No matter the size of your business, you’ll need a finance professional to keep track of profits and expenses, monitor how well your business is doing, and make sure you’re fully prepared for tax season. To find the best talent, your hiring team needs to be up to date on the latest hiring trends and things to look out for that set candidates apart. Your HR team should also be taking advantage of cutting edge recruiting software to help overcome common challenges, such as a lack of suitable applicants.
Before getting to that, however, it’s important that you understand exactly what kind of services you’ll need for your business and ensure your hire aligns with your future goals. Financial services can go well beyond basic bookkeeping, after all.
Types of Financial Professionals
There are many kinds of financial services that can be offered by different candidates, so your recruiter needs to know exactly what they’re looking for. Here are some of the most common.
Bookkeeper
This is the most basic position that most people likely think of when they hear “accounting.” A bookkeeper keeps track of all financial transactions including sales, purchases, payroll, account receivable, etc. They will generally have college training in accounting and should be familiar with basic accounting software. Small businesses often won’t need more than a bookkeeper.
Certified Public Accountant
CPAs are financial advisors that have passed a comprehensive exam and continue to improve their skills to stay licensed in their states. While many businesses hire CPAs as tax consultants, they can work in any financial position. CPAs can compile extensive finance reports and offer sound advice and strategies for business growth. They’re also qualified for forensic accounting services. CPAs are a safe bet for any business.
Chief Financial Officer
A CFO essentially manages an accounting team and directs the financial strategy of a company. They work with other senior members and generally have a say in the overall direction of the company. CFOs are mostly hired by large enterprises.
Recruitment Software
With such fierce competition in the job market, recruiters need every advantage they can get to find the best candidates. Finding the right candidates is a challenge in itself, and scheduling and conducting interviews is extremely time-consuming. That’s why you should be using interview management software.
With this software, selected candidates can schedule interviews themselves. They can see your interviewer’s calendar in real-time and select a day and time that works for them based on that person’s interview schedule. This software makes it easy to include multiple interviewers in the hiring process, all with standardized interview templates, to help reduce unconscious bias during the interview process. You can also easily collect and analyze data about time spent on interviews, the number of cancellations, and more to improve your process and make for a better interviewer and candidate experience.
Additional Qualifications
Sometimes you’ll have to good fortune of having multiple qualified candidates, and you’ll just need to choose the best talent for the job. This may come down to determining if the candidates have any additional skills that could help on the job.
Programming skills are becoming some of the most requested additional skills for finance professionals since they teach strong logic and problem-solving abilities. Python is an especially popular programming language due to its simplicity and the fact that it’s frequently used to develop finance applications.
The np.arange method is a great skill for finance recruits since it’s deemed one of the most important methods in numerical computing. The NumPy library is imported into Python script where it can then arrange any integer equal to or of greater value than the start value in the NumPy array and less than the stop value in the NumPy array. Many Python libraries rely on NumPy, so it’s crucial to understand it to write concise code.
Ultimately, you’ll have to decide what qualities are the most important for your finance pro, but there are great tools to help you find them and provide insights into your recruitment process.
