Hiring An Accountant

Many small businesses hire accountants with a solid background and skills to make their accounting team more effective. However, most small businesses make several mistakes while hiring an accountant. Most business owners try to hire acquaintances over the most qualified candidates and avoid practical experiences and choose candidates with a reputation. Sometimes business owners often overlook candidates that have diverse skill-sets. In the long run, all these mistakes will negatively affect the growth of the business.

Choosing Friendships Over Competence

You will be spending a vast majority of the work-week with your co-workers and it will be very soothing to work with people whom you like on a personal level. This is one of the reasons why many business owners hire friends overqualified candidates as accountants. However, choosing personal interest over your company’s interest can lead to all sorts of problems, from material accounting errors to co-worker complaints. Therefore, it is better to hire someone that has solid competencies.

Neglecting Practical Experience

It is very impressive to look at resumes that show lofty degrees and time spent at very reputable accounting firms. It is quite difficult for many business owners to turn down that kind of CPA. However, you need to consider the position you are hiring for and turn down those types of resumes. Most probably, you are looking for an accountant who can fit right into the operational accounting department. If you hire a former auditor or assurance associate who worked in a reputable accounting firm, they might not have the experience or skill to perform complex accounting balancing.

Candidates who have operational accounting experience may not have the knowledge of interpreting accounting standards, writing memos, or even coming up with specific accounting treatments. You have to hire a candidate who has proper accounting skills instead of hiring candidates that have impressive resumes. It is important to find a candidate who has the right practical skills, or else, you will be jeopardizing your business.

Neglecting Non-Accounting Experience

Small Business Owners

Most often small business owners ignore work experience that does not fall into the specific job requirements when they hire an accountant. Most often, the interviewer does not give too much attention to some job titles and other resume bullets points that they think are irrelevant. Even though there are many practical reasons for this kind of behavior, it can often lead to many poor hiring decisions on the part of small business owners. For example, hiring an accountant with operational quality experience is beneficial for your firm.

Flowcharting, procedure writing, and process mapping are some of the main practical skill sets of a quality assurance professional. It will be very effective and even drive the process improvement initiatives when you apply these particular skill-sets in the accounting department of your business. If you hire a candidate who has experience in marketing operations or even customer services, it will be beneficial for your business in the long run. However, you need to ensure that the candidate has the basic accounting requirements specified in the job description.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can hire qualified personnel for your accounting department and ensure the smooth functioning of your business.