Accounting and Finance Recruiting: Hiring trends in 2021

If you want to recruit accounting and finance professionals, you need to step with your hiring game. You have to stay up to date with the latest accounting and finance recruiting trends and leverage new recruiting technologies and strategies.

What is accounting and finance recruiting?

The accounting and finance sector is concerned with companies and professionals who provide financial services.

Accounting professionals are responsible for recording, analyzing, summarizing, and interpreting financial information.

Unlike accounting professionals, finance professionals are usually the ones responsible for future planning. They are often the ones that do financial forecasts and budget planning.

Accounting and finance recruiting is a term used for finding and hiring the right job candidate s in the accounting and finance industry sector.

In other words, if you need to hire a financial manager, insurance agent, accountant, business analyst or fill in a similar job within the accounting and finance sector, this article is for you.

Challenges in accounting and finance recruiting

The accounting and finance sector has been going through some major changes lately.

If you want to be successful in recruiting accounting and finance professionals, you have to stay up to date on accounting and finance employment trends and challenges.

Here are the 3 key challenges in accounting and finance recruiting:

Accounting and finance recruiting challenge #1: The talent shortage

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the unemployment rate for the accounting and financial sector at 2.2%. This is below the overall national unemployment rate of 4.9 percent. In addition, employment of accountants and auditors is projected to grow 11 % from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations. The result is a high demand for accounting professionals.

According to a recent survey by Accounting Today, accounting talent is increasingly hard to find and even more difficult to keep. Robert Half research reports that 65% of Chief Financial Officers say it’s challenging for them to find candidates. According to recruitment consultants Hays, 76% of accountancy and finance employers said their top challenge is a shortage of suitable applicants.

Accounting and finance recruiting challenge #2: Attracting candidates with the right skill set

Advances in technology are changing the accounting and financial job positions and their requirements. As a result, companies are requiring accounting and financial candidates who can do more than just crunch numbers. They want people with diverse business and technology experience and good people skills in order to have the ability to change and evolve with the times.

Research by recruitment firm Robert Half has indicated that 89% of chief financial officers in Australia struggle to find skilled finance staff, primarily due to a lack of professionals with the required niche and technical skills.

Accounting and finance recruiting challenge #3: Attracting millennial employees

The salient challenge in accounting and finance recruiting is attracting younger members of the workforce.

A recent survey by the Institute of Management Accountants found that 62% of senior finance professionals believe that recruiting millennials is the biggest challenge for their business!

According to Upskilled report, accounting and financial professionals under 25 years make up for only 8% of total accounting and finance employees!

How to tackle the biggest challenges in accounting and finance recruiting?

To tackle the 3 key challenges in retail accounting and finance, HR professionals and recruiters need to:

1. Build an attractive employer brand
2. Apply recruitment marketing tactics
3. Leverage employee referrals

Tips for recruiting accounting and finance professionals

Recruiting the right people for the accounting and finance industry can be a challenging task. However, if you leverage the latest innovations in accounting and finance recruiting, you can recruit accounting and finance professionals much easier and faster.

Here are the best accounting and finance recruiting tips that will help you effectively recruit accounting and finance professionals:

Accounting and finance recruiting tip #1: Write precise job descriptions

Start by writing job descriptions that attract the right type of candidates for the accounting and finance positions you need to fill. Make sure you highlight the technical and niche skills and experience you are looking for in your ideal accounting and finance employees!

To help you save time, we created accounting and finance job description templates. Feel free to use them and customize them to fit your own needs!

Browse through accounting job description templates :

Browse through finance job description templates :

Accounting and finance recruiting tip #2: Leverage employee referrals

Institute of Management Accountants conducted a survey of senior finance professionals to find out how companies are effectively recruiting younger generation.

The recruiting practice that has been most successful in recruiting Millennials is employee referrals!

By setting up an employee referral program , companies ask their existing employees to recommend suitable finance and accounting professionals that would make great candidates. In return, employees are rewarded with enticing employee referral awards.

Using employee referrals as the primary recruiting method significantly improves the time, cost and quality of hire .

Accounting and finance recruiting tip #3: Break the rules!

You need to differentiate your employer brand in order to stand out among your competitors and attract the attention of the candidates. Don’t be afraid to be different and even break the rules! Break free from stereotypes of the finance and accounting sector as boring and conservative.

If you’re skeptical, let me introduce you to the example of The Motley Fool , a financial services firm that decided to break free from the buttoned-up image of its industry. This company’s “foolish” culture became their recruiting powerhouse! The Motley Fool’s company culture is definitely worth blogging and tweeting about. Plus, it makes recruiting and retention a breeze!

Accounting and finance recruiting tip #4: Use social media

UK accounting firm My Accountancy Place recently announced they are recruiting a new Financial Controller. This company advertised its open job position on social media. They shared a video on social media featuring two of their current Financial Controllers talking about their working experience at the company.

Instead of posting a classical job description stating what they expect from a candidate, they focused on providing a candidate with a glimpse into their company culture.

Accounting and finance recruiting tip #5: Create an attractive career site

Your career site is at the heart of your recruiting efforts. This is a place where all other recruiting channels lead. Utilize your career site to make a great first impression on your potential candidates!

For example, take a look at UBS’s career site. UBS is a global firm providing financial services in over 50 countries.

Accounting and finance recruiting tip #6: Don’t forget the job boards

According to Kelly Services report, 71% of finance and accounting professionals surveyed say they most frequently search for work through o nline job boards, especially job boards like CareerBuilder and Monster.

Luckily, with modern recruitment software, you save time by posting on multiple free and paid job boards with just one click!

How can TalentLyft help you recruit accounting and finance professionals?

To learn how using all-in-in recruitment software such as TalentLyft can help you excel in accounting and finance recruiting, schedule a free personalized demo with our experts.