How to Hire Senior Accounting and Sales Staff For Your Business?
Senior positions in accounting, finance, business administration, and sales and marketing require experts with a diverse range of skills, in-depth knowledge, and quick decision-making abilities. At the same time, the senior managers in these roles need to be good people managers with strong leadership traits. How can you ensure finding, attracting and hiring exceptional talent for these positions? This blog gives you some valuable information.
Do these tasks get you worried – senior sales recruitment, senior accountant recruitment, senior finance manager recruitment, senior business analyst recruitment? Most organizations that seek to hire outstanding talent for senior-level positions put in place a very tough screening process for such roles and finding candidates who fit even 75% of expectations takes quite some time, from 4-8 months.
What is worse, in many cases, is when candidates are finally selected following a rigorous senior sales recruitment process or senior accounting recruitment process turn out to be not the right fit for the company.
The knowledge and technical skills that organizations value most is lacking in them despite the fact that the professionals hired have great academic credentials and a good track record in reputed companies. The companies then invest in training, learning and development programs to get the professional delivering on the goals outlined.
In other scenarios, companies hire brilliant professionals following a lengthy process of senior finance manager recruitment or senior accountant recruitment indulging in very ambitious goals. The salary and benefits packages are extended to accommodate the talent acquisition. But within a year, those brilliant professionals depart in pursuit of a better career move.
If you would like to make senior-level recruitment in sales, finance or business analysis successful in terms of metrics related to retention, quality of hire, cost of hire, performance based on KPIs, etc., then you would definitely need to take time out to discover the issues.
Here we talk about some mistakes that many companies have made.
Five Key Challenges That Lead To Poor Hiring Decisions
The hiring process needs to be a streamlined process with relevant interview and screening processes to hire the best recruit. How many companies are aware of all the recruitment pitfalls and misconceptions?
When candidates hired for senior roles do not give results or do not turn out to be the best-suited candidates as they appeared, does your HR or divisional heads change their recruitment approaches or techniques or screening processes? Have you ever considered the following points?
1. Key Focus on Academic Backgrounds
More often than not, hiring for senior positions such as the senior accountant recruitment process or senior business analyst recruitment focuses a lot on academic backgrounds.
Academic credentials are, of course, important parameters in framing hiring and selection criteria. The reputation of institutions, GPAs, etc., do indicate an individual’s knowledge, but many companies make it a huge priority when screening applicant resumes.
When it comes to finance, accounts, business analysis, factors such as industry exposure, business acumen, learning curve, vision, and experience in functions, tasks, software, and reporting systems also make a huge difference to the way a professional can deliver results. Often, hands-on practical insights, great situational judgment skills, and ability to interpret cash flow bottlenecks or opportunity loss etc., are not assessed properly even when these abilities are crucial to the position.
2. Assessments that Focus on Academic Knowledge, Not Industry Experience
In many organizations, the interview process and assessments are framed in a “back to school” approach. The questions asked and tests conducted are mostly academic in nature, for example, what is working capital or a walk through of financial statements, etc.
If your company wants to make recruitment outcome-oriented, you could focus on finding out if the candidate had improved a particular accounting process, or found a solution to specific issues that frequently occurred.
Find out if the candidate has excellent skills to optimize accounting analysis, such as revenue loss opportunities, etc. If it is senior sales executive recruitment, find out how the candidate calmed down a difficult client or if the candidate understands how sales software-based analytics could be improved to optimize cross-selling or order booking.
3. Weak Interview Formats
Interviewing is one thing and getting the right insights from the interviews are quite another matter. Interview panels would need to have the right scoring material in hand, and formats need to consider a holistic approach – technical, practical, knowledge, abilities, track records, behavioral traits, etc. How you conduct interviews, how you score candidates, what are the parameters for judging insights and latent abilities, etc., make all the difference for interviewing success.
4. Lack of the Right Candidate Scoring and Analysis
Many companies are not aware of the scoring best practices. Candidate sheets are prepared, and scores and weightage are allotted for different interview rounds, technical assessments, behavioral assessments, etc. The scoring and comparative candidate analysis requires specific skills and knowledge that is possessed only by expert recruiters.
You could work with a recruitment consultant to find out what candidate assessment practices are best suited for senior sales executive recruitment, senior business analyst recruitment, senior finance manager recruitment, senior account recruitment, etc.
5. Poor Background Checks
Poor background checks have often resulted in companies facing issues such as fraud practices, discrimination issues, money laundering, etc. In companies that hire professionals from different nationalities and countries, documentation checks become a crucial part of the recruitment process. Good recruiters put in place measures to ensure that candidates have their papers in order and nothing is a miss that could later cause unnecessary troubles. Whether it is senior business analyst recruitment or senior accountant recruitment, background checks are certainly needed before final selection.
Tips from Alliance Recruitment Agency Headhunters for Hiring Senior Accounting, Sales and Finance Roles
1. Create a Highly Detailed Profile Description for Internal Reference
As detailed the description is, that much is the level of success in hiring. Having a precise and clear understanding of the specifications for the position will increase the probability of finding the right fit. Based on these profile descriptions, you could choose the right recruitment process, assessments and various screening methods.
2. Frame Candidate Search Based On The Detailed Profile Description-Focus on Passive Candidate Search
Passive candidates are ones who are currently employed but not actively searching for a job opportunity. Active candidates are the ones who apply for a position advertised somewhere.
Your job description should be drawn from the detailed profile description you have prepared for internal reference but should not be the same. Job descriptions should be concise and framed in a manner that the pitch, company description, position description, job requirements are perfectly crafted to attract just the talent you are targeting. You could then approach passive candidates too with more confidence in attracting them towards your job offer.
3. Use Advanced Techniques and Tools to Receive, Store, Search, Scan, and Screen Resumes
When it comes to resumes and application formats, make sure they are structured in the right order, which makes it extremely easy to store, search and analyze, and filter details of the candidates. This practice will enable you to easily prepare pivots or analysis reports based on the traits, attributes, experience and other factors you value the most for senior accountant recruitment, senior business analyst recruitment, or senior sales executive recruitment.
4. Use Custom Recruitment Techniques Based on Age Groups and Geographies
Many companies adhere to a standard recruitment approach for senior positions in sales, accounting, finance, business intelligence and analysis. Post ads, screen resumes, select candidates, conduct 2-4 typical interview rounds, finalize the selection, etc. But this is too generic to give you the outcomes you need.
If you are seeking senior sales executives with knowledge of current trends in your industry segment, with the latest certifications in sales and CRM, and the ability to bring disruptive ideas, you might have to focus on candidates in their 20s. This is the new generation that believes good employers are tech-savvy, can manage recruitment through mobiles and virtual meetings, and conduct assessments online so that a lot of time is not spent on the road and yawning while waiting for your interview turn.
Recruitment processes for senior positions should also be enhanced based on global and local insights. If you are a French or British company framing senior accountant recruitment process for your business unit in Dubai, the recruitment methods should differ from those you use in your home country if you do not want to miss on the right talent.
5. Choose Well Researched and Relevant Interview Formats and Questions
The interview process is surely the most significant part of a recruitment process. The interview committee or panel members need to be specially trained so that all interview rounds are non-biased or objective. You should ensure from a legal perspective that there are no questions that indicate discrimination towards any class, ethnicity, gender, etc. Consult with experts, so that interview rounds are focused on assessing the most important skills, knowledge, and competency levels for the job.
6. Know the Latest Hiring Trends
Recruitment methods used a decade back or even half a decade back would not be well respected by the brilliant professionals you like to hire today. Neither would outdated hiring methods give you a competitive edge in talent acquisition. Many reputed large companies found following market mapping that their old recruitment practices actually motivated people to work at startups that impressed them by following the latest recruitment trends.
7. Compensation and Benefits Package Should Be Competitive
The compensation and benefits package you provide with the job position also needs to follow the current trends. Many companies in your sector might be offering innovative employee benefits such as work-at-home options in certain scenarios, innovative holidays and casual leaves that have options to choose from, although the number of days are the same.
For example, a global startup included children’s birthdays, wedding anniversary, etc., in their optional holiday list. The company cut down on many traditional employee benefits to include paid subscriptions for childcare, fitness platforms, grocery superstores, etc. Their employer branding enhanced tremendously, and they could easily fill positions attracting highly talented professionals through employee referral schemes.
8. Get Good Professional References and Check Backgrounds
Background and professional reference checks validate everything the candidate has spoken about. You could be more assured of the performance of the chosen candidates if you have past employers backing them up. Background checks help you avoid most hiring risks.
9. Avoid Delays, Making Professionals Wait for Too Long
Whether it is for the interview or in getting responses to queries, or in getting replies about job offers, delays often result in your losing good candidates who might have signed a job offer they received in a timely and impressive manner.
Alliance Recruitment Agency
Alliance Recruitment Agency has the best global recruitment consultant networks helping SMEs, mid-sized firms and companies operating in multiple geographies and markets to find best-suited candidates for senior roles. Our clients also include Fortune 500 companies, global startups, international organizations, and large online businesses.
We make recruitment strategic, outcome-enriched, and valuable to the achievement of business growth, performance and profitability metrics. Give us a call and find out how we make senior-level recruitment timely, efficient, and goal-oriented.
