If you surf the waters of the World Wide Web long enough you’ll find plenty of advice on how to handle accounting interviews. Unfortunately, most of these articles are about the person seeking an accounting position rather than the one interviewing eager candidates to fill the position. However, there are a few things you can do that will help you conduct an outstanding accounting interview as long as you put them into practice as an employer.

Understand the Assignment Requirements

It’s nearly impossible to fill a position adequately if you don’t fully understand the position you’re filling. When it comes to accounting, you need to know the specifics of the position being filled and what kind of person excels in this particular position. Not all accountants are good tax accountants. There are many different types of accountants and personalities that make some accountants great while others are only mediocre. When you’re interviewing, you want to be able to quickly spot the people who have the potential to be truly great while skipping over those who will plug through day after day without delivering standout results for your company or your clients.

Ask Appropriate Questions

Once you know the ins and outs of the position you’re working to fill, it’s time to create a list of relevant accounting questions. While questions about the job itself are vitally important, you definitely want to hire an accountant who knows his stuff, there are other questions you need to ask that will provide important insight to the nature of the person you’re interviewing. For example, someone who enjoys crafting as a hobby is generally very detail oriented – a good match for an accounting position. Questions about hobbies and interests reveal as much about accounting candidates as questions about skills and education if you know what to look for when it comes to answers.

Familiarize Yourself with Current Human Resource Laws

There are many different criteria available to help weed out the pool of potential employees. However, discriminating against a candidate due to race, religion, national origin, sexual preference or gender can land you and your business in a lot of legal hot water. Understand how these employment laws relate to your interviewing skills.

Finding the Perfect Employee

That is something that’s simply too big to look for. What you need to find is a person who has the right set of skills and personality to be a good match for your accounting needs. Perfection is a noteworthy goal. But, when you need to hire someone you can’t always afford to wait around for perfection when someone who is skilled, trainable, and motivated can still get the job done.

Giving an interview isn’t nearly as difficult as you may believe it to be. The most important thing to make an interview truly great is to be a good listener throughout the interview process. Nervous candidates often make telling reservations if you let them do enough of the talking. Look to Venteon financial staffing for your new hires.

Working in the financial world as a public accountant can be a highly rewarding and lucrative career. If you are good with numbers, detail oriented, and able to remember a great deal of knowledge about tax and business laws, you may be the right person for the job. The US Department of Labor and Statistics – Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-13 Edition for public accountants looks promising, with the average earnings of $61,000 USD annually, and growth of 16 percent projected to the year 2020.

The good news is that launching yourself in a public accounting career can be achieved within 2-3 years. To get you on the right path, here are some tips for building your public accounting career.

Educational Requirements for CPAs

In order to learn the things you need to know to be successful as a public accountant, you will need a minimum of a 4-year college degree in accounting or a related field. Some experts recommend getting a Master’s degree in accounting, as it’s often required by employers, or the equivalent of education and experience. Working as a junior accountant or an internship in a public accountant’s office can often meet these requirements. According to the Department of Labor, “As of 2012, 46 states and the District of Columbia required CPA candidates to complete 150 semester hours of college coursework, which is 30 hours more than the usual 4-year bachelor’s degree.”

Certification for Public Accountants

For public accountants who wish to become certified, a requirement of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), passing a 4-part exam from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants happens during an 18-month period.  Accounting professionals generally take a class to prepare them for the certification exam, around their work schedules. Continuing credits are required to maintain the credential. Some employers require this upon hire, so you’ll want to have a plan for taking this, particularly if you will be involved in the tax market, corporate finances, and audits.

Work Experience and Skills for Future CPAs

To get into the line of public accounting, you’ll want to focus on developing the skills that help top CPAs achieve more out of this career. Take temporary assignments during the busy tax season to learn how to manage work and people. Work as a junior accountant while in school. Learn accounting software, and become comfortable with its use. Read up on the laws surrounding accounting and finance. Be part of a community of CPAs by networking and being part of industry associations.

For access to full and part time, contract assignments in finance and public accounting, check out the recent job opportunities available at Venteon.

Change is in the air and one of the biggest changes on the horizon seems to be the imminent update from GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) currently used throughout the U.S. to International Financial Reporting Standards. Forward- thinking business owners and managers have already anticipated the changes ahead and are making adjustments to their accounting standards now in order to avoid mass chaos and utter confusion when the time comes. They are also focusing on hiring quality accounting and finance staff to manage these tasks.

With accounting disasters like Enron and WorldCom in our not-so-distant past, it makes sense that the time has come for the current accounting standards to change. However, the changes ahead are big changes that some businesses are reluctant to embrace. What possible benefits are in these changes for businesses that will make it worth a complete overhaul of current accounting and bookkeeping systems? How will it improve your business?

Uniformity in Accounting Principles

The new standard, known as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), offers a global standard that is uniform from one nation to the next. This also works from one business to the next and levels the playing field, to some degree, in that companies with more clever tactics for working around the GAAP aren’t getting an unfair advantage by using creative accounting to look more stable on paper than they actually happen to be. Your business will be judged by potential investors based on apples to apples comparisons of your business with other businesses in your industry.

Private Rather than Government Affiliation

The great thing about FASB is that it’s not an entity of the U.S. government. The U.S. government is overburdened with oversight commitments at the moment. FASB actually lifts some of the burden off the shoulders of the government by allowing the private sector to make the accounting rules. More importantly, with political stalemates becoming particularly problematic, it allows for the possibility of getting something accomplished because it is a non-political entity.

Clarity in Financial Reporting between Nations

When there is an international standard for accounting, there is greater clarity for conducting business on a global scale. No one country has an unfair advantage due to accounting practices that aren’t necessarily transparent. Every player at the table has an understanding of what the number represent rather than having an inflated sense of a business’ value because the numbers appear to be better than they are in reality.

There are a few potential drawbacks for adopting new accounting standards. The first major hurdle businesses will need to overcome is the transition process itself. For some businesses, this is going to be a costly and extremely time-consuming process. That’s why it’s better to act now and make the transition ahead of the curve so that you’re up, running, and ready to go when the change becomes necessary.

Get a jump start on your accounting updates by bringing on knowledgeable and reliable accounting and finance staff this year. Change is inevitable, so be sure to have the employees on board who can manage these updates. Venteon gives you access to leading accounting and finance staff to meet your business needs.

Not only is it becoming increasingly difficult to find top-quality accountants and financial candidates to meet your staffing needs, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep them.

Businesses today are becoming increasingly competitive in their efforts to recruit talented workers in the fields of finance and accounting—even resorting to lavish attempts to steal them away from their jobs at other companies and organizations. That’s why so many businesses must shift their focus from simply hiring good people to developing great people and keeping them happy in their current roles so that they aren’t tempted when the other offers start rolling in. But, how do you accomplish this critical mission?

Recognize and Appreciate Top Talent

You have plenty of employees who work hard for your day in and out; and these are the very people who deliver results on a consistent basis. They are the foundation for your business. It can’t exist without dedicated people such as these.

It doesn’t cost a lot to offer a word of thanks to acknowledge their effort and make them feel appreciated in the jobs they do for your company. However, appreciation that comes in the form of access to cutting edge technology, responsive management teams, flexible work arrangements, and a sense of balance between work and life are especially welcome by today’s financial and accounting employees.

Groom them for Bigger Roles within the Company

Get them involved in developing strong client relationships as quickly as possible. The stronger these relationships are, the greater the bond will be between your employee and the business. Teach them to be effective managers of other people. This lets them know that you believe in their management potential as well as their position within the organization.

This alone is enough to make many employees work harder to help your business succeed. They want to know you believe in them and it will earn you their loyalty for a long time to come.

Ask Your Employees What They Want

Your employees are your best source of information about what it is they want from your business to win their loyalty. For some people it’s an abstract thing like being appreciated while others have more cut and dried motivations (pay, flexible work hours, extra vacation days, company perks).

While it’s nearly impossible to please everyone with perks, you can work hard to ensure that your business is reaching the vast majority of your vital accounting and finance employees in a way that will matter most to them.

You may not be able to buy a lot of love in the business world today. But, with the right currency, you can buy a ton of loyalty and happiness for your employees. This ability will be instrumental in helping you to recruit and retain top talent in the high-demand fields of accounting and finance. For support with your staffing needs in Michigan and Minnesota, look to the support of Venteon for top performing accounting and finance candidates.

Moving financial matters to the “cloud” is shifting the way many businesses are handling their accounting data today. It seems that many aspects of finance and accounting work well when managed on remote servers that follow the cloud computing model. Why is this shift happening? This week, we will examine some trends in the financial sector and why going to the cloud is the way to go. But first, let’s look at some of the main benefits of this method of managing financial operations.

Cloud Financials – The Benefits

Financing in the cloud has many unique benefits that businesses are learning to take advantage of. If you are thinking of making the switch to cloud financials, here are just a few to consider:

• No need for on-site servers which must be continually monitored to prevent security breaches and damage due to unexpected events like natural disasters or theft. This secures business continuity.
• Cost effective to handle large amounts of financial information at once, helps to speed in-house systems up during peak accounting periods. This can help your business run more efficiently.
• Updates to financial products and services can be handled seamlessly due to a network of cloud finance providers who support integrated programming. You have less downtime during service upgrades.
• Remote access to your financial data on demand, from any web browser in the world, behind a secure password system. This is the perfect solution for a business expanding into international territories.

What’s Hot for Financing in the Cloud?

Those are just a few of the benefits of cloud computing for the financial sector. Yet, the future holds many great things for companies who move to this model. Some things that are heating up the financial cloud market include SaaS combined with CRM systems being deployed by large international firms, as well as smaller businesses being able to tap into some of the financial software that the big dogs use. It’s exciting to think where the global economy is headed in the next decade.

Finding the Right People for your Cloud Finance Team

One thing is for certain, it’s important to get on board with cloud financials by hiring the best staff to manage things well. This requires the support of a financial and IT staffing agency, like Venteon, to build your team with qualified individuals who understand cloud computing and financial legal fundamentals. Hiring the folks who are fast learners and can explain these concepts to your other staff and customers can give your business the edge when it comes to your financials.

Accounting professionals are all about the numbers, the facts, and the present time. They deal with what is happening now. Does it matter if they think about the long term? It could be a big problem if they don’t. Though it may be harder for you to gauge success and progress in this field as an HR manager, you can and should invest in setting long term goals. Doing so will encourage your employees to progress further in their abilities.

No Incentive Means No Progress in Accounting 

Even with the very detailed thinking of accounting and financial professionals, one thing is very clear. If you do not offer any incentive to improve and grow, no one will. Without any target to aim for, you can expect the person sitting at the desk to do the same thing for the next ten years if you allow them to do so. In fact, you may even see their progress slip and their productivity plummets over time.

Establish Long Term Accounting Goals

The place to start is with your company’s long term goals. Do you have them? You need to if you want to provide goals for your employees. In other words, you need to know which direction your business is heading so that you can tailor the goals you set to those achievements. Take a collective look at your employees, from senior managers to the basic entry level individual. What are your goals for improving and growing the health of the company?

Areas to Focus On in Finance 

As you work to develop these incentives to get your employees thinking long term, consider the following. You may find that refocusing your efforts can make a tremendous improvement not only now but well into the future as well.

• Get rid of unhealthy habits that could be hurting your organization. This includes habits that go against standards like providing clear feedback, addressing problems positively and evaluating on a regular schedule.

• Know your values and prioritize them. What matters to your organization, integrity, respect, your record? Prioritize what’s most important and be sure to communicate this with the group.

• Create simple but meaningful goals. Look long term. Focus on making changes to your business that will achieve those goals. Then, focus on what employees need to do and change to achieve this.

In the accounting and finance world, you may have goals of improving efficiency, aiding productivity and changing the profit margins. However, to make that possible, you need to sharpen employee skills and create individualized goals for each person. It is not an easy task to do, but it can help you to achieve incredible things in the long term. It is possible to get your team to focus on more on the long term goals but to do so you need to make it a company-wide effort. To build your accounting team with employees who see the bigger picture, check out the skilled accounting and finance staff available at Venteon today – in Minnesota and Michigan.

Accountants and accounting job applicants, listen up. There is no doubt that your resume is an important part of your application. In fact, it is one of the first tools and impressions of you that the hiring manager has. Yet, and here is what is most important to know, most people make mistakes on their resume that are costing them the job they desire the most! If your hiring manger finds problems with your resume – you are out in round one.

What Are the Big Ones?

Are you making mistakes on your resume? Many accounting and finance candidates commonly make the following mistakes.

• Are you including too much information about your life? Let us face it – time is money. No one wants to know your personal details. Include your personal information only as it relates to the position. If they want to know more about your desires, affiliations, kids or even your pets, they will ask.
• Are you including a photo in your resume? In the accounting and finance industry, a headshot in your resume or in your correspondence does not make sense. Unless you are applying for a Miss America competition or you are going with a modeling gig, there is no need to include this.
• What you did when you were a teenager is unlikely to fit into the mold either. If you are younger and you have experience working in management duties when you were 18 that may fit into your application. In other cases, such as your time working at the burger joint down the street, does not fit. Leave it out.
• Are you asking for money in your job application? Does your resume imply that you are demanding a certain salary? Unless they specifically ask for this information, do not include it. You do not want it to keep you from getting a job if it is too high or too low.
• Do not lie, either. Not only is it often obvious, it is the fastest way to get knocked out of the round of potential interviews. Do not lie about when you worked for companies, how long you worked there or what your responsibilities really included.

What else shouldn’t you do on your resume? Do not make overly verbose statements. Do not lie about being fired from a position. Do not provide confidential information from potential competitors. You also do not want even to include an objective statement any longer. It just is not necessary. To increase your chances of landing the job right for you, focus instead on creating an impressive resume packed full of useful information.

Looking for great opportunities in finance and accounting jobs in Michigan or Minnesota? Be sure to take a moment to review the finance and accounting temporary and contract jobs available at Venteon today! You can save time by submitting your application and your best resume online.

Considering a career in the rapidly growing financial consulting field? Do you have a good idea what you are walking into? Before you accept a job offer in financial consulting, it’s important to understand the industry and what to expect in your career – because this is not for everyone.

What You Need to Know About Financial Consulting

Working in the financial sector can be a highly lucrative and rewarding experience, if you know what you are getting into and what role you are best suited for. The general outlook for financial consulting looks very promising as smart investors look for support from financial experts like you. While there are many different areas you may consider focusing on, you are going to find that you may want to choose an area that best meets your goals and abilities.  Here’s how you can know this:

Required Educational Qualifications for Financial Consultants

In the financial world, your academic history and achievements are critical. You are more prized as a candidate if you have attended one of the top universities and earned high marks. Therefore, before you start dreaming of a career as a financial consultant, take the time to find out what firms hire from what academic backgrounds and if you even qualify. Then head back to school if you need to for a better career opportunity.

Personality Types Suited for Financial Consultant Work

Being a highly analytical and detail oriented person are the hallmarks of what makes a successful financial consultant. Yet, you also need to be a good people person with the ability to communicate difficult financial topics to your clients. Having a good mix of being an introvert at times and an extrovert other times can be beneficial in a career as a financial consultant.

Entry Level vs. Freelance Financial Consultant Jobs

Your past experience in the industries you have worked in can put you in the right place for either an entry level assignment or a freelance career. You need to consider the pros and cons of each choice as you delve into the financial market. It’s highly competitive to be a freelancer without agency experience so that can be a good place to start.

Find great assignments in financial consulting when you contract with Venteon temporary financial jobs.

Bookkeeper/Accounting Manager

• Highly experienced/full charge
• Perfect for small/medium sized businesses
• Extremely solid and stable career path
• Spent last 14 years with a family-owned engineering firm in northern Oakland County
• Highly proficient in QuickBooks, including implementation experience
• Positive, energetic, and highly detailed
• Will add instant value in both the bookkeeping and office management arenas
• Dale Carnegie trained and a Notary Public

Senior Financial Analyst

• Experience in manufacturing and services industries
• 5+ years of contracting experience
• 15 years total Finance and Accounting Experience
• Strong end-user technical skills (SAP, BPC, Hyperion, etc.)
• Proven resource with a personality that truly blends well with teams
• Available immediately for assignments as short as 2 weeks

Experienced CFO / Corporate Controller   

• A driven results oriented Executive
• Significant experience in managing financial functions to improve corporate efficiencies and profitability
• Ability to achieve goals in a fast paced, deadline driven environment
• Skilled communicator comfortable interfacing with all levels within the company
• Experience working within international organizations in Japan, Europe and Central America
• Reporting, Budgeting, & Forecasting
• Treasury /Change Management
• Business Leadership/Strategic Planning
• Transfer Pricing, Activity Based Costing
• J-Sox, ERP Systems, Information Technology

Big 4 Senior Associate – Risk Assurance / Internal Audit

• 6 years of public accounting experience providing audit and non-audit services to a number of local, national, and international fortune 500 companies in industries including automotive, utilities, consumer & industrial products, health care and financial services.
• 5 years of audit supervisor experience.
• Managing client relationships
• International team/Internal subject matter expert coordination
• Performing risk assessments
• Overall project management activities.
• Independently managed a Sarbanes Oxley readiness engagement which included facilitating training to management, scoping, assigning and reviewing work performed, as well as tracking and providing status updates to key stakeholders and upper management.
• Conducted & supervised internal controls, SOX controls and business process control assessments

Believe it or not, the right software package can do a lot to increase productivity in your accounting department. In fact, the one-two combination of a time clock coupled with time attendance software can get your staff motivated in more ways than you’ve probably ever thought possible. There are a lot of reasons this is true. Here are a few you might want to keep in mind as you brainstorm new ways to motivate your staff. Just remember that this software might feel like a stick and it only works if you dangle a few carrots (rewards, bonuses, etc.) in front of your workers to really get the most from the software solution.

1)   Tracking. Many companies have very relaxed policies about starting the time and staying in an “on the clock” mentality. It’s part of the problem that many companies that hire salaried rather than hourly employees face. A lot of time is wasted around the water cooler or simply getting set up for the day. If you had your employees punch a time card or “clock in” immediately before going to work for the day and held them accountable for their time on the clock you’d be surprised how much more productive they would be. Not just because they’re being monitored, but because they are more aware of where their time is being spent (and wasted) throughout the day.

2)   Productivity. There are actually two reasons employees are more productive in this situation. First, as mentioned above, they are more aware of their time. Second, they are aware that their time and accomplishments are being monitored. It’s a powerful combination. Employees, in general, want to be viewed as assets to the business. They want to seem indispensible. They are going to do their best to impress by providing top-notch results day in and day out.

3)   Focus. The bottom line is that this software combination will have employees putting in a more determined and focused effort for a longer, sustained period of time in each and every work day. It will make a massive difference in the overall productivity of each and every employee in the company—especially in combination with the tracking software and reports that will be used to help evaluate employees.

4)   Morale. While this might not be the first improvement that comes to mind, it’s usually a significant one that’s definitely worth mentioning. Employee morale gets a huge boost when those who are working hard are finally recognized for their contributions and those who are milking the system or treading water are also revealed by the tracking software.

If the time has come to make changes in the way your business runs—for the sake of improved productivity and/or morale—this is one method you might want to take a nice long look into.