Hiring a Remote Senior Tax Associate. Easy?

Customer questions are the best.  If one person asks, it means 100 others have the same question.  This week’s blog covers one question that came up recently. 

“I’m hiring my third remote tax senior.  We had a failure with the last one.  How do I make sure they’ll be able to do the job, but also that they will be good fit with the existing team?”  

We had a call with the prospect to discuss.  In this discussion we learned that this was a position which would fit with someone of around 4 years experience in tax preparation.  As a remote position the firm are specifically looking for attention to detail, suitableness to work remotely and good collaboration. 

The firm was interested in testing options (bit odd to call us if they weren’t…).  They wanted to know when they should use testing.  We discussed using testing before the first interview.  This means your interview can zero straight in on the competency based interview questions.  Best idea is to use the testing on the short list after you’ve completed a phone screen.  Also don’t waste everyone’s effort interviewing those who are so far away on technical competency you (hopefully) would never have hired them anyway. 

For a skills test the Senior Tax Associate Test was an obvious choice.  For the level of experience they need we discussed the 75% question correct threshold the expert group on this test considered necessary – and that any candidate who is tested needed to come very close to this to be taken further through the process.  Anything less than that, especially for a remote role, won’t be satisfactory.   

EXCERPT FROM THE SENIOR TAX ASSOCIATE TEST REPORT

We went through the aspects of the Accountants Personality Profile they’d need to focus on, for the attributes they were specifically interested in. 

EXCERPT FROM THE PERSONALITY PROFILE REPORT

Attention to detail – pay careful attention to the Conscientiousness and Self-Discipline traits in the report.  Accountants and Tax Pros are generally detail focussed by nature, so comparing them to other accountants / tax pros makes sense – low scores (less than 4) in either of these areas might be a cause for concerns and should be probed at interview.  

Remote Working – as well as the Conscientiousness and Self-Discipline traits, which are strong indicators of good remote workers, also look to Emotional Stability, Self Confidence and Affiliation.  Remote workers are more likely to need to work independently and be ‘self starters’, so you’re looking to see how much confidence they have to make calls and move on, vs wanting support continually during the day.  We’ve written a more in-depth article on this Assessing an Accountant's Suitability for Remote Working. 

Collaboration – just because a job is remote doesn’t mean collaboration is not important, and to an extent team members need to work harder at collaboration when it needs to be positively initiated.  Look for the Warmth and Affiliation scores and dig deeper if these are lower than 4 – in that case it might be you need to focus to make sure the candidate is drawn into the team.  Very high scores might indicate someone who could be ‘needy’ so again this might require management. 

As with all personality questionnaires they ask people about their preferences in given situations, so we discussed that what you have in front of you is how someone will likely behave if they were to follow their preferences.  Some people are well aware of their preferences and when they need to work against their natural style and some are not. We discussed with the prospect that their job as an employer is to test those concerns with well crafted interview questions to determine whether, for example, someone with a high need for affiliation derives all their interactive fulfilment through their family, friends and hobbies and are more than happy to not have extensive affiliation at work. 

Figuring all this out before you start shortlisting and screening will make life so much easier (and quicker).  This prospect (now a client) told us afterwards they only needed one interview, and made an offer to the top candidate within 24 hours of the interviews – we love that!