5 Ways to Modernize Your Firm and Attract Talent Amidst a Talent Shortage

Hey 👋 - Brandon here.

Happy Saturday to 1,545 growth-minded accountants.

Here’s one growth tip for you and your firm.

Today’s issue takes less than 9 minutes to read.

Firm owners of all sizes blame the talent shortage on their inability to hire good talent.

But… it’s just an excuse.

It’s true, there is a talent shortage that certainly makes hiring harder. But unless you are hiring hundreds of accountants per year, I don’t see why the talent shortage would drastically impact your firm.

You might disagree.

I might even have you a bit fired up right now.

But hear me out.

I love the game of business. It’s one where you implement new ideas and strategies and get objective feedback - you either increase your enterprise value or you don’t.

The firms that outcompete others in terms of growing enterprise value are built on modern business models.

And modern business models attract talent.

Here are some ideas for you to modernize your firm and make hiring a breeze, even in the midst of a talent shortage.

Review your compensation - is it top of market?

The very first thing you need to do is ensure you are paying top of market for talent.

If you refuse to attack this problem head on, you will always struggle to grow your firm.

You will hire sub par people who just want a job and don’t really care about your firm or your clients. They will monopolize your time and energy and you’ll be left wondering “why can’t they just get this work done.”

My life changed a few years ago when I started paying top of market pay.

I was able to hire amazing leaders who can hold themselves accountable to results and do a great job of building up team members and processes around them.

The best way I have found to verify market comp is using B4 Transparency. We currently use the service and it is phenomenal. I don’t get any compensation for plugging them here, I just think they are great.

Hiring is guessing, firing is knowing - improve your onboarding process

Do not overcomplicate your hiring process.

You don’t need 6 interview steps, a technical test, case studies, etc.

When you have a need, you want to quickly onboard talent to fill the need. I think about hiring in sprints rather than dragging the process out - I want to be done with interviews within two weeks of the need having been identified.

Speed is your friend when hiring.

When you combine speed with top-of-market pay, great candidates will opt in to work with you because they will have received an offer with the comp they were looking for - why continue interviewing?

Obviously, hiring fast exposes the firm to risk.

You can reduce risk by checking references, running background and license checks, and reviewing social media accounts.

But at the end of the day, you are making a “best guess” that the candidate will succeed in your firm.

The reason I choose to move fast in hiring rather than slow is because even when you hire slow, you are still guessing.

Instead of trying to hire the perfect candidate, focus on building great onboarding processes with 30/60/90 day milestones.

Because you will know within 90 days if a hire is going to work long term.

To get help with hiring, check out JStaat’s new venture - he hopes to connect progressive firms with top talent. I don’t receive compensation for this either, and I haven’t tested the service myself, but knowing Jason, it will be great.

Offer Hybrid / Remote

One of the easiest ways to gain a leg up in the looming talent crisis is to offer remote work.

When you can hire talent from anywhere, you gain access to a much wider talent pool.

You can argue with me about how remote makes culture hard to manage and being in person is super important and, by the time you are done ranting, I will have already onboarded my new hires from across the country.

If you want to be a top firm over the next decade, you have to figure out how to run a distributed work force.

Offer large referral bonuses

Want to save money from recruiters, reduce risk of a bad hire, and increase retention all at the same time?

Offer large referral bonuses.

Your team will get excited about a $5,000 bonus if they refer a candidate to you that you eventually onboard.

They will make it a priority if you offer them $10,000.

Hire the person who will build the team

When we think about scaling a team we typically opt to hire bottom up.

For example, if we know we need a Manager, Senior, and Associate, we hire the associate or senior first, and the manager last.

Why do we do this?

To save money.

But I’ve learned this approach actually costs you money.

When you hire bottom up, it falls on you or your other leaders, to train the new hires and get them fully integrated into your firm (which can take 3-6 months).

That’s a lot of lost time that you, or your leaders, could have been spent working on high leverage tasks.

Instead, hire the manager first.

And then make one of the manager’s performance objectives to hire a senior and associate by X date.

The manager will appreciate more ownership in the team building process and will bear most of the weight related to training and onboarding, freeing you up to do bigger things.

That's all for this Saturday. See you next week.

Cheers,

Brandon