In a year that forced changes in nearly all of accounting firms’ day-to-day operations, hiring and onboarding processes were among the most impacted. The usually personal and hands-on experience of finding, engaging and acclimating new talent was transformed into a virtual one nearly overnight, and as they did with so many other things, firms had to adapt on the fly.
Even in normal times, firms of all sizes often have an urgent need to bring aboard fresh talent, and while the COVID-19 pandemic drastically complicates matters, firms are still seeking out job candidates.
“We are now seeing activity pick up in many areas and have seen demand for accounting professionals relatively consistently even with the uncertainty of the pandemic,” said Michael Steinitz, senior executive director of accounting staffing agency Accountemps. “Many companies were able to quickly and almost seamlessly move operations to remote and keep their accounting and finance teams and functions operating efficiently.”
In some ways, the move to remote work may actually have boosted firms’ abilities to reach candidates.
“When the employer stops caring where the staff works, and begins to hire remote, our clients see large upticks in resumes for those remote positions — about eight times more than for location-specific jobs,” said Jeff Phillips, co-founder of recruiting platform Accountingfly.
“So many of our clients started hiring fully remote,” continued Phillips, who is also CEO of accounting and business consulting services provider Padgett Business Services. “Firms that opened up to fully remote work like this had an easier time hiring — they were talking to a larger amount of high-quality applicants and filling open roles faster.”
For some firms, traditional recruiting methods were still able to work to their advantage.
“LinkedIn provided most of our candidates last year,” said Sarah Taylor, recruiting director at Austin, Texas- based Maxwell Locke & Ritter, which ranked No. 2 among midsized firms onAccounting Today’s 2020 list of the Best Firms to Work For. “Forty-one percent of our total hires came from LinkedIn’s sponsored job postings and/or the LinkedIn Recruiter platform. After LinkedIn, our internship program was our next significant source for new hires in 2020. We hired five interns for full-time roles, which is very unusual for our firm’s experienced-hire model. Prior to this year, we had only transitioned a handful of interns to full-time staff immediately after graduation.”
Believe it or not, campus recruiting still brought in candidates for some firms last year — albeit there, too, the effort was much more digital.
“Our recruiting teams had to work extra hard to … be more resourceful in how they worked with potential candidates,” said Katrina Thompson, managing director of human resources at Top 20 Firm Dixon Hughes Goodman. “On the campus recruiting side, we pivoted our efforts to be completely virtual. … We actually experienced higher conversion rates of our summer 2020 interns, and we think that was largely due to how we were able to successfully pivot.”
“We embraced the virtual world, hosting virtual career fairs and events, and utilized innovative platforms to reach candidates,” Thompson continued. “These tactics have been effective for both our campus efforts and experienced hire efforts.”
Welcome aboard (kind of)
Once that new hire has been found, a whole new challenge emerges in introducing and acclimating them to a team that may be spread out over a city, state, or even the whole country. As the vast majority of firms spent 2020 in a work-from-home capacity, how did firm leaders reach out and successfully welcome new employees into the fold?
“One of the biggest challenges we faced across campus and experienced-hire onboarding was how to make new hires feel connected and engaged with the firm and their new colleagues,” said Thompson. “We were able to integrate a mix of games, questions and open discussion to create the level of connection and engagement we were used to in-person.”
“Remote staff can feel isolated, and starting new hires remotely can miss a lot of the socialization that normally occurs,” added Phillips. “We recommend having existing staff reach out to new hires before they start to welcome them to the team … hosting welcome meetings over Zoom to introduce the new hire to the team, and assigning a mentor/buddy to make sure the new hire knows the team and gets what they need.”
It may come as no surprise that the practices that found themselves well-prepared for 2020 are those that had embraced a more tech-forward approach prior to the pandemic.
“We achieved our goal of providing an experience similar to our in-person onboarding experience for new hires with only minor changes,” said Taylor. “Prior to the pandemic, we transitioned to virtual onboarding sessions for our general firm orientation, so we were well-positioned to continue with virtual experienced-hire onboarding. Our technology team quickly pivoted to provide equipment at home and assist with virtual setups. For our campus hires, we created smaller cohorts, so they were all able to feel connected to one another.”
“The virtual environment [further] prompted us to upgrade our onboarding experience,” she added. “We recorded our training sessions and now have an online training library which gives new hires a resource to refer to as they transition to our team.”
Being ahead of the game is ideal, but even if firms have to play catch-up in terms of virtual hiring and onboarding, it might not be as difficult or time-consuming as they may think.
“It’s been incredible how quickly organizations have shifted strategies to account for remote hiring and onboarding,” said Accountemps’ Steinitz. “We’ve seen companies adapt quickly to create playbooks and onboard new hires virtually, and it’s been very successful.”
Casting a wider net
Firms will also have to reckon with the idea of what a post-pandemic business could and should be. Having had a taste of remote work, some staff may find they like their new work situations better.
Phillips cited a survey by online job platform LiveCareer that found 29 percent of working professionals would quit their jobs if they couldn’t continue to work remotely.
“It’s my opinion that even after we fully recover, high-performing staff will demand to spend more, or all, of their time working from home,” said Phillips. “This change could be a challenge for CPA firms looking to return everyone with the office.”
“Hire virtual staff anywhere [across the country] for permanent and seasonal positions,” Phillips advised. “You will cut your time and cost to fill critical roles in half.”
And despite a wounded economy and troubling employment numbers, hiring is indeed marching on. Steinitz pointed to a recent Robert Half survey of more than 4,000 managers that found that 51 percent of companies still plan to expand their teams in 2021, adding that “how [firms] work may be different, but the volume of work continues.”
“Companies that were previously averse to offering flexibility and remote work for employees will now be open to it permanently,” said Steinitz. “This will be an expectation of workers moving forward, and businesses have shifted mindsets. Organizations are increasingly adopting a remote-first approach, and they’re realizing the value of recruiting outside their city.”
“Employers who accelerate the hiring process — by having fewer rounds of interviews or fewer interviewers, for example — put themselves ahead of the competition,” Steinitz added. “Research compensation trends regularly and be prepared to come to the table with a competitive offer, and increase your odds of attracting top talent by offering fully remote job opportunities and expanding your candidate search geographically.”
What’s next?
While the last year and a half has brought much undeniable hardship, there has been some silver lining in embracing new ways of hiring, including expanded ideas about how firms can hire, who they hire, and where they can hire.
“After the pandemic forced us to shift all interviews to the virtual setting, our team discovered that we can hire fantastic people without meeting them in person, and the virtual interview experience is just as positive, engaging and fun as it is in the office,” said Taylor. “As a firm that engages with significant out-of-area candidates, shifting to virtual interviews has been extremely beneficial; we have improved the candidate experience and made our recruitment processes more time- and cost-efficient.”
“I am 100 percent sure things will permanently change post-pandemic,” said Thompson. “The biggest ‘happy accident’ of this entire pandemic was observing how resilient and resourceful people are. … From a recruiting perspective, we learned how much we could do virtually that we previously did not think was possible; it actually removed some barriers and allowed us to be more places and reach more students. I do believe these will be permanent, and positive, changes.”
“As a profession, we have been talking about ‘the future of work’ for a while,” added Thompson. “That ‘future’ arrived sooner than we expected, due in part to technology advances and the intentionality we had to have with leading people and connecting.”
