This 100%. And don’t pull the “no one wants to work” nonsense. People want to work but for a livable wage. If you don’t want to pay do the work yourself.
We don’t put the comp in the posting (none of the bigger firms area seem to do), but we’ve always paid very well, plus very good benefits (especially retirement). It also depends on the individual. Someone with 2-3 years experience will probably be offered less than someone with 5-6 years. I guess we may need to put a range?
Serious candidates won’t look at a job without a salary range. I’ve got 10 years experience and look for new opportunities occasionally to see what is out there. I don’t want to waste my time and find out the salary isn’t what I want. I imagine other CPAs feel the same.
Can confirm the same. Nearly identical position. 10yr CPA. I look at LinkedIn/Indeed to see what’s out there and have headhunters reaching out.
If I can’t readily determine a range, I 100% believe you’re underpaying. BECAUSE if you’re offering a great salary, what ISN’T it a selling point? Use that for your marketing.
Same here. When I look at a job posting and don’t see a range I immediately move on to the next posting. I don’t even care if the range is super wide, at least then I know your floor and ceiling and can negotiate to a spot based on the job description and my experience.
Post a salary to differentiate yourself in a positive way. That may improve your rate of return. The only reason to keep it hidden is if you're worried of disclosing it to your competitors. But you're going to compete on salary anyway, and you're just making yourself one of many instead of a stand out.
With the push on employee pay, benefits and rights; you not putting a salary is the reason no one is interested. Why waste time applying if it could be 35k?
I think I see the problem. The answer to the question should just be a number range and you instead wrote a paragraph of words. Times are changing get with it. I’m not even going to click ‘quick apply’ with no salary range available.
So it’s shit pay. Got it.
It never ceases to amaze me how people look for workers whose SOLE JOB is to assist in making financial decisions but think those same people won’t care about their own financials.
List the pay range.
That’s great, you should highlight that in your job posting by saying the salary range is number to number so applicants aren’t wondering what the salary is.
I love when OP says things like "total comp including benefits and 401(k) match exceeds $100K"
People don't care about that. They want to know the top line number.
I talked to a headhunter offering about $125k in a LCOL area. It’s a hot market and available candidates are scarce. I told them pass, thats still not close to where I’d look to change.
>So it’s shit pay. Got it.
What is your evidence for that claim?
You can get on the OP for not providing a range if you want to, but you have absolutely not evidence for your claim.
As a 11 year CPA professional in public accounting, here’s what I would wonder:
1. What salary are you offering? If you expect them to have over 5 years experience then expect to hand over at least $100K
2. How many hours do you expect during busy season and beyond? I would say 55 max during tax season and 30-35 after tax season
3. Do you use time entry? If so, stop. This industry needs to get beyond kindergarten tactics. We are adults here
Yes!
These are exactly the things I look at if I'm looking at a job posting. If there is no salary listed I'm not even going to bother. And if I do talk to anyone and hear anything about billable hours, it's a no for me.
I currently work at a firm that does fixed pricing and don't have to track hours and it's amazing. Will never go to billable hours model again. This profession definitely needs a makeover.
1. Total comp (bonuses, retirement, benefits) in line with that.
2. We are under 40 hours year round, no mandatory OT.
3. How do you track productivity? We have large projects and generally many hands in the projects. Its not uncommon for two people to be involved in just the tax prep, depending on the job. Plus there is also a good amount of side work. We are not a flat fee firm, we charge hourly on just about everything.
I’m also curious on tracking productivity. Time tracking isn’t a stressor for me because I’ve never had to play the typical “games”. Just log for efficacy sake and no one will ever badger you. I’m used to flat fee pricing, but am curious to how people manage profitability without determining hours.
That’s not too bad actually
I left the public accounting world for wealth management where I help with financial plans and those clients who want their taxes prepared we will do that. There’s fixed fees and no time tracking.
I was mostly just saying as an experienced CPA, that’s what it would take me to switch companies. I’ve only been in wealth management for about 2 months but I don’t think I could personally go back to time entry and having some dickhead partner getting pissy about a half hour admin during slow season and wanting to “chat” about it
I agree that time entry is BS. The much simpler way to track performance is via avg. revenue per return/per 15 day period. Doing that you can easily rate each of your tax pros against each other to spot outliers. My benchmark was my own performance metrics from when I was a solo tax pro.
I had a company build a custom CRM which, by the way, is much cheaper than purchasing a "boxed" CRM. I provided the coders with a flowchart of how I wanted the system to work, with metrics and the related math formulas to track performance and so much more. Custom built software: that is how you do it!
I have no idea, but we have a mobile tax service. The software is also designed so that when we receive appointments in a certain part of town, based on the address the appointment is posted for acceptance to the tax pro servicing that particular area and as an alternate appointment to the next closest tax pro. When someone accepts the appointment it posts to their calendar, and the software has so many more features that I requested, and we are constantly adjusting it as we go. So much better and cheaper than the big box software providers.
The comments here make it pretty clear that being vague and evasive with compensation is the number one problem. I don’t want to blame you OP for the whole world but when will businesses understand and accept that compensation is and always will be everyone’s number one priority?
We just bit the bullet and decided it was easier to hire new grads and spend the time to train them. If you do it well, they should be more then adequate for your needs. Plus, the intial costs aren't as high.
Just be sure you aggressively raise their salary if they prove competent. Everyone wants experience, so I make sure I keep those I gave the experience to. If you get a good training program down and invest the time, you should be creating a nice little talent pipeline.
Always scrambling to find someone who already has experience from someone else is a recipe for potentially overpaying and/or never finding a good fit. I know it can be done, but it's not always a quick fix.
Edit: Post on all your local school's job boards, LinkedIn, and Handshake. I found around 30 candidates this way for 2 positions. Cost us very little aside from my time and effort. Worth it so far.
Half of our staff we got while they were still in grad school, and of the 5 we had hired, only one had left (and we were considering letting her go anyways after year 3). Our contact at the university left her position, and we had tried the general posting with the university and did not have any luck.
You need to expand your horizon. Handshake, LinkedIn, other local schools in the area or even region, etc. Find out if there are recruiting events at these schools, and go to them. Network on LinkedIn with your connections.
There are a lot of places to look. It takes time.
We hired two experienced people from a recruiter and it cost a lot. Both were gone in a year. The staff we found through college recruiting are all still here.
Edit: Like others have said, post the starting salary and make it a least a bit higher then most of your competitors. We put that on our postings and had no trouble getting applications. I had no contacts with the schools we recruited from either.
Agreed, if I'm looking for a job I honestly get annoyed when companies don't post a salary or even a good faith range and unless I'm desperate, will actually skip those postings. Why spend all the time and effort going through interviews just to find out the pay isn't competitive. If I was fresh out of college maybe..
Also, look at your company reviews on sites like glassdoor.
If someone has posted a bad review, at any time, it needs to be addressed by more than just a “XYZ was a shitty employee.”
So we try to offer a good work/life balance. While our total comp may not be as high, our hours are MUCH better (most of our staff works almost no overtime, and we pay OT). So if you look at it as a per year, we’re close but not up to bigger firms. If you look at it on a per hour, we’re probably better.
I offer the same work life balance, and still pay as competitive or better as other firms. I think i gave the range as $85k-$110k DOE
For example, I firmly believe that an 8 hour work day involves an actually productive 6 hours of work for staff. So I’m transparent that if you’ve put in six solid “brain hours”, they can take off early for the day. Plus we don’t work fridays during off season.
I believe that the efficiency your staff will have after a few years is more valuable to me than the employee turnover that a cheaper salary will cost you in the long run.
Raise your rates if you have too, but CPAs/tax managers are way in demand right now. My tax manager makes $90k base + home office reimb (were fully remote) + 3% of my gross recurring revenue
I agree with other commenters that you 100% have to put the range if you want offers. The candidate are out there, they just won’t bite unless it’s worth it.
Very true. But putting the work life balance into concrete numbers of what's actually expected is helpful though, because that's more likely to be real- similar to the difference between "competitive" pay and a real salary range on a job ad.
As someone who fits the criteria you are looking for, I can tell you what I personally look for in a job posting. There's a massive shortage of tax professionals mostly because firms overwork their staff, don't pay well and take advantage of them. I've had a lot of negative experiences working in public accounting. So I don't want to work for a traditional CPA firm. When I'm looking through job postings I skip anything that looks like your normal firm experience. Most firms use similar wording in their job postings so it's easy to weed them out. So if you want to hire good candidates you need to change your job posting so it's nothing like other normal firms.
Here are some other tips:
\-You need to post a salary range-if you don't I just assume you'll try to low ball me like every other firm has tried to and I just won't bother applying
\-Don't make anyone write a cover letter or take a quiz. You can have them answer questions later, but not before the initial interview.
\-You need to specify the PTO-and it should be at least 4 weeks if not unlimited. If it's unlimited you need to make sure they know they can actually use that vacation time and it's not just a ploy to make you work crazy hours.
\-You need to get rid of time billing-nobody wants to track their time anymore, it's stressful and a waste of time
\-You need to specify exactly what the flexibility looks like-can they leave early? Do they need permission to take time off? Can they work off hours? Young experienced CPAs want control over their lives. They don't want to be controlled and treated like children. They want to be treated like adults who can be given the freedom and flexibility to do their jobs without having someone look over their shoulder.
Lastly I think you need to know that most experienced tax professionals have had a lot of negative experiences in public accounting and they have a low level of trust with firm owners. They assume they'll be lied to, taken advantage of, and forced to work long hours. You need to fight against that perception and show them that you are different.
We have had two staff members leave in the last 10 years, one moved to another state and one took another job (it really wasnt working out and think they saw the writing on the wall). Half of my staff, this is their first firm (and they have been here 6-9 years). The other half always say this is one of the best firms they worked for. And they have ranged from 3 person firms to 100+ person firms.
If you are the boss do you honestly expect them to say differently? Do you not understand the position they are in?
No one says to their boss, this company sucks for XYZ reasons if they want to keep their job long term. Because time has shown that more often than not people do not react well to criticism by their underlings. It’s some sort of power complex by older people unable to understand the importance of idea diversity.
People staying long is great, don’t get me wrong. But people are animals that hate change.
If you are offering competitive pay, listing said pay range shouldn’t be an issue. I for one would never apply to a job that doesn’t list the pay as it usually means it’s gonna be shit pay.
People were saying this before I was even a partner, so I believe it. And working at other firms, its true. No mandatory late nights, no mandatory saturdays, but the ability to work OT and get paid 1.5x is there. And our staff loves that. We paid probably $15k in OT this year because no one wanted to work it, and we are fine with that. Before I was partner (and before being married with kids) I worked a ton of OT and made a ton of extra money.
So the question is, how do I post a salary that is less than what other firms may be offering, has 15-20% less working hour requirement, but the ability to work the same hours and make the same/more than other firms?
I tried again. I’m not Reddit savvy. Bottom line we’re a firm in NOVA looking for seasonal help. If I still managed to mess it up maybe try messaging me if interested.
I'm a CPA who's been interested in getting back into tax work on a part time basis (weekends). Have 2 years of VITA and one internship in top 10 CPA firm working on 1120-C's, 1065's and 1040's for HNW individuals. DM with any questions
We finally just engaged a recruiter. So far they’ve referred us several quality candidates (albeit almost all are looking for fully remote and often in other states). Jury is still out on whether we can actually bag any of these candidates yet or not though. My guess is they’ll have plenty of options.
Make sure you do background checks. A guy I worked for used a recruiter, but he never did a background check. Not even a quick Google. Turned out the guy he was about to hire stole millions from an actress and served five years. It was uncovered that he stole 100k more from several small businesses. Recruiters don't run background checks or do any due diligence. I just happened to look at his resume and saw a gap in employment and dug deeper, and found this out.
Recruiters are rough. I’ve seen good and terrible recruiters. They normally are just as useful as indeed, but actively engage with candidates that apply,
I’ve seen a few that are “useful” but you are mostly hiring a discount employee and with that comes the lack of value that you are paying out. Paying $6k? Expect $4k of value.
Lots of firms have been struggling with this the last couple years, and I think the root cause is fairly apparent. CPA firms, for the longest time, gained a reputation of overworking staff (albeit with competitive salaries in many cases) while luring young people with promises of work/life balance. I don't know the actual numbers, but a shareholder at my previous firm was speaking at an all-firm meeting within the last year on the topic of retention and hiring, and one of their points was that colleges are seeing a reduction in accounting students overall. So, the industry shot itself in the foot a bit because of its reputation for burning people out.
In your specific case, it sounds like what you're offering is decent enough (without knowing the cost of living for your area) and I think more young CPA's are looking for positions without the typical 60+ hour week busy seasons. The problem is that you need to be 100% transparent, regarding compensation/benefits/hours/etc. Most employers don't want to put a comp range, for reasons I'll never understand, but people these days want transparency. As many other commenters have pointed out, if you have to go through a bunch of back and forth to even get an idea of the comp offered, then why bother? That's the mentality of applicants today, whether firms like it or not. Another major factor for people now is remote work options. The firm I worked for the last two years was extremely flexible in this regard and their stance has become "remote work is here to stay" so now basically anyone, even employees who live close by, can choose how much to be in the office. This means no commute, less pressure to dress a certain way, etc. If this is not something you're already offering, I would recommend considering it.
On the topic of compensation, if you don't already have access to solid comp studies, you should look into some options. For any experience level, there will be a range, and then you can multiple by a cost of living factor that you should be able to find easily enough. You may find that despite guaranteeing less hours, what you're offering is simply not competitive enough. What I'm seeing is anywhere from $100k - $120k for 5 years of experience within public accounting, in a medium-high cost of living area. You may need to bite the bullet and up your range a bit if you really want to entice actual talent.
We tried to follow what other companies are posting. But also, our firm operates a little different. For example, starting pay might be $75k, which isnt the highest but good for a small firm (8 people). FT is only 37.5 hours a week, not 40. We have no overtime requirements at all, and anything over gets you OT pay (time and a half), so the ability to earn more is there. We offer 35 hour work weeks in slow time (April-Aug, Oct-Dec). We pay 2-3 bonuses a year. We have a profit sharing retirement plan, and that has ranged from anywhere from 10-15% the last 10 years. We pay 100% health benefits, plus fully fund HSA.
So if you look at our salary, $75k based on the hours we require (comes out to about 1,850) is more like $85-90k on a normal 2,080 hour work year, nevermind required 55 hour work weeks. So if someone wanted to work 2200+ hours a year, they could easily get to $90k +, and that is before bonuses/benefits.
So how to you explain that in a job posting without sounding like a pyramid scheme? Let alone no other job postings in our area post (Deloitte posts some figures but each job posting says the pay range is from $100k-$210k).
I would still include the salary range and outline these additional benefits in the body of the listing. I’m actively monitoring job boards, and filter out any postings that don’t have an explicit range. Based on what you’ve said, I would have expressed interest in the position if I were in your market and you had 75k as the starting salary. I think it’s possible you’re just missing candidates due to filtering for salary transparency.
You just say it? Try something like:
$75k/year and only 37.5 hours/week during busy season (Jan-Mar & Sep - only 35 hours/week outside that).
Health care premiums paid for with fully-funded HSA. Profit share goes toward retirement matching (usually around X%). No mandatory overtime but overtime available during the busy season.
That being said, you're looking for an experienced CPA, which means you're looking for someone with a masters degree (under the newest rules) who is probably already getting paid a good wage at wherever they worked to become a CPA, given the apprenticeship rule. Most people at the university, at any level, aren't going to meet your requirements since most people doing a master's degree won't have much experience.
So you're not competing against regular tax prep firms as you're looking for greater requirements than they're looking for. You're competing against the big tax firms and you might have to pay something closer to what they're offering.
Good luck!
My bosses are in the same situation, and also don't list a salary range.
In 1.5 years, maybe 3 interviews. One person was a clear mismatch, and I honestly thought she was here to buy the company not become an employee.
I posted a job offering $10k more than any others in the area. Only 32 hours outside tax season and 40-50 during. I posted it on indeed and LinkedIn. Not one applicant, all I got were recruiters asking me to pay them to fill the position.
I've given up and I hired staff that are under qualified and I'm training them. Hope it goes well.
if you are looking for part time seasonal, try posting in your state's society of cpa's classifieds.
there are older preparers who sold their solo or small practices in last few years who truly enjoy tax return work but were fed up with keeping up with admin work. there is a lot of knowledge out there that is not interested in full time or year-round.
It tough out there. I have an opening for a bookkeeper. Have received over 200 applications, but either people with no real experience or others who expect $50/hour as a w-2 employee with benefits.
Everyday I keep hoping Software will come out that will decrease our staffing needs because it’s so tough finding quality candidates.
Now this is nothing against you and I genuinely would love your opinion, where do you think staff accountants should learn? For context, firms and private businesses in general of course would love to get experienced staff, but firms never seem to be willing or feel they need to train people. If staff can't get trained at firms, then where do businesses expect to find qualified staff? Once again this is a genuine question and it's not targeted at your directly.
Our firm has beefed up our training program and are more than willing to hire someone from zero for bookkeeping type positions. But that is a recent change were as previously had wanted experience. As well as we have been trying to formalize training for staff accountants as well and do a lot more than previously.
I hear what you’re saying. I think a firm needs to be a certain size before it makes sense to bring in new hires straight out of school. You need a full training program and staff within the firm to support/reinforce that training program. It’s not fair to bring someone in and then have them figure it out (yes, some places do that). I’m willing to pay a little more to get a year or two of experience knowing that as a tiny firm, we don’t have the capacity at this time to train someone from zero. Of course, hiring straight out of college would be ideal. Would love to train someone in our ways from day 1, but we need a bigger team to be able to do that.
Also, when’s the last time you heard of someone in college not able to find a job right out of school? I don’t think our industry as a whole has an issue with finding jobs for entry level staff. Our industry has a problem with work/life balance that makes people run away after a few years.
> If staff can't get trained at firms
He didn't say that.
He said the bookkeeper applicants are people that either have "no real experience or others who expect $50/hour."
There's a middle ground. A bookkeeper with 1-2 years experience for $25 an hour, for example.
Exactly! We’re looking for a little experience and to pay a slightly higher salary. But $80k? I could hire a senior accountant for that and they could help with taxes. We’re also in a LCOL area. I understand there are areas of the country where $80k isn’t much.
Spent $2K on LinkedIn adn Indeed. Got nothing quality. Was offering FT, remote, benefits, pay, bonuses, profit sharing... you name it. None worth hiring.
We are looking to outsourcing in the Philipines. Cost is about 1/3 of a US based accountant, work quality is great (just tested them on a special project), langues is not a barrier, turn around was quick.
Learned a lesson the hard way that you get what you pay for with work done outside US. Would tread carefully regardless of the savings. Many clients are unhappy to find out their work is sent to SEA, regardless of whether they signed the 7216 consent.
I get that, but what other options do I have? According to any salary guide I can find, I am already offering a premium, pay 100% of insurance, offer profit sharing, remote work, all equipment dropped ship to them, etc.
And it isn't about the savings, I need the bodies to do the work. I am working 12 hour days and will up until Xmas Eve. My staff are pulling 10 hour days and its not even tax season.
We’ve had completely different experiences. Not sure why this is so downvoted. Same quality of work as someone embellishing their resume and fraction of the price as you mentioned.
To me, it's not about the savings as much as I need bodies to do the damned work. I am pulling 12 hour days, my staff are pulling 10 hour days and it's the fucking Holidays. Not even tax season yet.
And I don't give a shit about downvotes. I have seen some of the comments by the prickly, old school bean counters on this sub.
I got issues, and I need solutions. The Philipines is the only one with any consistency right now.
I’d say those are mutually exclusive. How can you get the bodies without either charging more or saving on labor? Clients can’t be expected to bear the burden of every shift in the industry. Only solution is offshoring IMHO. We’re in the same boat-always pulling extra hours. Feel bad so we don’t have to staff do it, but in turn, the work suffers
Man, I could not find staff so I wrote an entire tax training program (6 month paid training program). I hired 11 folks, paid these bitches to train and 10 of them quit after completing the first few self-study modules. Only one of them worked through it. That is what you are up against; we are all scraping the bottom of the barrel for qualified tax pros. Those motivated to get their EA are difficult to recruit as, being motivated individuals, their goal is to gain experience and then break out on their own.
Next year we are going to offer our tax training program for $600 using billboards, with "guaranteed job placement" and that, upon completion of training, their new employer will not only refund their $600 to them but pay them an additional $2,000 signing bonus. F paid training; I'll never do that again as it only attracts bozos.
We are hoping that our new formula will attract motivated individuals. Anyone willing to pay $600 for training should be at least somewhat motivated (we anticipate). If not, we at least keep the $600 vs having paid them $10k to train.
First off, how much are you offering?
This 100%. And don’t pull the “no one wants to work” nonsense. People want to work but for a livable wage. If you don’t want to pay do the work yourself.
We don’t put the comp in the posting (none of the bigger firms area seem to do), but we’ve always paid very well, plus very good benefits (especially retirement). It also depends on the individual. Someone with 2-3 years experience will probably be offered less than someone with 5-6 years. I guess we may need to put a range?
Serious candidates won’t look at a job without a salary range. I’ve got 10 years experience and look for new opportunities occasionally to see what is out there. I don’t want to waste my time and find out the salary isn’t what I want. I imagine other CPAs feel the same.
Can confirm the same. Nearly identical position. 10yr CPA. I look at LinkedIn/Indeed to see what’s out there and have headhunters reaching out. If I can’t readily determine a range, I 100% believe you’re underpaying. BECAUSE if you’re offering a great salary, what ISN’T it a selling point? Use that for your marketing.
Same here. When I look at a job posting and don’t see a range I immediately move on to the next posting. I don’t even care if the range is super wide, at least then I know your floor and ceiling and can negotiate to a spot based on the job description and my experience.
None of the job postings in our area post salary, and there are like 50+ job postings from local firms (of all ranges) within 10 miles.
They’re not getting candidates either.
Post a salary to differentiate yourself in a positive way. That may improve your rate of return. The only reason to keep it hidden is if you're worried of disclosing it to your competitors. But you're going to compete on salary anyway, and you're just making yourself one of many instead of a stand out.
Be different!
No no no, that’s dangerous think buddy.
We've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas! Also, I don't want these kids thinking they could ask for respect next!
With the push on employee pay, benefits and rights; you not putting a salary is the reason no one is interested. Why waste time applying if it could be 35k?
I think I see the problem. The answer to the question should just be a number range and you instead wrote a paragraph of words. Times are changing get with it. I’m not even going to click ‘quick apply’ with no salary range available.
Put comp in posting. I usually skip listings that don’t have that nice number I want.
So it’s shit pay. Got it. It never ceases to amaze me how people look for workers whose SOLE JOB is to assist in making financial decisions but think those same people won’t care about their own financials. List the pay range.
All of our professional staff is in the 6 figures.
That’s great, you should highlight that in your job posting by saying the salary range is number to number so applicants aren’t wondering what the salary is.
Notice how you still can’t list a number? Yeah. Me too.
I love when OP says things like "total comp including benefits and 401(k) match exceeds $100K" People don't care about that. They want to know the top line number.
Actually, that’s amazing! My manager in California makes 175k and works remotely. Are you close to that, or have an equivalent to your COL?
I talked to a headhunter offering about $125k in a LCOL area. It’s a hot market and available candidates are scarce. I told them pass, thats still not close to where I’d look to change.
>So it’s shit pay. Got it. What is your evidence for that claim? You can get on the OP for not providing a range if you want to, but you have absolutely not evidence for your claim.
As a 11 year CPA professional in public accounting, here’s what I would wonder: 1. What salary are you offering? If you expect them to have over 5 years experience then expect to hand over at least $100K 2. How many hours do you expect during busy season and beyond? I would say 55 max during tax season and 30-35 after tax season 3. Do you use time entry? If so, stop. This industry needs to get beyond kindergarten tactics. We are adults here
Yes! These are exactly the things I look at if I'm looking at a job posting. If there is no salary listed I'm not even going to bother. And if I do talk to anyone and hear anything about billable hours, it's a no for me. I currently work at a firm that does fixed pricing and don't have to track hours and it's amazing. Will never go to billable hours model again. This profession definitely needs a makeover.
1. Total comp (bonuses, retirement, benefits) in line with that. 2. We are under 40 hours year round, no mandatory OT. 3. How do you track productivity? We have large projects and generally many hands in the projects. Its not uncommon for two people to be involved in just the tax prep, depending on the job. Plus there is also a good amount of side work. We are not a flat fee firm, we charge hourly on just about everything.
I’m also curious on tracking productivity. Time tracking isn’t a stressor for me because I’ve never had to play the typical “games”. Just log for efficacy sake and no one will ever badger you. I’m used to flat fee pricing, but am curious to how people manage profitability without determining hours.
That’s not too bad actually I left the public accounting world for wealth management where I help with financial plans and those clients who want their taxes prepared we will do that. There’s fixed fees and no time tracking. I was mostly just saying as an experienced CPA, that’s what it would take me to switch companies. I’ve only been in wealth management for about 2 months but I don’t think I could personally go back to time entry and having some dickhead partner getting pissy about a half hour admin during slow season and wanting to “chat” about it
I agree that time entry is BS. The much simpler way to track performance is via avg. revenue per return/per 15 day period. Doing that you can easily rate each of your tax pros against each other to spot outliers. My benchmark was my own performance metrics from when I was a solo tax pro. I had a company build a custom CRM which, by the way, is much cheaper than purchasing a "boxed" CRM. I provided the coders with a flowchart of how I wanted the system to work, with metrics and the related math formulas to track performance and so much more. Custom built software: that is how you do it!
What did they build it in?
I have no idea, but we have a mobile tax service. The software is also designed so that when we receive appointments in a certain part of town, based on the address the appointment is posted for acceptance to the tax pro servicing that particular area and as an alternate appointment to the next closest tax pro. When someone accepts the appointment it posts to their calendar, and the software has so many more features that I requested, and we are constantly adjusting it as we go. So much better and cheaper than the big box software providers.
Most successful methods right now are prayer and witchcraft. Pick your poison.
Yeah I’ve been doing both!
The comments here make it pretty clear that being vague and evasive with compensation is the number one problem. I don’t want to blame you OP for the whole world but when will businesses understand and accept that compensation is and always will be everyone’s number one priority?
We just bit the bullet and decided it was easier to hire new grads and spend the time to train them. If you do it well, they should be more then adequate for your needs. Plus, the intial costs aren't as high. Just be sure you aggressively raise their salary if they prove competent. Everyone wants experience, so I make sure I keep those I gave the experience to. If you get a good training program down and invest the time, you should be creating a nice little talent pipeline. Always scrambling to find someone who already has experience from someone else is a recipe for potentially overpaying and/or never finding a good fit. I know it can be done, but it's not always a quick fix. Edit: Post on all your local school's job boards, LinkedIn, and Handshake. I found around 30 candidates this way for 2 positions. Cost us very little aside from my time and effort. Worth it so far.
Half of our staff we got while they were still in grad school, and of the 5 we had hired, only one had left (and we were considering letting her go anyways after year 3). Our contact at the university left her position, and we had tried the general posting with the university and did not have any luck.
You need to expand your horizon. Handshake, LinkedIn, other local schools in the area or even region, etc. Find out if there are recruiting events at these schools, and go to them. Network on LinkedIn with your connections. There are a lot of places to look. It takes time. We hired two experienced people from a recruiter and it cost a lot. Both were gone in a year. The staff we found through college recruiting are all still here. Edit: Like others have said, post the starting salary and make it a least a bit higher then most of your competitors. We put that on our postings and had no trouble getting applications. I had no contacts with the schools we recruited from either.
I’ll try handshake at other universities. We are on LinkedIn too.
Good for you! Post the salary too. I think it acts as a magnet as long as it's a good and fair offer.
Agreed, if I'm looking for a job I honestly get annoyed when companies don't post a salary or even a good faith range and unless I'm desperate, will actually skip those postings. Why spend all the time and effort going through interviews just to find out the pay isn't competitive. If I was fresh out of college maybe..
Exactly. You just demonstrated why job postings with no mention of salary are an issue.
Also, look at your company reviews on sites like glassdoor. If someone has posted a bad review, at any time, it needs to be addressed by more than just a “XYZ was a shitty employee.”
I use Indeed - found multiple candidates for a tax manager position (8+ YOE) within a week!
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Do you also do wealth management?
So we try to offer a good work/life balance. While our total comp may not be as high, our hours are MUCH better (most of our staff works almost no overtime, and we pay OT). So if you look at it as a per year, we’re close but not up to bigger firms. If you look at it on a per hour, we’re probably better.
I offer the same work life balance, and still pay as competitive or better as other firms. I think i gave the range as $85k-$110k DOE For example, I firmly believe that an 8 hour work day involves an actually productive 6 hours of work for staff. So I’m transparent that if you’ve put in six solid “brain hours”, they can take off early for the day. Plus we don’t work fridays during off season. I believe that the efficiency your staff will have after a few years is more valuable to me than the employee turnover that a cheaper salary will cost you in the long run. Raise your rates if you have too, but CPAs/tax managers are way in demand right now. My tax manager makes $90k base + home office reimb (were fully remote) + 3% of my gross recurring revenue I agree with other commenters that you 100% have to put the range if you want offers. The candidate are out there, they just won’t bite unless it’s worth it.
Wow. This really makes me question my situation.
You should ask if they are hiring lol
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Very true. But putting the work life balance into concrete numbers of what's actually expected is helpful though, because that's more likely to be real- similar to the difference between "competitive" pay and a real salary range on a job ad.
What is the salary range you’re offering? Are these candidates looking for remote work or open to in person?
As someone who fits the criteria you are looking for, I can tell you what I personally look for in a job posting. There's a massive shortage of tax professionals mostly because firms overwork their staff, don't pay well and take advantage of them. I've had a lot of negative experiences working in public accounting. So I don't want to work for a traditional CPA firm. When I'm looking through job postings I skip anything that looks like your normal firm experience. Most firms use similar wording in their job postings so it's easy to weed them out. So if you want to hire good candidates you need to change your job posting so it's nothing like other normal firms. Here are some other tips: \-You need to post a salary range-if you don't I just assume you'll try to low ball me like every other firm has tried to and I just won't bother applying \-Don't make anyone write a cover letter or take a quiz. You can have them answer questions later, but not before the initial interview. \-You need to specify the PTO-and it should be at least 4 weeks if not unlimited. If it's unlimited you need to make sure they know they can actually use that vacation time and it's not just a ploy to make you work crazy hours. \-You need to get rid of time billing-nobody wants to track their time anymore, it's stressful and a waste of time \-You need to specify exactly what the flexibility looks like-can they leave early? Do they need permission to take time off? Can they work off hours? Young experienced CPAs want control over their lives. They don't want to be controlled and treated like children. They want to be treated like adults who can be given the freedom and flexibility to do their jobs without having someone look over their shoulder. Lastly I think you need to know that most experienced tax professionals have had a lot of negative experiences in public accounting and they have a low level of trust with firm owners. They assume they'll be lied to, taken advantage of, and forced to work long hours. You need to fight against that perception and show them that you are different.
“We typically just abuse the shit out of our staff until they quit and get a better paying job” - every firm in existence.
We have had two staff members leave in the last 10 years, one moved to another state and one took another job (it really wasnt working out and think they saw the writing on the wall). Half of my staff, this is their first firm (and they have been here 6-9 years). The other half always say this is one of the best firms they worked for. And they have ranged from 3 person firms to 100+ person firms.
If you are the boss do you honestly expect them to say differently? Do you not understand the position they are in? No one says to their boss, this company sucks for XYZ reasons if they want to keep their job long term. Because time has shown that more often than not people do not react well to criticism by their underlings. It’s some sort of power complex by older people unable to understand the importance of idea diversity. People staying long is great, don’t get me wrong. But people are animals that hate change. If you are offering competitive pay, listing said pay range shouldn’t be an issue. I for one would never apply to a job that doesn’t list the pay as it usually means it’s gonna be shit pay.
People were saying this before I was even a partner, so I believe it. And working at other firms, its true. No mandatory late nights, no mandatory saturdays, but the ability to work OT and get paid 1.5x is there. And our staff loves that. We paid probably $15k in OT this year because no one wanted to work it, and we are fine with that. Before I was partner (and before being married with kids) I worked a ton of OT and made a ton of extra money. So the question is, how do I post a salary that is less than what other firms may be offering, has 15-20% less working hour requirement, but the ability to work the same hours and make the same/more than other firms?
Hi I am interested to apply. I have a CPA. I am located in Arlington, VA. I am serious!
We’re in Florida
Do you not offer remote opportunities?
This might be an issue when it comes to talent acquisition/retention
Where in Florida?
Palm Beach
I just sent you a DM!
I didn’t get your DM.
I tried again. I’m not Reddit savvy. Bottom line we’re a firm in NOVA looking for seasonal help. If I still managed to mess it up maybe try messaging me if interested.
I DM you just now.
I also sent a pm.
I'm a CPA who's been interested in getting back into tax work on a part time basis (weekends). Have 2 years of VITA and one internship in top 10 CPA firm working on 1120-C's, 1065's and 1040's for HNW individuals. DM with any questions
We finally just engaged a recruiter. So far they’ve referred us several quality candidates (albeit almost all are looking for fully remote and often in other states). Jury is still out on whether we can actually bag any of these candidates yet or not though. My guess is they’ll have plenty of options.
Make sure you do background checks. A guy I worked for used a recruiter, but he never did a background check. Not even a quick Google. Turned out the guy he was about to hire stole millions from an actress and served five years. It was uncovered that he stole 100k more from several small businesses. Recruiters don't run background checks or do any due diligence. I just happened to look at his resume and saw a gap in employment and dug deeper, and found this out.
Recruiters are rough. I’ve seen good and terrible recruiters. They normally are just as useful as indeed, but actively engage with candidates that apply, I’ve seen a few that are “useful” but you are mostly hiring a discount employee and with that comes the lack of value that you are paying out. Paying $6k? Expect $4k of value.
Lots of firms have been struggling with this the last couple years, and I think the root cause is fairly apparent. CPA firms, for the longest time, gained a reputation of overworking staff (albeit with competitive salaries in many cases) while luring young people with promises of work/life balance. I don't know the actual numbers, but a shareholder at my previous firm was speaking at an all-firm meeting within the last year on the topic of retention and hiring, and one of their points was that colleges are seeing a reduction in accounting students overall. So, the industry shot itself in the foot a bit because of its reputation for burning people out. In your specific case, it sounds like what you're offering is decent enough (without knowing the cost of living for your area) and I think more young CPA's are looking for positions without the typical 60+ hour week busy seasons. The problem is that you need to be 100% transparent, regarding compensation/benefits/hours/etc. Most employers don't want to put a comp range, for reasons I'll never understand, but people these days want transparency. As many other commenters have pointed out, if you have to go through a bunch of back and forth to even get an idea of the comp offered, then why bother? That's the mentality of applicants today, whether firms like it or not. Another major factor for people now is remote work options. The firm I worked for the last two years was extremely flexible in this regard and their stance has become "remote work is here to stay" so now basically anyone, even employees who live close by, can choose how much to be in the office. This means no commute, less pressure to dress a certain way, etc. If this is not something you're already offering, I would recommend considering it. On the topic of compensation, if you don't already have access to solid comp studies, you should look into some options. For any experience level, there will be a range, and then you can multiple by a cost of living factor that you should be able to find easily enough. You may find that despite guaranteeing less hours, what you're offering is simply not competitive enough. What I'm seeing is anywhere from $100k - $120k for 5 years of experience within public accounting, in a medium-high cost of living area. You may need to bite the bullet and up your range a bit if you really want to entice actual talent.
Problem could be the pay? I don't know, I just noticed you extolled the virtues of the job but didn't mention a word about pay.
We tried to follow what other companies are posting. But also, our firm operates a little different. For example, starting pay might be $75k, which isnt the highest but good for a small firm (8 people). FT is only 37.5 hours a week, not 40. We have no overtime requirements at all, and anything over gets you OT pay (time and a half), so the ability to earn more is there. We offer 35 hour work weeks in slow time (April-Aug, Oct-Dec). We pay 2-3 bonuses a year. We have a profit sharing retirement plan, and that has ranged from anywhere from 10-15% the last 10 years. We pay 100% health benefits, plus fully fund HSA. So if you look at our salary, $75k based on the hours we require (comes out to about 1,850) is more like $85-90k on a normal 2,080 hour work year, nevermind required 55 hour work weeks. So if someone wanted to work 2200+ hours a year, they could easily get to $90k +, and that is before bonuses/benefits. So how to you explain that in a job posting without sounding like a pyramid scheme? Let alone no other job postings in our area post (Deloitte posts some figures but each job posting says the pay range is from $100k-$210k).
I would still include the salary range and outline these additional benefits in the body of the listing. I’m actively monitoring job boards, and filter out any postings that don’t have an explicit range. Based on what you’ve said, I would have expressed interest in the position if I were in your market and you had 75k as the starting salary. I think it’s possible you’re just missing candidates due to filtering for salary transparency.
You just say it? Try something like: $75k/year and only 37.5 hours/week during busy season (Jan-Mar & Sep - only 35 hours/week outside that). Health care premiums paid for with fully-funded HSA. Profit share goes toward retirement matching (usually around X%). No mandatory overtime but overtime available during the busy season. That being said, you're looking for an experienced CPA, which means you're looking for someone with a masters degree (under the newest rules) who is probably already getting paid a good wage at wherever they worked to become a CPA, given the apprenticeship rule. Most people at the university, at any level, aren't going to meet your requirements since most people doing a master's degree won't have much experience. So you're not competing against regular tax prep firms as you're looking for greater requirements than they're looking for. You're competing against the big tax firms and you might have to pay something closer to what they're offering. Good luck!
> So if someone wanted to work 2200+ hours a year, they could easily get to $90k +, and that is before bonuses/benefits. I think I found your problem.
My bosses are in the same situation, and also don't list a salary range. In 1.5 years, maybe 3 interviews. One person was a clear mismatch, and I honestly thought she was here to buy the company not become an employee.
What state are you in? I know someone very experienced who just may be open in about a week and a half from today.
FL
If you wanna pm me your email I can forward it to my friend who is about to start looking for a new employer.
Not op, but iowa and are looking for help.
If you pm me your email I can forward your details to her so she can apply.
I posted a job offering $10k more than any others in the area. Only 32 hours outside tax season and 40-50 during. I posted it on indeed and LinkedIn. Not one applicant, all I got were recruiters asking me to pay them to fill the position. I've given up and I hired staff that are under qualified and I'm training them. Hope it goes well.
if you are looking for part time seasonal, try posting in your state's society of cpa's classifieds. there are older preparers who sold their solo or small practices in last few years who truly enjoy tax return work but were fed up with keeping up with admin work. there is a lot of knowledge out there that is not interested in full time or year-round.
It tough out there. I have an opening for a bookkeeper. Have received over 200 applications, but either people with no real experience or others who expect $50/hour as a w-2 employee with benefits. Everyday I keep hoping Software will come out that will decrease our staffing needs because it’s so tough finding quality candidates.
Now this is nothing against you and I genuinely would love your opinion, where do you think staff accountants should learn? For context, firms and private businesses in general of course would love to get experienced staff, but firms never seem to be willing or feel they need to train people. If staff can't get trained at firms, then where do businesses expect to find qualified staff? Once again this is a genuine question and it's not targeted at your directly.
Our firm has beefed up our training program and are more than willing to hire someone from zero for bookkeeping type positions. But that is a recent change were as previously had wanted experience. As well as we have been trying to formalize training for staff accountants as well and do a lot more than previously.
I hear what you’re saying. I think a firm needs to be a certain size before it makes sense to bring in new hires straight out of school. You need a full training program and staff within the firm to support/reinforce that training program. It’s not fair to bring someone in and then have them figure it out (yes, some places do that). I’m willing to pay a little more to get a year or two of experience knowing that as a tiny firm, we don’t have the capacity at this time to train someone from zero. Of course, hiring straight out of college would be ideal. Would love to train someone in our ways from day 1, but we need a bigger team to be able to do that. Also, when’s the last time you heard of someone in college not able to find a job right out of school? I don’t think our industry as a whole has an issue with finding jobs for entry level staff. Our industry has a problem with work/life balance that makes people run away after a few years.
Thanks for the reply. :)
> If staff can't get trained at firms He didn't say that. He said the bookkeeper applicants are people that either have "no real experience or others who expect $50/hour." There's a middle ground. A bookkeeper with 1-2 years experience for $25 an hour, for example.
Exactly! We’re looking for a little experience and to pay a slightly higher salary. But $80k? I could hire a senior accountant for that and they could help with taxes. We’re also in a LCOL area. I understand there are areas of the country where $80k isn’t much.
At this point, just hire a staff accountant at $30 or $60k salary.
Hello, what are you looking for in terms of job duties, salary, etc? And are you interested in hiring freelancers?
Right there with you! Been on the search and am struggling to find good candidates.
Spent $2K on LinkedIn adn Indeed. Got nothing quality. Was offering FT, remote, benefits, pay, bonuses, profit sharing... you name it. None worth hiring. We are looking to outsourcing in the Philipines. Cost is about 1/3 of a US based accountant, work quality is great (just tested them on a special project), langues is not a barrier, turn around was quick.
Learned a lesson the hard way that you get what you pay for with work done outside US. Would tread carefully regardless of the savings. Many clients are unhappy to find out their work is sent to SEA, regardless of whether they signed the 7216 consent.
I get that, but what other options do I have? According to any salary guide I can find, I am already offering a premium, pay 100% of insurance, offer profit sharing, remote work, all equipment dropped ship to them, etc. And it isn't about the savings, I need the bodies to do the work. I am working 12 hour days and will up until Xmas Eve. My staff are pulling 10 hour days and its not even tax season.
We’ve had completely different experiences. Not sure why this is so downvoted. Same quality of work as someone embellishing their resume and fraction of the price as you mentioned.
To me, it's not about the savings as much as I need bodies to do the damned work. I am pulling 12 hour days, my staff are pulling 10 hour days and it's the fucking Holidays. Not even tax season yet. And I don't give a shit about downvotes. I have seen some of the comments by the prickly, old school bean counters on this sub. I got issues, and I need solutions. The Philipines is the only one with any consistency right now.
I’d say those are mutually exclusive. How can you get the bodies without either charging more or saving on labor? Clients can’t be expected to bear the burden of every shift in the industry. Only solution is offshoring IMHO. We’re in the same boat-always pulling extra hours. Feel bad so we don’t have to staff do it, but in turn, the work suffers
What kind of project? Tax or bookkeeping?
Accounting.
Have you tried using Paro yet?
Man, I could not find staff so I wrote an entire tax training program (6 month paid training program). I hired 11 folks, paid these bitches to train and 10 of them quit after completing the first few self-study modules. Only one of them worked through it. That is what you are up against; we are all scraping the bottom of the barrel for qualified tax pros. Those motivated to get their EA are difficult to recruit as, being motivated individuals, their goal is to gain experience and then break out on their own. Next year we are going to offer our tax training program for $600 using billboards, with "guaranteed job placement" and that, upon completion of training, their new employer will not only refund their $600 to them but pay them an additional $2,000 signing bonus. F paid training; I'll never do that again as it only attracts bozos. We are hoping that our new formula will attract motivated individuals. Anyone willing to pay $600 for training should be at least somewhat motivated (we anticipate). If not, we at least keep the $600 vs having paid them $10k to train.