manny cosme explains how and when to leverage ziprecruiter, indeed, and social media.
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with richard rothstein
accounting firms need to use every tool available to maintain a fresh supply of top-notch talent, according to manny cosme, president of cfo services group, in this 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 interview with richard rothstein.
more on the staffing crisis: “the new normal” will never be normal again | learning how to hire amid covid | how covid rewrites the rules for recruiting | steven braunstein: new covid strategies for staff recruiting and retention | irs has recruiting problems, too | 12 signs it’s time to outsource | how aging boomers impact the accounting profession | why remote workers need retreats | 44 key attributes for assessing staffers | coaching the right way | 20 best practices for staff training and retention | the art and science of hiring: three essentials for the covid age | uncover potential in 10 interview questions | why your firm needs to attract more millenials | why small firms can win the talent wars | the one big reason your hiring sucks | five ways to improve operating margin during covid | getting and keeping the best people | be a talent magnet | who’ll quit next? | why you must constantly push work down |
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cosme makes some great points about working for a small nimble firm like cfo services group and the challenges of retaining great talent in the face of competition from bigger firms for high-quality talent.
cfo services group also moved virtually several years ago, so they have some time-tested insights on ways to maintain culture even while working remotely. even more interesting is their attitude on when they hire non-accounting professionals like sales and marketing staff.
manny cosme is president and ceo of washington, dc-based cfo services group, which provides outsourced cfo and bookkeeping services for small businesses throughout the country.
transcript
richard rothstein
this is richard rothstein without rothstein consulting again in the next chapter of our series about what managing partners and heads of firms are doing for recruiting these days and have been doing this year. i have with me manny cosme, who’s the president of cfo services group. and we’re going to chat a little bit about what he’s been doing this year. and i think it’s pretty interesting. maybe you want to tell us a little bit about the cfo services group?
manny cosme
we are a management accounting firm. so that means that we focus on both bookkeeping and in financial strategy for small businesses and nonprofits. so that’s our bread and butter, we really stick to the management side, which is kind of being the in house accountants, if you will, for small businesses and nonprofits.
richard rothstein
that’s great. how are you handling, recruiting accountants and other professionals to come aboard before covid?
manny cosme
so actually, our processes haven’t changed, really, at all. one of the unique things about us is that we have been actually 100% remote. for the past few years, as my firm started to grow, i made the decision to pull us out of a physical office space and into into a virtual office space. and so that worked well for us come to covid because nothing changed, we kind of just continued business as usual. i’ve always recruited people remotely. and so so that recruiting process never changed. so did you want me to go into kind of like what we do?
richard rothstein
yeah, absolutely.
manny cosme
it really starts with putting a really nice posting up on a site. so we’ve used zip recruiter and we’ve used indeed, in the past. and so sometimes we’ll kind of pick one or the other, depending on the position we’re trying to hire. but we’ll put the posting up, we have a whole 12 step process that we go through to hire someone. and that’s how we do it. in terms of getting the word out there. it’s, it’s on our website, which is really great. so for seo purposes, if someone’s looking for an accounting job, hopefully, our website will hit, we’re on google ads as well. sometimes when we’re recruiting, depending on the position, we may run a special adjustment specifically for that. so hopefully, if indeed, or zip recruiter is during their job, that’s great. but if not, you know, we have a little bit going on our site as well, with the google ad. and of course, social media is the big one there. so that’s where we’re also constantly hitting it out there on social media. so my in-house marketing team obviously runs our social media. so we’re posting that message consistently. facebook now has a hiring thing. so we posted on there as well. linkedin also has a hiring thing. so we’ll put it on there. and then of course, i will, on my personal page, then reshare those posts, and i’ll say, that’s where we end up getting a lot of people from, it’s just sort of like, you know, my own personal network, i’ll put it out there. i know, someone, oh, let me tell someone about this job and whatnot. so we end up getting a lot there. and we also encourage our team to put it out there in their networks as well. so i would say we end up getting a lot of sort of people who know people end up applying, and that’s exactly what we probably want when we’re hiring for a position is you want someone to kind of know someone, it’s always really helpful to do that. so that’s how we kind of we just kind of all come together as a team, and let’s just get the message out there as much as possible.
richard rothstein
one of the questions i’m asking people is about what their remote work policy was.
manny cosme
yeah, we’ve been remote for a few years now. so and i definitely will not look back. i now personally have an office just because i don’t like working from home. and my whole team actually does have access to wi-fi. i have an office in regus. and so we actually have a team member to regus, so if any of my staff members want to pop into a regus and do work or whatever they’re welcome to but otherwise they can work from home and wherever they’re at. it works really well for us.
richard rothstein
since everybody is remote all the time do you still have kind of a geographical limitation on where you hire from?
manny cosme
we do. so right now i’m in washington dc, right downtown, actually on pennsylvania avenue. so my entire team is in the local area. and the reason why i made that decision was, well, when i think there’s a little more familiarity with what’s going on in the region, i think for what we do, because we serve as the in house, basically the in-house accounting department for small nonprofits and helping them strategy and whatnot. so it’s helpful to kind of have that local tie to kind of really, truly understand maybe what’s going on with your client and whatnot. um, also, because we are remote, one thing that i like to do is make sure that you know, the team is really tight together. so even the team themselves kind of having the familiarity of, you know, oh, it’s raining today, oh, it’s snowing today, we can kind of chat about that. and right, kind of have fun with that or look what’s going on in our city today. so that kind of brings some familiarity. and then once a quarter, we all do get together in person to do something fun, right. and that’s a really great way to build a team, especially when you’re remote, super important to be able to do. so obviously, if everyone’s really far away, you know, that’s a lot harder to do. now, of course, we haven’t really done that for about a year now, which is really sad. we were all looking forward to our holiday, you know, thing, but you know, and, you know, in the last few quarters, you know, so we’re all looking forward to, to getting back to doing that. but that’s also really important when you run a remote team to be able to do that. so yeah, so we are all local here, some of our clients, most of our clients are, of course, local. however, we do have some clients across the country and even in other countries. interesting. so, you know, that’s not so much, but it’s nice to kind of have everyone in the area.
richard rothstein
that’s cool. you mentioned a couple of other things there that you did you do that you deal with zip recruiter in the depending on the position, and then you also do some google ads yourself. could you talk tell us a little bit more about that?
manny cosme
if it’s a super competitive position. like, if we’re hiring a controller type of person, that would probably be a little bit more competitive. so i tend to like zip recruiter, whatever their methodology is to get the word out there. i don’t know what their proprietary method is, but it seems to work better. they also have a lot more like filtering capabilities and whatnot. so even if we’re hiring like a bookkeeper, kind of entry-level type person, we can get flooded with a lot of resumes, like a lot of resumes. so zip recruiter has really great filtering capabilities, that can filter out a lot of the stuff that, you know, i mean, it’s amazing what some people will pay for a job. and i’m like, did you actually read the job description, like, you have no qualification for this job at all. so you know, i don’t read a lot of that out, right. so zip recruiter is really great. it is, however, a little bit more pricey. so that’s why i tend to use it for certain positions. for other positions that are maybe a little bit less challenging, or ongoing positions, like we do have an ongoing position for some independent marketing reps. obviously, don’t want to use it recruiter for that, because it’s pretty pricey. so we’ll use like, indeed for that. because you can actually do free postings with indeed, they do a pretty decent job of getting the word out there as well. but we don’t have to pay that premium to hire something like that, that’s kind of ongoing, or, again, just less competitive positions. and that also really depends on the time of year as well, you know, there’s a certain time of year was where it’s just easier to get accounting staff like, like, i found the summertime, you know, people just graduated, they’re kind of starting looking for a job, it’s actually a lot easier to hire at that time than versus in october or something.
richard rothstein
that’s an interesting insight there that if you’re looking to hire, you may want to take a good look at your business, and figure out, hey, especially in a seasonal business, like accounting, get out your crystal ball and figure out, well, what am i going to need next season? and go ahead and hire for that, you know, in, in the summer? before?
manny cosme
yes, exactly. and never wait until you’re at full capacity to hire, always hire before you hit capacity. like when you’re about 80% capacity. that’s probably the time to start the process because it can take a while.
richard rothstein
it sounds like your firm has figured out some ways to do some really cool stuff. how do you feel like those things are things that make you competitive or are there other things that you’re doing to make you kind of competition to attract the best talent?
manny cosme
i think so, in accounting it is competitive. our employees are constantly being headhunted as well. so it’s not only getting them in the door but then retaining is very important. because we’re small, i think sometimes that puts us at an advantage. we’re all very connected to each other, you know, we really do a good job of just making sure that we feel like a really tight family. and i think a lot of people really appreciate that. a few years ago, that was unique. and really up until this year, i think that’s also been a unique thing for us. and something that i know people have been very, very interested in. so in fact, when we do put out, a job posting, we get a ton of resumes. and a lot of those people really say, well, the reason why i was interested in this is because you said work from home. that’s a really big attractor. to us. so, yeah. so yeah, i would say that’s kind of puts us at an advantage.
richard rothstein
yeah, especially the fact that’s not going away with you either, right? so what do you expect kind of the general recruiting situation to look like, a year from now?
manny cosme
i think it’ll be kind of the same as i mean, accounting is kind of one of those things, no matter what type of accounting you do, that’s just consistent. it’s definitely not going to go away. if anything, i think more people are interested in what accountants do now, with, with everything that happened with you know, the pandemic, and whatnot, and the ppp and everything, i think a lot of businesses they’ve slowly started to wake up to realize that they need good financial records, and they’re starting to look at who can help me with this. and i think that, in turn, is kind of opening other people’s eyes to, oh, maybe this is a potential career for myself, right, especially those people that have been displaced now, with certain industries closing or not, you know, you may look to, you know, maybe i can help another business financially. in fact, i’ve gotten a lot of questions around, am i going to help people kind of do their own bookkeeping and whatnot. it’s been sort of interesting that i think this is really, you know, shaking everyone up, and kind of really, i think it’s going to revitalize the industry. that’s what i think so i think recruiting-wise, i think we’re gonna have a good, you know, group of people that we can start really picking from and grooming into growing firms and whatnot.
richard rothstein
any particular challenges, you’re still seeing that, you know, you’re kind of working your way through?
manny cosme
i would say retention is always a challenging thing. now that, especially for a small business can be hard. because, you know, people are constantly being headhunted. and so a larger firm may have a larger budget, and be able to kind of attract talent away. so that’s always a bit of a challenge for us. i think we’ve, we’ve been working through that pretty well. um, but you know, it’s definitely always something in the back of my mind, like, how can we get better at just retaining talent really just, you know, this fancy shiny, you know, the firm wants to steal someone away? how do we make sure that we keep them in the firm?
richard rothstein
that sounds like a hallmark movie.
manny cosme
it’s true. it is selling, you know, don’t forget me, little guy.
richard rothstein
finally, what advice do you have for other firms that are looking to kind of grow through hiring in the current situation?
manny cosme
i would say be really clear about the positions you want to be really clear about kind of the hierarchy and sort of how people move through the system. that’s something i learned, is that if i recruit someone in today, do they have a clear path of growth, salary growth, position, growth, talent, you know, all that stuff. so be really clear about what each position is and what you need. also, if you’re an accounting firm, don’t just hire accountants, you actually need other types of people in your firm as well, like marketing people and salespeople. i fact, the last hire that i made was not an accountant, it was a salesperson. i have a team in-house sales and marketing team now. that i realized i had to hire if i’m going to grow as a firm. i don’t just hire accountants, i also hire other types of people as well.
richard rothstein 15:41
just a quick follow-up on that just so people know, how early are you talking, hiring this other stuff?
manny cosme 15:48
it depends on how quickly you want to grow, i guess. i mean, i’ve been in business a number of years. so it really wasn’t until last year that i hired, i actually hired a salesperson. and then after a few months realized, no, you can do more than sales. so i ended up putting him in charge of sales and marketing because i just realized he actually had a talent in both of those areas, which is rare, sales and marketing are two very different things. but they work together, he actually had talents that he could do both. so and i’m really glad i did that. because he now can then manage our other consultants in that area to really help us grow. i probably should have hired him a long time ago. if i could go back in time, though, i probably would have hired someone in-house a long time ago, i would say,
richard rothstein
well, thanks manny for walking us through what you’re doing these days and given us a few pointers. it’s been great talking to you. any final words there anything you want to, promote what you’re doing or anything to people out there?
richard rothstein
awesome. well, thank you, manny.