Running an accountancy practice, a big part of our recruitment activity involves bringing in people to fulfill various technical roles, but the expectation of an accountant in 2018 has changed significantly. We now see a huge step up in what clients are expecting from their accountancy firm and we’re behind it.
No longer is it enough to crunch the numbers, tick the boxes and file the reports. Thankfully, all of that has become far more streamlined with modern technology and now the shift is in to delivering insights and advice to clients and genuinely supporting their business.
From the very beginning, we’ve worked hard to build the culture in our business and knowing that the wrong hire can have ramifications keeps us focused on only bringing in new team members who match our culture over anything else.
The culture we’ve built stems from our core values which aren’t just a list we have on the wall of our office that nobody ever looks at, we truly live and breathe them every single day and that’s never been more evident than in our latest round of recruiting.
Recruiting based on technical ability is easy, you look at their educational background and put assessments in place; the candidate either knows their stuff or doesn’t, but how do you recruit based on the things you can’t ‘test’? Our final stage consists of questions relating to our 8 core values, each of which carries a score based on responses given, enabling us to make an informed decision and giving the candidate an opportunity to illustrate understanding and belief of our core values.
We are looking for a future Mapper who can give solid examples demonstrating their understanding of our values and correlating professional/personal examples that show them putting our values into action. We want to see that any future member of the team embodies the key traits of our values through and through.
A candidate with a strong cultural fit is more likely to work well with other successful members of our team and stay on in our business long-term. A lot of the technical elements of a role can be trained on the job, but passion and pride in your work can’t be taught. Bringing someone into our team who is a poor culture fit increases the chances they will leave for another opportunity that is more aligned with their own values.
From our experience, qualifications and work history do help to narrow down candidates through to the interview stage and potential team members do need to exhibit both the necessary qualifications to perform the job and the essential cultural fit needed to work effectively within the existing team.
When faced with two potential Mappers who have similar experience and qualifications, the person who will fit in with the existing team will always have the edge.
If you’d like to understand the process further drop me an email at [email protected] or call the office on 0161 711 0810. If you are interested in a career here at MAP then I’d also love to hear from you.
