Thanks for tuning in to CPA Life's special rebroadcast of John Randolph's appearance on the who's really the Boss podcast with Rachel and Marcus Dillon. They discuss their firm's experience with Benaiah Consulting, and John shares his insider insights into the recruitment landscape in public accounting. Welcome to who's really the boss and CPA Life. Welcome back to another episode of Who's Really The Boss Podcast. Hey, thanks for having me back. We are excited to have a guest with us.
We have John Randolph. Welcome John. Hey, how are you guys doing? I'm excited to be here with you guys and talk to you a little bit about your business and our business and everything going on in the staffing world as it pertains to accounting. Absolutely. Thanks for being here, man. So, John, give us a little self intro because we actually have come to know you a lot more really. So give us self intro of who you are and you can share as much or as little as you'd like.
So that's, that's always kind of a loaded question. Um. Husband, 28 years, dad of two girls that are amazing young women. My wife and I used to joke when our kids were little and say that, uh, you know, you're doing a halfway decent job if other adults enjoy being around your kids. Hmm. Now that our kids are grown, we get grief when we don't invite them somewhere.
And so we've changed that saying and flipped it a little bit and say, you know, you did half a decent job if your adult children enjoy being around you. Yeah. So we enjoy the fact that we get to be around our little girls. Uh, I say little girls grown women now, but uh, I've owned Benaiah Consulting Group as it sits, as the business that is today for eight years. We focus strictly on partnering with what I refer to as.
Locally owned, small to mid-size CPA firms, advisory firms and consulting firms. So love the niche that we're in. Love the people that we deal with because just like you guys, your small business owners just like I am, love the fact that we can provide the type of solutions we can provide to firms like you guys and not worry about, Hey, how's this gonna fit into our business plan? What about the other big Fortune 500 clients or big four firms?
We are narrowly focused on solving the problems of firms like you. Well, John, can I ask you one more question about the name of your business about Consulting Group? Can you tell me a little bit about where did the. Absolutely. So the way that I tell the story is in the Old Testament, when you get into the book of Second Samuel, it starts talking about David's mighty man. And David, in effect had what we would refer to today as his own secret service.
So David had his Secret service detail, and the head of David's Secret Service detail, if you will, was a guy by the name of Benaiah. It doesn't list a lot in scripture about Benaiah, but there's about four or five references to Benaiah. But the first one is, one of the feats that he accomplished was he chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day and killed it with his bare hands. Through that process, I read a book called In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. It is about chasing lions in your life.
And instead of turning and running when things get tough, digging in, leaning into God and figuring out a way to come up with a solution. So that's how the name of the firm came into play was, uh, through that book and through that scripture, man. Were you wrestling with some lions? Uh, at that time? You know, at, at that point in life, Marcus, I was le wrestling with some serious lions. Uh, I think we all go through phases of life where we do that. Yeah, that's good stuff.
I think that's gonna be added to my, um, bookshelf right in the next, or my coming up reads. That's good. Before we get started, we like to always ask our guests the best piece of advice they've ever been given. That way if our conversation goes south or sideways, at least we've left the listeners with something good right from this episode. So, best piece of advice you've ever been given. Um, that's a really hard, that's probably the hardest question to answer.
Thinking about, you know, we talked about beforehand, um. I, I've been very blessed. I grew up in a house where my parents were married 68 years and, and my dad was just a blue collar, hands, dirty mechanic guy that owned his own business. Mom was a school teacher, so there was always banter in our house and wisdom being thrown around.
My dad didn't talk a lot of it when he did, it was usually pretty profound and probably one of the biggest things that I took away from my life at home with my dad was no one is going to work harder for you to succeed. I. Then you're willing to work yourself. And that was my dad's nice way of always telling me, look, I'll, I'll invest in you. I'll help you succeed.
I'll do all the things that you want and need me to do as your dad and as a supporter, but I'm never gonna work more at it than you are. So I've, I've always kept that in mind that, uh, people are only gonna pour into me what I'm willing to pour into myself. Yeah, that's good. So have you used that on your daughters?
Oh, that was used a whole lot, Marcus, that, uh, there's, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of loyalism as my daughters have come to call them, that they had thrown at them from, from me, from my dad, so That's awesome. That's good stuff, man. So appreciate you sharing that. And it's great.
Every time we ask that question, it's like from a previous generation, like it's, it's usually something that's handed down and continues to be handed down, so I'm sure you know, I. 20 years from now, your grandkids or, you know, different generations will be saying, you know, this is what was taught to me, so it's cool. Yep. Yeah, you, you gotta love that. Yeah. Well I appreciate you joining us here today.
I'm gonna give a little bit of background how we've come to know you, um, and then how we've specifically been working with you here recently. So, John, you have a podcast, the CPA Life Podcast, and you asked me to be on that. A while back, maybe one, two years ago. Mm-hmm. Which, very fortunate to do that. I don't know what you saw in me to. You know, come as a guest, but was very honored to do that.
You've had a lot better guests, uh, before and after me, so, uh, maybe just setting the bar really low for everybody else was what you did with me. So, um, but CPA Life, you can go check that out. We'll link to it as well. A lot of great stuff there. I've had some friends that have been on it and listen to them and got to know them more too in that process. So you're a great. Interview kind of through the podcast and probably through your day job, what you do with recruits. So thank you.
Um, but yeah, here recently, obviously we've been connected even after that kinda reached out to you, we had a, a need, uh, for a team member, a client controller specifically, which, similar background to a tax manager out there in the open market. You know, just like anybody that loves doing stuff ourselves, we took a stab at it to try to fill that position ourselves.
First, I. Yeah, just in that process I was like, there's probably somebody else we really trust and know that we're connected to, to kind of help us with this process because of some frustrations that we were seeing in those initial resumes and responses we were getting. So we reached out to you about that time and um, it was after a team member had left. So after November, kind of December timeframe, not the best time to hire somebody. Um, people have already kind of found their.
Next job prior to tax season. So yeah, I think that's what led us to engage you. And then you were able to find us a great, you know, crop of resumes. One of those we interviewed, ultimately hired, she starts next week. So excited for her journey with DBA, but that's kind of how we've. Recently worked with John, just so everybody knows Rachel, is there anything else to add to that?
No. But before, um, John, I ask you all the questions and the magic and the secret sauce of how you find great people. I just wanna share that. Marcus, will you share what we did before we reached out to John with very little success? So it, we've come a long way even in this. So we posted on LinkedIn, we boosted that post. Um, I like the little hiring, you know, thing, um, around your picture. Every time we do that, we seem to get a lot of additional followers for DBA.
I think your posts get boosted as well because you're an EM hiring employer, so that's prob probably part of the LinkedIn algorithm, but we only making money, so, so they're gonna boost that. Yeah. And so we, we spent I think over two to three weeks, maybe it went a month. We spent about five or 600 bucks, you know, just to kind of boost that post and. We got resumes, uh, man, do we get resumes? You know, so like we got all kinds, all industries, all backgrounds, all nations.
Um, pretty much so in that process, you know, you can definitely find a diamond in the rough, so to speak, or even try to go after people. I've had some success with that in prior years. Like where I would identify, hey, this person would be really great for DBA based on. What they share or you know, who I know them to be through just additional connections. So we've had that luck before. But this time around, it just got our head shaking, like, what is going on in the market today?
The people that we have in our mind, do they even exist? Right? And so that's what we did. We used LinkedIn, which has produced results in the past. Uh, man, way back when we've, we used Craigslist at one time for a job posting, and that was, that was fun. So we've, we've kind of used some different things. Indeed, Craigslist. But here recently it was LinkedIn, so.
Rachel, that was what you were kind of hoping for that I said, I mean, we didn't, we didn't go door to door knocking for anybody yet, but uh, we were pretty close, so, yeah. Not yet. So John, is that common of what you see when accounting firms come to you? Where are they looking or do they typically just, are they smarter than us and just come to you first?
No, I, I think that, uh, I think that everybody, regardless of what it is that we're trying to do, ob now, obviously there are things that we look at as individuals, business owners, homeowners, whatever it is. There are things you look at and go, you know what, that's outside of my scope and my bandwidth. If, if there's something that goes wrong here at the house that has to do with electrical or plumbing, there's a phone call that's gonna get made. I, I'm not gonna touch it. Outside of that.
I'll, I'll try it and, and if it doesn't work, then I'm gonna call somebody. I, I'll give you a perfect example. We moved a year ago. Downsize our house, downsize our land. I needed to dig a trench that was gonna be about 250 yards, basically a ravine to, to steer some water away from the house where we built. And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking it's dirt. It can't be that hard. I, I mean, I drove a skid steer in college. I, I'm gonna run a track hoe. I'm gonna dig this.
What's the worst that could happen? It's dirt. I spent $650, rented a track hoe. Dug about 60 feet of it in nine and a half hours. Got off that thing and called a dirt guy, got a bid, $6,000 and I told my wife, that's gonna be the best $6,000 I've ever spent, ever. Had I not done that, I would've walked outside, seen that trench for the next, however long we live here. And thought to myself, I could have done that. I absolutely could have done that. Why'd I spend that money?
So sometimes we have to do those things to learn. You know what, maybe that's not in my wheelhouse. So in answering your question, yeah, that that's a normal process and a normal step that I think everybody goes through to try to see, Hey, I. Can I get this done, whether it's on my own or I've had bad experiences, or man, I just don't want to spend, or I don't have the money to spend.
It's a multitude of things, but that's typically what we'll see is those are the resources that people are leaning on and they're great resources at times. Yeah. Let's start with the big question. Are there qualified in quality accounting professionals? Available to work. I think we're being told something different that there are none. So if you just find like a living, breathing person, um, hire them. But are there qualified and quality accounting professionals available to work? Easy answer.
Yes, there are. They're out there. It, it's just a matter of putting in the time, energy, and effort to, to find those people, to engage with those people, to know where to go. To know what to say.
Here's the, the biggest challenge I think that most firms don't understand, and maybe they do, and maybe maybe most public accounting firm leaders don't want to address it or deal with it, or they don't think it really affects them, and that is the industry as a whole, from an employment standpoint, doesn't have the greatest reputation in that two to eight year, two to 10 year.
Employee model, they, they just don't, because the preponderance of those people are spinning their wheels working 80 hours a week at a big four or top a hundred national firm. And so that's, that's the news that's getting out there on Reddit. Ongoing concern on Glassdoor. That's what people are seeing is this is a horrible work life balance. I hate this place. Get me outta here. Kind of mindset. They're out there. They just have to be dug into a little bit more than, than just the surface.
I'll give you some numbers. I'm a huge stat person. We track pretty much anything and everything we can track in our system. Played baseball all through high school, college. It, it allowed me to get a college degree, so I love numbers, love stats. We did a survey 2019. We redid that survey last year. One simple question, we sent it to 600 people. The first year. We got, I think 550 responses. This time we got about 460 responses. But the question was real simple.
If you have made a job change, and this was only sent to people with a public accounting background. If you've made a job change in the last 18 to 24 months, or you're contemplating making a job change in the next 18 to 24 months, did you or would you respond to a job posting from another CPA firm in 2019? 83% of the people said they did not or would not. In 2024, 78% of the people said they did not, or they would not. So we're getting better. We're getting better.
But again, I like to take that and put it in real live numbers. If there's 10 people that are qualified for a job that someone posts qualified, forget whether they're interested, they're just qualified. Seven to eight of them are never even gonna send their resume in. That leaves two to three, that's it. Two to three that are gonna raise their hand and say, Hey, I'd like to know more. Yeah, I think that like data, uh, I love that.
And I'm gonna ask you about some other data that you shared here recently in a post, but I. I think first, so people do exist. They're out there. Part of it, and you may speak to this, like what we see is. When we test, like even our team and do some just general testing Enneagram or things like that to learn more about ourselves and each other and how we work better together. A lot of accountants are loyalists, right? And so a lot of accountants live through and you get calloused and you.
Sometime in your career, you wore those hours or those nights as a badge of honor, but maybe not your whole career, right? Mm-hmm. And so we see a lot of loyalists. Um, and I know that whenever you and I were, were talking about like, Hey, what would it look like to get some help on placing someone in this role?
You went through, like how you identify people who could even be looking potentially for a change or have recently had a change, and maybe it wasn't the change that they thought it was gonna be. Could you give a little bit of background about that process? What you and your team do to even like go find or go touch those qualified people? Like you said, people with public accounting backgrounds that have actually worked in accounting.
So I, I think that one of the things that gives us a little bit of an advantage in the space that we play in is this is all that we do. And while that may not seem like it's that big of a deal. It's, it's huge. Um, I spent, uh, Marcus, Rachel, I, I spent half my career with two large national recruiting firms that are known for their accounting finance practices. When you've got sitting on your desk.
A job wreck that is from a staff accountant at a manufacturing company to a financial analyst at a bank, to a senior auditor at a public accounting firm, and a CFO at a hundred million dollar manufacturing company. And that's just four or five of the 30 that you have sitting on your desk. And when you multiply that to a team of five, to eight to 10 people, now you've got 50 to a hundred drop job wrecks that you're juggling as a team.
You are speaking to anybody and everybody that's got a background in accounting. You are doing that from the process of, let's face it, sales. So you're gonna shoot at the closest targets and the lowest hanging fruit. And so if again, a stat, I'll give you 83% of the conversations we have with people. Somewhere in the first 10 minutes we are told, I hate what I do. Get me outta here. I don't wanna be in public accounting.
So if I'm sitting at another recruiting firm and I've got 30, 40, 50, 60 open recs sitting on my desk, plus what's on my teammate's desk, and somebody says in the first 10 minutes, I hate public accounting. Get me outta here. The response is, Hey, not a problem. 'cause I've got 50 to 70 other jobs that have nothing to do with public accounting. Let's talk about those. In our business, all we do is public accounting. That's it. So I don't have controller CFO jobs to talk to people about.
I don't have a senior accountant at a bank to talk to somebody about, I've got, I got a tax manager job, I got a client controller job. I've got a a CS senior accountant. I got a tax senior manager. That's what I've got on my desk. That's it. So we are spending all day long reaching out and engaging with people in that space. We are sending emails, we are sending InMails on LinkedIn. We are farming our database. We, we've got anywhere from.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 to 300 messages that are going out on a daily basis to people just touching base. And with, with AI today and with technology today, we can personalize that to a pretty nth degree. It's not like it was even a year ago. There is stuff that we can do in that that that creates a lot of personalization through the conversations that we're having and documenting and information that we're pulling offline on people so we can at least. We just want to engage.
We just want to get a response. 'cause if I can get people to start talking, then I can start, you know, pulling on that thread just a little bit. And it may not bear fruit for us today. It may not bear fruit for six months to a year. It may not be for four years, but we're gonna continue to pull on that thread. We're gonna continue to engage with that person.
We're gonna continue to talk to the that person because there's going to be opportunities that may check the right boxes that we've been able to learn about what's important to them. And a lot of times we'll have people say to us that we reach out to you, Hey, now's not a good time. Hey, that sounds like a great opportunity, but I'm happy where I'm at. We are gonna do everything that we can to continue to stay in front of those people on a consistent basis.
Yeah. One quick question, because we talked about loyalist and you just mentioned people that say, I'm not in a position to change. How silent does it go from January through April? Um, it's, it's pretty, I mean, it's pretty silent from a proactive perspective. We, it's, it's funny 'cause the way that we design our outbound engagement is it's pretty high. You know, throughout the year it ebbs and flows, but it's pretty high in November.
Gets higher in December, gets a little higher in January, and then we start tapering off and we are virtually non-existent in someone's emails, text messages. Um. Anywhere that we don't have a relationship already, we are silent because I know that I am the last person. Whether it's someone that's hiring or somebody that's looking to make a job change, I'm the last person they have mental bandwidth for.
So we try to be respectful of that, but even when we're reaching out to people with the stuff that we're doing, our response rate from people coming back, even if that response rate is, Hey, thanks, I'm busy. Our response rate is less than about 2.5% from about mid-March till. Around the week before the 15th. Week before the 15th, we start to see a little bit more engagement. Pick up. Yeah. They're just, they're just watching stuff, making sure nothing blows up from a filing sign standpoint.
And they're like, yeah, that was brutal. Or they're running like crazy in that last week and at two o'clock in the morning when they're shutting down their computer, they're thinking, let me just see what might be out there. 'cause I'm dying right now. A glimmer of hope to get through the week. Right. You know? Exactly. Yeah, I think that that's prime opportunity when people are at that breaking point of I'm never doing this again.
That pain, the pain of staying the same gets greater than the pain of even entertaining a different solution or a different opportunity. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. There's a, there's a little window in there right at the end, before the deadline, um, and then a few days after. Something happens and they start to forget day by day how brutal it actually was, um, during those first couple of months. Yep. And ask us how we know.
We, we played that game for a few years in a row ourselves with what we were willing to sacrifice and take on and say yes to, because it's just for a few weeks and then it'll get better. Thankfully, we no longer operate that way. So tell me John. You mentioned that you know, the candidates that you're talking to or prospective candidates that you're talking to, they'll latch onto something.
What are some of those things that candidates latch onto the, that gets them excited enough to continue exploring an opportunity? Um, it, it's Rachel, it's really not rocket science. We, when we talk to candidates and we hear that, get me outta here, don't want to do this. What we'll typically ask candidates at that point, you know, we don't tell 'em, Hey, this is, sorry. All we, all we do is public accounting, so we have nothing to talk to you about.
Um, what we do is we'll dig into why, what is it about what you're doing that is just so horrific? What's got you to this point? We hear the exact same answers. For the most part just said differently. So a lot the same ways, but we hear the same answer, the same four or five answers. Number one is work life balance. I don't have a life. My hours are ridiculous. I'm micromanaged, billable hours, utilization realization issues. I hate filling out time sheets. I hate that.
You know, it's never enough. I'm just a cog in the machine is all I am. So we, we hear a lot of the same things and then we'll talk to 'em about. What do you like about what you do? You've been there two years, five years, eight years, 10 years. You've been in the industry that long, whatever it may be. You obviously don't hate everything about it. Tell me what it is that gets you going in the morning. I love the variety. I. I love to make a difference in the clients that I work with.
I love the fact that the clients that I work with are small to midsize businesses and you know, if, if I make a difference in their organization, it's not just their organization, it's probably their lives as well. Or if they're working at a big firm. You know, I love the complexity of the work that I do. So we hear a lot of those same things.
So when, when we talk to candidates and we speak to them about things that are gonna check the right boxes, we focus on the things that we hear that excite them. The things that drive them crazy. What's the exact opposite of that? They get jazzed about work-life balance. You mean I can work for a firm that I'm not gonna be told in January that I gotta have 60 to 65 billable hours already, or I'm gonna work for a firm that maybe they track hours, but it's strictly to understand scope of work.
It's not for billing. I'm not gonna get beat up every Friday because I didn't work enough hours. Those are huge. The ability for people to have the flexibility to have a life from eight to five work for a firm that understands that, hey, I got two kids that are under the age of 12 years old and, and sometimes curve balls fly at me that I just don't see coming.
I need somebody that understands that and somebody that understands that, while it may seem like a natural outflow for you guys or a lot of the other clients we work with, you'd be surprised still to this day, how many people just don't get it. They don't get it. So those are things that when we talk to people, their eyes light up, they get a smile on their face. They're excited about what we're talking about. Compensation obviously plays into that.
But I, I think that we're at a point in the world today in accounting where there's not a huge disparity in compensation between firms. There's some, there's definitely some, but the thing that I talk to candidates about constantly whenever we start talking about compensation, especially if there's other comp on the table from other opportunities they're looking at, is you're gonna earn every dime of that compensation.
They're going to get their value out of you at that comp for what they're paying you. We've got a candidate that just took an offer for another firm versus an offer we had on the table that was a eight year tax manager, CPA at $175,000. I. It's a, it's a mid-size firm. It's not a large national firm. It's a mid-size firm, but 175,000 plus a $10,000 sign-on. And I'm very well aware of who the firm is.
I know how they treat their people, and I let the person know, look, you're, you're gonna earn every dime at 1 70, 1 75. You are, you're gonna work for the money you're getting. And if you're okay with that, God bless you. Go knock the cover off the ball. Yeah. I think that's really helpful. So obviously a lot of accountants listen to us, uh, ramble on and talk about our mistakes. They probably all just backed up and highlighted what you shared as far as compensation.
So can you share, you know, 'cause going into even posting a job, maybe you don't know what compensation should be. And I know there's a variety of factors. You could probably speak to that as well. What drives the range of compensation, but. What are some acceptable ranges for really looking at three different roles, right? Like an entry level, maybe bookkeeping, accounting, and then like you said, that tax manager. I think that's a really important role.
And then the other one is everybody is looking for, you know, hopefully that director level, that advisor, that that leader that can kind of get plugged into the firm. So could you share some like ranges of what you see and even what impacts those ranges on those three different roles? Absolutely.
You know, on that first tier that we're talking about, that, that staff accountant, bookkeeper, accounting specialist kind of person, I think a lot of the things that drive compensation there is, do we need a degree? Do we not need a degree? If we need a degree, does it have to be any accounting degree or would you look at somebody with just, you know, any kind of a bachelor's degree?
You know, so trying to understand what some of the requirements are there, but stereotypically what we'll see as a comp. For that type of a position, anywhere from about 45 to 70 5K is kind of what we've seen. There's obviously some that we've seen that are a little higher. There's some that, well, we really haven't seen any that are lower. We'll, typically if we see something that's lower, we'll try to advise people.
I. Hey, you're, you're probably not gonna have a lot of success, or they haven't had success, and now they're talking to us and we'll let them know. That's why they haven't had success. But stereotypically, that's kind of a range that we'll see at that level and is a workable range. Again, depending on, depending on the skillset they're looking for, someone's looking for a degree with two to four years experience, they're obviously gonna be at the higher end of that range.
If they're looking for somebody that is non-graded with two or three years experience, there's a wide range in there they can look at. Okay. At that manager level, there's a pretty big window there. A lot's gonna be driven by firm size. A lot's gonna be driven. And, and when I say firm size, again, as I, as I said a minute ago, there's not a drastic difference from what we've seen. Over the last two to three years, there's not a drastic difference in compensation.
Once you start getting at a manager level and above, now you start getting at partner level, principal level. Yeah, there gets to be some differences there because maybe there's a few more dollars to work with that are incentive based. But at that tax manager level, we are seeing anywhere from, um, here's, here's the best way to answer that question.
If I talked to a client and they said they're looking for a tax manager, and the compensation was under $90,000, we'd be really hard pressed to find somebody, even if we were looking for somebody that wasn't certified yet. So at least 90,000 is kind of where we are advising clients. They need to be from a manager perspective, and that comp range could go all the way up to 150, 160.
Again, depending on the size of the firm, the complexity of the work, different variables are gonna come into play there, but that's kind of what we are seeing. That's a workable comp range that we feel like we can bring value to the table with a client at that advisor level. That senior manager, director level of a person, again, depending on the size of the firm, we're gonna be looking for a client that's compensating anywhere from about 130, 140.
And north of that is is where where we would need to see compensation to be competitive. And again, a lot of it just depends on size of the firm. Some of it becomes in that level, some of it does become geography. You know, we've, we've got a client that's in Buffalo, New York that just hired a senior manager over their trust and estate group through US. Comp range we were at was a little bit north of 200.
We were looking at people with comparable experience in New York City and those guys were making 350 to 400,000. And you know, my advice to those guys was, Hey, stay working in New York City because you're not gonna make that outside of New York City unless you work for a firm based in probably San Francisco or LA or maybe Seattle. Yeah. You're gonna give a lot of that back in taxes. Uh, absolutely. Absolutely. To the variety of different, uh, taxing authorities there. Um, yeah.
But no, that, that's really, that's really helpful, those ranges. There was a lady that, that I spoke with, I ironically, for y'all's role, that had the background that we were looking for, had all of the things that check the right boxes. She's in la. Hmm. I mean, she was not gonna budge off 1 70, 1 75 base. And I told her, I said, look, I'm, I'm gonna be honest with you, in, in the market you're in, you're worth every dime you are asking for.
I can't sit here and tell you that you're not gonna get it. You're probably gonna get it from somebody. I just don't have that on the roles that I'm working on right now, based on, you know, the level of, of experience she had, what she brought to the table, but in the marketplace, she was in la. If she looked at San Diego or San Francisco, she'd probably get what she was looking for.
Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about, or tell all of us a little bit about, are people still looking for completely in office, local positions? Do you see mostly hybrid to remote? What is the makeup of the business candidates you're working? Request for location. Here's the best way I can answer that question. Time to fill.
If we're working a job that is 100% completely remote, I don't care what the job is, it could be a staff accountant, it could be a senior manager, director, principal, partner. Obviously you get a little higher. There's some more nuances, but let's just say staff, accountant, up to a manager. Our time to fill on a role like that is between 30 and 45 days. Hybrid role in office. Two, three days a week. And, and when I say hybrid, I'm not talking, Hey, we're flexible.
They can be in the office whenever they want. I'm talking, there's a schedule. We need people in the office Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Friday, whatever it may be. Time to fill on a role like that is between 45 days and three months, 100% in office. Our time to fill on a role like that is about seven and a half to eight months. So we've, we've got a client in, uh, the DC area. They're pretty much in office full-time. They're off on Fridays, but they're pretty much in office.
Full-time and through our talent advisory model, we, we worked with them, took on all of their recruiting this past year. We were able to fill nine positions with them over the last year, staff level and up. But there was one senior manager, director level job that we worked on, and we started working on that job in January of 24. We had a candidate start in January of 25.
We had, we got to the altar with a couple of people, but when it came down to really thinking about getting in my car four days a week and driving to the office, they pulled out. Are there any other, I'll call them red flags. But kind of that gives a candidate pause. So you've kind of presented this opportunity with a company. Maybe they've had a discovery call with them. Is there anything that they start to get cold feet or, or give pause?
Like, I don't know if I wanna proceed with this company? I think probably the biggest thing that we see there is a slow process. People wanna work for people that are decisive. Know how to make decisions. You know, we all sell candidates. Everything you do in this process is a part of the interview process. Everything you do well, that sword has two sides to it. Everything that you do as a business owner and a business leader is a part of the interview process.
And if things get delayed, if there's no communication, if things just drag on, that's a red flag. We try to get clients to understand. When you interview people, you need to approach the end of that interview with one of three very simple thoughts in mind. One hire meaning. If it's up to me completely, we're hiring this person. Now, there may be other steps in the process and we're gonna expedite those and move those along. But hire, or no, not hire, we're passing. They don't fit.
My experience has been in three decades of doing this, whether I'm hiring people for me or interviewing people for my clients, when I hang the phone up, when I end a Zoom call, when I walk out of an interview, there's a part of me that knows that I know that I know this is a yes or this is a no. Now there is a small percentage that I'm not sure, and if that's where we fall, then let's figure out what do we need so that we are sure. Do we need an interview? Do we need more data on the person?
Do we need an assessment done? What has to happen to get us to either hire or don't hire? I think that if firms can move that process along or effectively communicate about what the delays are, what's slowing things down, because those are things that people are going to take into account when they start looking at how do they manage their people, how do they run their firm? What am I gonna encounter when I step into this organization?
So what you're saying is don't reach out to people at nine o'clock on a Saturday because they, they see that you're working at nine o'clock on a Saturday, and they may see that as part of their future, so they may opt out of moving forward. If people are going to do that, I would strongly advise, begin that message with. Hey, I normally am not working on Saturday, but I'm catching up on some stuff. I'll, I'll some. This past Saturday, Cindy was gone.
So I'm work it was, that was Sunday afternoon. I typically shut off Friday at five o'clock. Unplug I'm out. Um, but Sunday I was working. I was sending emails to people while I was bouncing back and forth between my office here and the game and there, but I was sending every email and saying, Hey, I'm normally not working on a Sunday, but here's what I'm doing. My wife's not here. I'm trying to catch up on some stuff. If you're working or you're available, great.
If not, this can wait till Monday. I think it's important that you do that. That's a great, that is a great observation, Marcus, because there are people that will do that. And I can tell you, speaking from experience, years ago I was interviewing for a regional VP job with a firm outta Houston.
And the only communication I, I wasn't actively looking a recruiter that reached out to me and the only communication I would ever get from the president of the company was somewhere between 11 at night and three in the morning Every time. And after about two weeks of that, I decided, you know what? I don't think that's the kinda life I wanna buy into. Yeah, no, that's good. I'll share a little bit about our most recent, um, hiring process, which follows how we typically do our hiring process.
Um, but typically when we have a candidate. I will have a discovery call with them. While it looks and sounds a whole lot like an interview, I don't really ask any technical accounting questions at all during that call. I'm really looking for culture fit. Are they going to fit with our team? Are they going to mesh well? I. How do they present? Obviously on camera we hire remote people, so that's kind of like, can they join the meeting with me?
Does all of their technology work or do they know how to address it? If it doesn't, I, I mean, I am literally analyzing every single thing during that call, even though. Not asking technical accounting questions. And then I saved that for the people who would probably know the answers better than I do to those kinds of questions. But this last time, so we had the discovery call with our candidate and then, uh, and then we had already decided as a leadership team if we're going to proceed.
Two dates and times. Like we had already said it. We had already put holds on our calendar just in case, so that way before Tiffany who will be working with us. But that way before Tiffany and I got off that call, we already went ahead and scheduled that. And one was for like a day later and one was for the Monday after the weekend that was coming up. And so they were very quick to come in, which I don't typically like to move that fast.
I like to take time in between to think about all of the things, to pray about it, you know, to hear or see anything that ha comes up in between. But that was really under Marcus's suggestion of like, no, we need to move fast for this. Like this time we need to go even faster than what we normally go. And so then after that. When we got off the second call, so our second, our actual interview is with our leadership team.
That way everyone has had the opportunity to ask questions and we don't have to go back to the candidate again. It's either, at that point it's a yes, we're gonna make an offer or, um, thank you so much. We're not going to proceed at this time. Thankfully we were able to do all of that and move quickly. But John, I know you asked why are you having another interview already? Why is this not just an offer or a thank you for trying? Um, and so I, I appreciate that listening time is of the essence.
I, I think that, you know, one of the things that we try to do is understand what does the process look like. And that's why I said if the answer is yes after that initial conversation and there's other calls that need to be, had, other discussions need to be had like you guys did, let's get those set up. Let's get this thing moving along.
You know, we, there's a couple of mastermind groups and leadership groups in the staffing industry that I'm a part of, and we were talking about this the other day in one of our groups, and I said, look, I don't have a problem if the process is three steps long or 13 steps long. What I have a problem with is if the process is 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13 days long. That's where it becomes a problem.
Because what I think that we fail to understand when we're hiring and, and we try to convey it to the clients that we work with, is we may reach out to a candidate that maybe they're not actively looking today, but if they sit down and they put together a resume and they send that resume to us, I don't know statistically what that number is, but I gotta believe it's north of 90% of those people sit down and think, well, you know what, if I put a resume together for John.
And I'm gonna look at this job. I might as well look and see what else is out there. So they're gonna pop open indeed. They're gonna pop open LinkedIn. They're gonna go to their LinkedIn messages and look at the 37 different messages they've got in the last three days from recruiters and see if anything looks interesting there. So this candidate that we talked to on Monday that wasn't looking at all somehow by Thursday, has five different opportunities. They're juggling.
So again, real life example. Recruited a candidate last Friday for a client. Presented to 'em on Monday. She got a resume to me on Sunday. She did a first interview on Tuesday with that client. She has a second interview, final interview tomorrow, but between Tuesday and today, she's already got an offer on the table from another firm and has a final interview next Monday with another firm. So it's just that type of pace that's gotta somehow figure out.
How do we juggle, getting comfortable with the situation, but also addressing the needs of what's happening in the marketplace right now. All right. I got two questions for you, man. Uh, I'm trying to leave listeners better off. As a firm owner, how do we protect our team from recruiters? I. Oh, that is a great question and, and it's funny because I work with a content manager that we put together content for the next month, usually the last week of the month.
And I was on that call before this one. And one of the things that we talked about was exactly that subject. I think probably one of the biggest things that firm owners can do to, to create an environment and a culture that they are putting up roadblocks from firms like ours. Open, honest, candid communication. I think one of the things that people need to understand is people don't leave because of compensation. People don't leave because something bad happened yesterday.
They leave because there's been a compiling of things that have brought them to a. This point again, as as an analogy, my wife and I do marriage mentoring and marriage coaching, and one of the things that we always talk to people about is ultimately, sometimes what causes a marriage to fall apart is not the salt and the green beans. And what I mean by that is one of the biggest fights I ever saw my parents get into ever. Was over how much salt was in the green beans.
Now what I didn't know was there was a lot of stuff that was going on underneath at that time that ultimately caused my dad to blow up about how much salt was in the green beans. Obviously, they worked through it and spent, you know, the rest of their lives together for 68 years. But employment is the same way, Marcus. People don't leave because of the salt and the green beans, because they didn't get the raise they were wanting or because they didn't get the promotion they were wanting.
They leave because it's just one of a stair step or compiling of the things that have been frustrating, and that's driven by lack of communication, lack of transparency. Being open and honest with your people and letting 'em know, Hey, what does your career look like here? What does the next step look like here? What have you got to do to get to the next level? What does a compensation increase look like? If you do X, Y, Z, what does that look like and what's the timeframe that that looks like?
That is huge. In the world that we live in today. The other thing is create an environment where people feel trusted, respected, they don't feel micromanaged. Now obviously there are people maybe that aren't delivering at a level they need to be delivering at, and there's gonna be a little bit of a tighter reign put on those people. But I think that so many times the lazy thing to do as a leader, and I've been there, is you manage to your lowest common denominator.
And if this is the person that's causing us to do all the things that we do that aren't good, we, we just make everybody else live to that. And, and I think that that is completely wrong in the world we live in today. We've got a group of people in the marketplace today that want to be trusted, that wanna be given latitude, that want to be given the opportunity to get the work done. Sometimes not at the times that we want the work done, but it's getting done.
I think if people can do those things, and ironically we keep a list of firms. That we can't recruit out of. Hmm. And I don't mean like they're a client, we don't recruit outta their firm. I'm talking about firms that it doesn't matter what we say, what we dangle in front of 'em, what we offer 'em, statistically speaking, the response we always get is, thanks, but no thanks.
We keep the list of those firms and the reason why is those firms become the firms that we start doing business development with. Those are the firms that we wanna work with. That's good. Yeah. Take care of your people, candid conversations, you know, all the stuff that you know you should be doing. And then because recruiters, sometimes you have a negative, you know? There's just a negative approach, you know, with, with recruiting. Mm-hmm.
And you're taking my people, and then, you know, Intuit sends a postcard to the office asking, you know, for all this stuff. And it's like, I hear your people and your people are gonna throw those things away, or not respond, but Yeah. Like it's a building and maybe one day it's, they open that email on the wrong day. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're not gonna be able to win a hundred percent of the time.
Yeah. But if you're winning more times than you're losing and holding onto your people, then, then that's a win because at, at the end of the day, you may not be a right place for somebody today after they've been there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years. Just like somebody in your firm that's been there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years may not be the right person for where you need to get to be tomorrow. Doesn't make them a bad person, doesn't make you a bad place. It's just not a good fit any longer. Yeah, it may be.
Five years from now, you come back together. But it's all in how we handle those situations and do you create an environment that people want to be a part of, and you create that stickiness, that connective tissue that holds people on, you know, to the environment. Yeah. All right, so one of my last questions and then I'll throw it back to Rachel, for people that are gonna take a stab at trying to hire themselves, right? How long before they really.
Like that job posting goes stale and they really need to reach out to somebody like you that's qualified. And then how do they know when they're working with a good recruiter or not? So first part of your question, I think it really comes down to the individual and what do they value their time at if, if somebody has the bandwidth to spend hours.
Looking at resumes of Firestone Tire changers and no disparaging remark to Firestone Tire Changers that wanna be accountants, and that's not an exaggeration. We get at least one of those a month. If you wanna spend your time digging through those resumes, then do it. Knock yourself out. There's a lot of time, energy, and effort that goes into that. I don't know if there's a magic answer for how long. It just really comes down to where, where do you place the value in your time? I. In doing that?
Yeah. Do you have the bandwidth to do it? Do you have the energy and the patience level to do it? Because again, let's face it, if you're running a firm that is stereotypically what our client size is, which is about. 10 to 12 employees, up to 60 employees. That's our target avatar. That's the client we work with more times than not.
So more times than not, you are the person, as the firm owner that's doing that screening and something tells me, you tell me if I'm wrong, something tells me you're not doing that at two o'clock in the afternoon or 10 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday or a Thursday. You're doing that at eight o'clock at night while you're trying to watch the latest episode of friends, you're doing that on Sunday afternoon at two in the afternoon while you're trying to watch the a FC championship game.
That's when you're doing it. Mm-hmm. And more firms than not don't have a husband, wife duo like you guys. So a lot of times that firm owner, that firm leader is doing it while their spouse is in the back room, uh, or in the kitchen, deep breathing and sighing, shaking their head. Wondering why, why are you doing this? So, oh, that, that still happens. It doesn't matter that we work here. Um, somebody has boundaries in our house and someone, those boundaries are a little looser than the other.
So someone, someone needs to understand where those boundaries lie. Yeah. That's a whole other conversation we can have outside in our marriage coaching. Okay, there you go. So I, I would say a lot of it just depends on the individual when it comes down to. How do you know if you're working with a good recruiter? To me, that's an easy answer, and that is are you working with somebody that understands your business? You guys get that you are a fairly niche.
Advisory consulting, tax advisory accounting firm. You know who your customers are, and if customers come to you that are outside of your wheelhouse, you either dig in really deep to understand them, to determine whether or not you can work with them. And then if you work with 'em, you know there's gonna be more work to understand who they are, or you're gonna pass on 'em and say, Hey. We're probably not the best resource for you today.
I think that that working with recruiters the same way, somebody that understands your business, somebody that understands the needs of a locally owned small to mid-size CPA firm is hyper critical. We talk to a. Potential brand new client that was referred to us out of Memphis the other day.
You know, he's worked with three or four other recruiters and he was talking about how, you know, I'm getting CFO resumes of people that used to be tax people or somebody that was the tax manager at company A, B, C. But they've been outta public accounting for 13 years and yeah, they're doing taxes, but they're working for a $2 billion organization. They, they don't understand who our clients are. So. As a firm owner.
I think that digging into with that recruiter, Hey, how much of your business makeup is in public accounting? How much of your business makeup in public accounting is outside of the top a hundred CPA firms out there? What percentage of your placements last year were with locally owned small to mid-size public accounting firms? Oh, and by the way, if this doesn't work out, what's my recourse from a financial standpoint? Because I'm not a hundred million dollar firm.
I'm a $4 million firm, $5 million firm. So cutting you a check. Let's just say at a hundred thousand dollars, average fee's gonna be 25 to $30,000. That's a lot of money. So when I cut that check, what's my recourse if this doesn't work out? And if, uh, if that's Matt from Memphis, I owe him a text back 'cause he was asking about it. Um, so we're talking at four today, by the way.
Good. John, I just want you to know that we often get asked by our accounting friends, so firm owners and firm leaders in accounting firms, how do we hire, have we ever used a recruiter? How much does it cost? Was it worth it? And even though our candidate hasn't even had their first day when we're recording this, I can say that it was a hundred percent worth it. And I think that's a testament to you. Thank you. And integrity of wanting what's best, both for our firm and for the candidate.
Because it's what's best for both of those things. Yes, there's a little incentive because if it doesn't work out, you have to start all over and look for a new candidate to fill that position. But I think honestly, even the coaching and encouragement that you provided during the process for both sides, for the candidate as well as for us to make sure that we both got the best fit possible, uh, was very much appreciated and very much worth. It doesn't even matter how it plays out.
You know, after that first process, the beginning, the whole process with you was top notch. And just for anybody who's wondering, would we do it again? Yes, we would do it again. Uh, just so. Painless and, uh, fruitful and encouraging of an experience that we would a hundred percent do it again. I appreciate it. That, that, that really means a lot because we, uh, when we started down this path in 2018, I made it very clear to my family as well as our staff and our team that.
We are, we're gonna work with people that are just like us. We're gonna work with people that are small business owners that every single time they write a check, there's some weight to it. We are not gonna work with firms that we're just one of the masses. That means that we're probably not gonna have a ton of volume from clients. That's okay. We wanna make a difference one firm at a time, one person at a time.
And we know that that's gonna continue to build upon itself if we do that right, and we do it with everybody's best interest in mind, and it's worked. Well, thank so much. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for answering all of our questions and even providing more than we could have ever thought to ask. So thank you for being here and sharing, uh, what you do so well with everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, you guys. Uh, I, I love your podcast.
I watch it and listen to it quite often, so I love what you guys are doing. Love what you guys are doing in the industry, in the space itself. I've referred several people to your collective cohort because I think that what you guys are doing to help people run more effective and efficient firms is amazing. So you guys keep doing what you're doing as well and I'm excited to, uh, to be just a little bit of a part of that. Yeah. Well, thanks man.
And I know that you're just listening to that to get more content on what not to do for your marriage counseling. Um, so, uh, appreciate you, uh, being here and we'll make sure that people know how to find you. But, uh, thanks so much for your time today and, uh, we'll see you soon. Thanks a lot. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. Leave a five star rating and visit our website for links and show notes at CPALifePodcast.com.
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