Shownotes
Got 10 minutes? That’s all it takes to sharpen your practice! In this episode of the Bissett Bullet podcast, Martin Bissett delivers two actionable insights to help you grow your firm without the overwhelm.
Struggling to recruit the right people for your firm? You’re not alone. In this episode of The Bissett Bullet, we tackle the recruitment challenge that’s plagued accounting practices for decades—and offer clear, actionable solutions.
Part 1: The Recruitment Cycle
Whether it’s 2009 or 2025, the complaints are the same: talent is scarce, candidates are entitled, and the best people go to bigger firms. Yet most firms keep doing what they’ve always done, post a job, wait for CVs, and hope someone decent applies. If that sounds familiar, it’s time to rethink your approach.
Part 2: What Actually Works
In the second half, I break down what successful firms are doing differently. This isn’t about throwing more money at the problem, it’s about positioning, messaging, and adapting your recruitment strategy to today’s reality. If you want better people, you need a better plan.
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Ready to grow your firm with practical, no-nonsense advice? The Bissett Bullet podcast gives you bite-sized insights you can implement today.
Visit www.bissettbullets.com for more resources.
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4impactdata is an AI-powered platform that helps firms move beyond historical reporting by delivering clear, actionable next steps for your advisory team so that you can provide more value to clients without the guesswork of dashboards. To book a conversation or demo, or to join the 10X Advisory Cohort with resources from Martin, along with 10% off your first year’s subscription, visit 4impactdata.com
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ProNation is a global community for accountants and bookkeepers that gives you peer-to-peer support, expert guidance, and proven strategies to run a more profitable, efficient, and impactful firm. Led by Will Farnell, Lucy Cohen, and Martin Bissett, it helps practices of all sizes grow with confidence and better serve their clients.
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In association with CPA Trendlines
Transcripts
Recruitment the accountants dilemma since the dawn of time.
Speaker A:Do you offer more money than your competition?
Speaker A:Or if not, do you offer a career path that you hope to compensate for the lack of financial power in your offer?
Speaker A:Or do you just complain about not getting the right people in the first place?
Speaker A:Now everyone wants too much money and they expect everything for nothing.
Speaker A:Well, let's find out.
Speaker A:We're ready.
Speaker A:This is season two of the bullets, so we start season two with a thank you.
Speaker A:In season one, I think over 90,000 of you listened to the first six episodes, or at least 90,000 listens, and there might have been several listeners by each of you and thank you for that if that's the case as well.
Speaker A:We also want to thank Free Agent and four Impact Data for that first season.
Speaker A:Sponsorship for Impact Data are back for the second season along with Pro Nation, which is a new offer which you'll hear about in the middle of this episode.
Speaker A:The format seems to have worked for you, where we do 10 minutes so you can digest them nice and easy, where we describe the issue or the concept in the first part and then provide practical solutions that are proven in the second part.
Speaker A:That seems to work too, and we don't intend to change it.
Speaker A:So let's deal with this.
Speaker A: Recruitment: Speaker A:I remember practices speaking to me saying, oh, global financial crisis, war on talent.
Speaker A:Big firms are snapping up all the quality university graduates and spitting out the ones that weren't good cultural fits.
Speaker A: nes we have to choose from in: Speaker A:I hear they owed, you know, recruitments, you know, so much demand, bigger than supply for professionals.
Speaker A:And therefore all the big firms are just taking up all the good ones and ones are on the cultural fit are getting spat out.
Speaker A:And because they've been originally scooped up by the big ones, these ones that we have to deal with afterwards, they just want big compensation packages that don't want to do any work.
Speaker A:And it's all very entitled.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Does that sound like you?
Speaker A:Sounds like most of the firms I've been talking to.
Speaker A:But there are exceptions, you know, and with recruitment, what I see for most firms is that you're not doing anything differently or indeed better than you have done at any given time in your history.
Speaker A:To recruit talents, you put your job posting out online or in some form of print ad, and you get your resumes or CVs in, depending on where in the world you're listening to this or watching this right now.
Speaker A:And then you go and interview people and they're all much of a muchness.
Speaker A:And the standout one wants too much money and the one that look promising decides that they don't want to do half the work that you want them to do and it's beneath them.
Speaker A:And you complain about entitlement and how in your day you didn't even ask how much money was on offer, you just were grateful for the opportunity.
Speaker A:And maybe that's true, maybe that's right.
Speaker A:But things have changed and you're still in practice and you're still running your practice.
Speaker A:So you have to adapt.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:And so let's bear in mind that this recruitment issue isn't going away.
Speaker A: t described the scenario from: Speaker A:So if the Bullet podcast exists 20 years from now, guess what we'll be talking about there?
Speaker A:Unless we adopt things that work.
Speaker A:Oh, things that work.
Speaker A:Speaking of things that work, that's what this is for.
Speaker A:Here's a quick word from our seasoned sponsors and then I'll be back with some bullets for you as to how to overcome this issue.
Speaker B:Do you need more time, money, confidence or a better team?
Speaker A:We know your struggles.
Speaker B:Many accountants work tirelessly for their clients and still end up with a loss making business.
Speaker B:It's time for a change.
Speaker B:Pronation works with accounting firms worldwide and we have the expertise to to help you step by step to get the firm you desire.
Speaker B:Transform your practice today with Pro Nation, implement effective growth systems, increase earnings and build confidence to attract better clients and develop a strong and experienced team.
Speaker B:Make the change today and join the nation.
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Speaker A:So what can I provide you with that works in recruiting now, has worked in recruiting before and is likely to work in recruiting in the future?
Speaker A:I have three bullets for you for this episode.
Speaker A:Number one, consider open houses.
Speaker A:Now, open houses are fairly commonplace in the us much less so in the uk And I can't tell you too much about the rest of the world, but I don't certainly hear much about it in the rest of the world, in the markets that I'm involved in.
Speaker A:And an open house, rather than posting a job opening, it's, you have an event which is always out of office hours, generally in the early evening, which gives people a chance to leave wherever they're working now and get to wherever you are, and you put a little bit of food on and you give them a welcome.
Speaker A:And a few members of your team are there and it's about a one hour experience where 20 minutes of it is you giving a presentation on the firm and its history and its values and what it offers and why anybody should want to work there.
Speaker A:Then roughly 20 minutes is spent where the team take them around your offices and show them what it's like to work there and what the place actually looks like and feels like.
Speaker A:And then about another 10 minutes of that then is to bring them back into the main room and to take general questions, not questions on pay necessarily, but questions on the nature of work, the type of clients that you act for, and see how proactive your group and cohorts are.
Speaker A:And then the final 10 minutes is to say to them, right, you've seen us, you know all about us, you know what it's like to work here, you know what the openings are right now, self select.
Speaker A:If that's enough for you and you don't want to do anything more, then just leave.
Speaker A:Thanks very much for coming.
Speaker A:If you do want to have a shot at work in here, then so and so stood right there with their iPad and their digital calendar book in for an interview right now before you leave.
Speaker A:And then you've just saved yourself a huge amount of time in recruiting because those who are not a good fit for the firm already left, they've already gone.
Speaker A:And those that do want to be there, even if it's not even the best of the bunch that were there, but they still want to know and they still want to have a conversation with you.
Speaker A:Huge time saver.
Speaker A:So that's bullet number one, consider an open house.
Speaker A:Bullet number two, consider a career path.
Speaker A:The biggest complaint I hear from juniors, managers, senior managers, partner designates, is that there's no career path laid out.
Speaker A:You know, the vague one day you might be considered for partner, perhaps.
Speaker A:Now, big firms have long since overcome this problem and have very detailed career paths and, and, you know, fast tracks and executive tracks and that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And you need to follow suit and go with the same sort of idea where you have got Something where you say, look, whether it's wage increases, salary increases, whether it's responsibility increases and promotions, or whether it's something else, breadth of experience, perhaps you get to work in tax and audit and payroll and bookkeeping.
Speaker A:Whether whatever it is that you're trying to demonstrate to them that you can provide, okay, you may not have specific milestones to say right after three years that this happens and after two years that happens, but you can show them that it exists.
Speaker A:And you can show them other people in the firm who have walked through the path.
Speaker A:If you demonstrate that they're coming into a cube farm to stay in a cube farm indefinitely, expect recruitment to be tough, especially when you don't pay that well, expect that.
Speaker A:So show them that there's some sort of pathway, that there is some sort of succession and they can climb a ladder in your firm.
Speaker A:Otherwise, don't expect to recruit people who are particularly good or talented.
Speaker A:So that's the second bullet.
Speaker A:Consider articulating a pathway and third, consider another form of self selection beyond the open house.
Speaker A:A firm I know based in the UK have a, when you go in their front door, there's immediate stairway up into their offices.
Speaker A:Second floor offices, first floor office, I should say ground floor will be the first floor, first floor offices.
Speaker A:And at the top is this board with lots of writing on.
Speaker A:And on the right hand side there is a meeting room where the interviews take place.
Speaker A:And when they arrive in there in that firm, people are greeted and if they've come for an interview for a job opening, they are told, hey, you're here to see so and so.
Speaker A:Great, they'll be with you in a couple of minutes time in between times, could you just familiarize yourself with the information on that board please?
Speaker A:And when you've read through it, if it's not you, if it doesn't suit you, if you don't think you're a good fit, or it doesn't describe you particularly well, feel free to leave.
Speaker A:And when so and so comes to see you and you're not here, we'll know why.
Speaker A:But if you familiarize yourself with that content and it is for you, and it does sound like you or what you want to be, then we'll take, we'll do the interview and it'll be great.
Speaker A:And the content on the board that they were referring to was essentially a Ten Commandments style cultural mantra as to what it's like to work there and what you need to be like to work there.
Speaker A:So they would talk on that board about only here do we have collaborative people, for example, only here do we have tolerant people.
Speaker A:Only here do we have ambitious people, commercially minded people, whatever it is.
Speaker A:But there was like, I think there was actually 12 commandments on this board, which was again an immediate self selector.
Speaker A:If you don't fit this criteria, you won't enjoy it here.
Speaker A:Save us the trouble of having to interview you.
Speaker A:Leave.
Speaker A:And they were so specific on the type of individual they wanted.
Speaker A:Not the type of skill set, bear in mind, but the type of individual that they wanted, that it cut hours and hours and hours out of the recruitment process.
Speaker A:It cut thousands out of the spend.
Speaker A:You know, when you're not paying for the wrong people, whether it's through an agency or just a hiring decision, and you find out you've got the wrong person after six weeks, you're not paying out based on that huge time saver.
Speaker A:And the opposite angle might be, Ah, but that does not discriminate if, you know, if you're not one of those people, you don't get to work in this firm.
Speaker A:Yeah, it does.
Speaker A:What's wrong with that?
Speaker A:Because the person who decides that is the interviewee.
Speaker A:Not the organization, not the practice, not the firm.
Speaker A:The individual is given the responsibility of deciding whether they're that sort of person.
Speaker A:So it's positive personal discrimination.
Speaker A:Have you ever seen positive peer pressure in action?
Speaker A:Well, that's what happens there.
Speaker A:So our three bullets, guys, please consider the possibility of an open house.
Speaker A:So you do a one to many approach rather than a one to one approach in the first instance to select the right people for your firm.
Speaker A:Assuming you've got that many resumes on your desk or CVs on your desk.
Speaker A:Number two, consider articulating a career path so that they're emotionally invested in what you're trying to do, that there's a future for them in this role.
Speaker A:And number three, consider defining who works well in your firm so that they can self select again, saving you time and money in the interview process.
Speaker A:When you do those things, it becomes less about how much they're getting paid and more about what impact they're creating.
Speaker A:And for this generation at the time of this recording, that is a really important metric for you to factor into your recruitment processes.
Speaker A:Because it's not just about the money anymore.
Speaker A:Still important, but not all about the money.
Speaker A:So there you go, three recruitment bullets for you to put into practice immediately.
Speaker A:And yes, that was a deliberate play on words.
Speaker A:And I will see you on the next episode.
Speaker A:Until then, thank you very much much to our sponsors for being with us.
Speaker A:On this second season, and I will catch you on the next Bullet.
Speaker A:Bye for now.
