Would You Pay Your Accounting Manager $6,700 Per Week?

You’ve hired a Client Accounting Manager for $100,000/year.  Happy days!  Add on some benefits – let’s say 20% - that’s around $2,300/week. 

But after 3 weeks you’re thinking maybe they aren’t quite what you thought.  The vibe from the team is that the Senior Associates know more than the Manager.  Plus they are doing a really poor job at coaching – never available and just keep making demands of the team.  You monitor it – but it gets worse. 

You know how this ends.  After 90 days you have the Dear John conversation, pay them 3 weeks notice and ask them to clear their desk.  Oh well the cost was only $34,500 [12wks + 3 wks x $2,300] and some work was billed out.  Your firm Administrator though questions this – sends you to the Accountests Bad Hire Calculator to see what the real cost was.   

Your simple salary cost has forgotten a whole host of other costs:

1. Recruiter fee 
   
   
2. Management and accounting team time during recruitment (especially interviewing and selection) – for 3 candidates 
   
   
3. Testing and assessment of 3 candidates 
   
   
4. On-boarding time from your accounting team and firm owners – including introduction meetings to the team and clients,  
   
   
5. Lower productivity of the new starter AND your accounting teams while the new starter learns about the team and the clients 
   
   
6. Senior leadership time deciding how to handle poor performance you're seeing 
   
   
7. Performance management processes / meetings 
   
   
8. Termination costs 
   
   
9. Celebration with the rest of the leadership team the day they leave the building 
   
   

Ouch.  When you add all this up it’s $80,000 for 12 weeks ‘work’ - $6,700/week.  
 

And you still don’t have the position filled. 

How high up on your firm strategy goals is improving your hiring and on-boarding processes?  

 

Giles Pearson  |  After 18 years as a partner with a large public accounting firm, Giles founded Accountests to help those recruiting accountants make better hiring decisions

Accountests  |  Accountests deliver the world’s only online suite of annually updated and country-specific technical skills, ability and personality tests designed by and for accountants and bookkeepers.