Bringing in an extra pair of hands to perform year-end is essential for many businesses – there’s often more work than the regular team can handle, and when year-end is completed, the extra resource can be released as the finance team returns to the day-to-day business. That said, finding an interim accountant isn’t always straightforward, and the tight timeframes mean you’ll want to know what potential hitches and snags lay ahead. Here are the most common pitfalls associated with finding an interim accountant.

Qualifying a Candidate

So, you’ve decided to hire someone on a temporary basis. If you want to find the right person, though, you’ll need a clearer idea of the skills and experience that you require:

• IT Skills: If the Interim you’re hiring isn’t already familiar with your company’s software, you’ll have to teach them. Taking time to train is a routine part of onboarding for permanent employees, but for a contractor it’s just a time wasted. So, finding an interim who’s already used your company’s accounting software is essential, and not something you can afford to compromise on.
• Experience Level: Experience level is a balancing act. On the one hand, you need someone experienced enough to do the job; on the other, you don’t want to overpay. The key factors when deciding what level of experience that you’ll need are the amount and complexity of work you need your interim accountant to do, and your budget. If the work you need done is small or routine, or if you’re strapped for budget, then go for a newly qualified, QBE, or even part-qualified candidate; if the individual would have a lot of work with complex systems/processes etc, and you have the money for it, then go for someone with at least five years’ PQE.
• Industry Experience: This is an interesting one. Some interims work within a specific industry, learning the ins and outs of the industry, while others bounce from sector to sector and become jacks-of-all-trades. If your company’s sector has a significant impact on the work your interim will do, such as special regulatory requirements, you’ll want someone with experience in your industry. A good example would be Revenue Recognition in a SaaS business. Otherwise, don’t bother looking for industry experience – instead, you’ll actually want someone with a varied background, as adapting rapidly to your company and your team is a skill unto itself, and it’s best trained not with focus, but with variety.

Recruitment consultancies like Savant Recruitment can help recommend you on what skills and experiences you’ll need and can then find you someone who’s the right fit. 

The Hiring Process

Hiring for a permanent position is an involved process, full of sifting CVs, multiple rounds of interviews, and chasing references and supporting documents. However, for the recruitment of an interim, the key is to move as quickly as possible, and you want to make sure that the time you are spending is well spent.

• Don’t Skimp on Compliance: Make sure you get all essential documents, like copies of passports, proofs of national insurance, and at least two references - this is not something you want to cut corners on. Apart from making sure you have every T crossed and I dotted from a legal perspective, do you really want to hire an accountant who skimps on compliance, or who is so slow they bog you down in paperwork before their first day? Recruitment consultancies like Savant Recruitment can speed up this process by offloading the burden of getting compliance documents – we might even have them to hand already.
• Selecting the Right Person: This can be significantly more painful than it truly needs to be. The goal here is to find someone with the skills you need at the price you want, who can start as soon as possible. Failing that, you want the next best person. Sifting through the CVs of people who aren’t right for you is a waste of your own time. Offloading the applicant vetting process to a consultant is one of the best things you can do – they can take the time to narrow down the right person while you get on with real work, and that’s if they don’t know the right person already. In many cases, this will be a ‘tried and tested’ candidate, whom they’ve successfully placed several times before, and whose track record they can vouch for personally.
• Don’t Waste Time on Interviews: For a temp role, a multi-round interview process is wasted time. The point of bringing in someone quickly, and then getting them out when they’re done. With that in mind, we at Savant Recruitment recommend a ‘working interview’ – the candidate starts the next day, and if anything goes wrong before 1pm, then it’s no harm, no foul. The ‘interview’ is them ‘doing’ the job for the first morning – if they’re the right person for your job, then you’ll have them in the team as quickly as humanly possible, and already doing the work you need. You can’t get quicker than that. If you do need to do pre-screening, though, then a single-round process is best – again, speed is key, and the real test will still be when they sit to do your job for the first time.

Conclusion

Overall, the main challenges you’ll face will be figuring out what sort of interim you need, and then getting them ASAP. No recruitment process is ever plain sailing, but getting an interim in can be so fast, so smooth, and so effortless, that spending any more time and any more effort than necessary is counterproductive. So, follow this advice: know who you need, find them, and bring them in – once you get over those obstacles though, you can get back to what matters most – getting year-end done.

Savant Recruitment Experts has a dedicated team of Finance specialists, backed by market research, possessing extensive experience and expertise in Finance talent solutions. If you are looking to build or expand your Finance function, we can offer you our support with the best talent in the industry and market-leading onboarding advice and consultation. To know more about how we can assist you, please reach out to us at - finance@savantrecruitment.com