Head of the Accounting Department Service Group, BDO Unicon Outsourcing
Frequently we hear that the accounting profession will soon be gone, and all specialists will be replaced with robots. Probably, this refers to those accountants who only process documents and transfer data from Excel to IT systems. Conversely, those professionals who analyze the information received and whose solutions can influence business development will be highly sought-after. Right now we have shifted from the so-called routine accountants to analysts. Let us tell you how to find such candidates.
Assessment of the Primary Professional Experience
There is a clear distinction between the approaches for assessment of mature and fledgling specialists. When it comes to a fledgling specialist, we determine their potential, and when it comes to a mature specialist — we consider their achievements. Having received a CV, pay attention to education. We prefer finance graduates. Check whether the person’s studies were accompanied by in-depth examination of the profession: internships, additional courses, academic degrees, and so on. If the job seeker got a degree “for the sake of appearance”, they are a character type with suppressed self-dependence, which may become an obstacle in their development.
When analyzing an experienced specialist, look how the candidate was building their professional foundation: whether they made an informed choice of the higher educational establishment, what direction their career has been taking, what they undertook for that, and so forth. Moreover, it is important to evaluate their current track record.
Testing Critical Professional Skills
The second candidate assessment stage is dedicated to the depth of understanding of the profession. A specialist should have the knowledge base and understand how to correctly apply the theoretical knowledge gained in practice.
The skills can be checked using special tests. For example, the candidate can be asked to look into a business case in the context of accounting transactions, to perform settlements with accountable persons under specified conditions or to arrange business trips abroad. This helps assess the depth of the specialist’s analytical abilities and theoretical base rather than their practical experience. If you discover a knowledge gap, you can realize whether it is caused by the lack of interest in the profession or by the lack of experience.
Another vital skill formed at the early specialist development stages is the ability to apply the current legislation. We do not set the task to learn all the existing laws by heart, but the candidate must understand their structure, purpose and scope. We are the connection between people and the laws of the Russian Federation, like lawyers, only in finance. If a graduate does not know a single law because “it can be looked up online” we cannot offer them a job.
The situation when a specialist is unfamiliar with new software such as 1С is more serious. Unlike SAP, 1С is artificial intelligence able both to develop and to control a specialist. So, if a person has never worked with 1С and is, for example, a chief accountant, a question arises: will they be able to adapt to the new system?
The most common situation is when a person demonstrates a good deal of expertise in working with the “settlements with accountable persons” section: easily names the daily allowance limit amount, but cannot say for which tax the daily allowance is available due to the failure to study that part of the Tax Code. Here a specialist is simply guided by outside experience. Their answer can also be determined by the restrictions preset in the database with which the specialist works.
Another example: when translating such a business operation item as “sales” into the accounting language in the form of accounting entries, the entire pool of accounting entries in which one action results should be taken into account in order to assess the financial result. If a specialist has shallow knowledge, this prevents them from analyzing the impact of the transaction and, as a rule, the candidate refers to the program as a “safety net” tool, which can be detected at the job interview within minutes.
Testing Personal Qualities
If during the job interview suspicions arise that the person is conflicting or is not a good team player, they should be gone through. It is worth taking a break before making the candidate an official proposal, and setting up an additional pool of job interviews: asking hard questions, calling prior employers.
Sometimes we ask a person directly whether they had any workplace conflicts. If the person says that they have never had them over fifteen years of practice — this is a red flag and the job interviewer should look under the hood. As a rule, some unpleasant experience always comes up. Then the job interviewer can discuss it at the next job interview and, having understood the weaknesses, learn what the person hides.
In addition, a job interview should be made as uncomfortable for a specialist as possible. For example, if the candidate is talking about accounting entries, ask them an unexpected question about legislation or education. It is not unusual that people get up and walk away because of such approach. This proves that the person is not stress-resistant, cannot manage multitasking and that it is more than likely that it will be difficult for them to work with clients. At the same time, those who passed the job interview stay with our company for a long time.
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