looking for in their employees, but we also take the time to understand what each candidate hopes to get out of their growing career in the financial industry. To learn more about our recruitment methods and how we can help you find the right company for your career endeavours, contact us today!