What every employer should know about finance and accounting staffing

Hiring for finance and accounting is challenging. Unlike some other specialties, candidates often need highly-specific training or education to succeed. Many companies use staffing agencies to fill those gaps, but what companies may not be aware of is that Beacon Hill Financial offers another solution outside of traditional contract staffing.

If you want to find a comprehensive staffing solution for all of your accounting and finance needs, Beacon Hill Financial can help with our Dedicated Resources solution. This program is a creative and successful approach to staffing that our clients asked for and we delivered.

An overview of the finance hiring landscape

Over the last three years, the candidate market has continued to tighten and fewer finance and accounting candidates are available. This is due to fewer accounting and finance graduates, a shrinking candidate pool in local markets and candidates in the market that don't possess every skillset thought to be necessary for the role.

"We are encouraging our clients to bring quality candidates in based on certain skillsets and capabilities, while also being willing to train on the skillsets they may be missing. We encourage clients to be creative as they seek top talent. In an effort to keep up with today’s ever-changing and challenging market, we designed the Dedicated Resources solution to help clients where continuity is key in certain roles, projects, staff surges or similar situations.

"Clients can’t afford to have a candidate leave in the middle of an engagement, miss critical deadlines, or have an open position sit vacant for too long. We have minimized that risk by offering a number of incentives to the candidates who are in the Dedicated Resources program," said Joanna Puglisi Foulk, Managing Director and EVP, Executive Committee Member.

Beacon Hill Financial has noted that the most requested and simultaneously, most difficult roles to fill are staff and senior accountants, accounting managers and controllers. Having a creative solution for filling these roles, with today’s demand for talent and burnout among existing teams being at an all-time high, is vital to a company’s success in any industry.

When Dedicated Resources is a good fit

Reasons to choose Dedicated Resources

Engagements can vary greatly; however, if having continuity and minimizing turnover are priorities, especially if the staffing need is or could go beyond a three-month period, Dedicated Resources might be the right solution.

Scenarios where Dedicated Resources can be helpful

• Mission-critical projects – If you are working on pivotal deadline-driven projects, the reliability of Dedicated Resources can help you make those deadlines a reality. 
  
   
• Turnover – People leave positions or earn promotions every day, leaving holes in the team for existing staff to cover, in addition to their own day-to-day responsibilities. A Dedicated Resource can get started immediately, hit the ground running and make an immediate impact. 
  
   
• Cross-training - If an existing employee has vacated a role or will be out for an extended period of time, losing that in-house knowledge can be detrimental to an organization. Bring in a Dedicated Resource to cross-train and keep that knowledge in-house, until the employee returns or a replacement is identified. Our Dedicated Resource can help ensure the new hire is set up for success. 
  
   
• When requirements are a barrier - If you are struggling to fill a full-time role, our Dedicated Resource solution will ensure you have the best candidate available in the market with minimal risk of turnover. This allows you to take your time identifying the right long-term hire rather than hiring a candidate out of desperation. 
  
   
• Specialized projects - When your company is looking for talent to execute projects such as an ERP upgrade/conversion, implementation, automation, workflow optimization, or audit, pick Dedicated Resources. We can staff one individual or send in a team to complete the special project, along with a project manager to lead.
  
   
• Leaves of absence – A Dedicated Resource is able to seamlessly fill extended leaves such as family leave, medical leave, any leave of absence or sabbatical. 
  
   
• Uncertain timeline - If you're not quite sure when you want to hire or how long a project will extend, Dedicated Resources is likely the solution to best fit your need. 
  
   
• Hiring freezes - When you don’t have the ability to add to the headcount and hire a permanent employee, leverage our Dedicated Resources. 
  
   
• Layoffs - Downsizing happens. If you're searching for a cost-effective solution to fill a talent void, we can help.
  
   
• Mergers & acquisitions - Preparing for or following a merger or acquisition, change is inevitable, as is turnover and workload needs. Dedicated Resources is the ideal solution while you reassess your needs and respond to changes in your department.

How Beacon Hill's Dedicated Resources program is different

• Hire freely - Competitors with similar programs make hiring talent at the end of an engagement quite difficult, if not impossible. If they do allow for the resource to be hired, their conversion fee (or buy-out) is typically 50% of the salary. We believe in helping you hire and retain the best talent for your team. As such, we offer a 25% conversion fee, in line with our permanent placement fees and standard in the market.
  
   
• An established relationship – It’s rare to find one company that can serve all your recruiting and hiring needs. Dedicated Resources is an offering within Beacon Hill Financial that can easily be leveraged in tandem with our other staffing services, depending on your unique scenario. 
  
   
• More affordable - We strive to keep our fees reasonable so that we can provide you the best talent in the market, which allows you to do your best work and retain your staff. 
  
   
• Incentives for the talent - Our Dedicated Resources are heavily incentivized to stay loyal, committed and engaged. We provide them with a host of benefits to provide the continuity you need and retain them on the engagement. 
  
   
• Not benched – Our Dedicated Resources program is intended to identify the best talent available in the market for your specific need. Given we don’t have a benched program, you aren’t tied only to the resources on bench and become pigeonholed into a small group of people to choose from for your engagement. 
  
   
• Choices - Our Dedicated Resources have input into what engagements they take on, which means their expertise and interests are more likely to align with your goals.
  
   

Dedicated Resources for all kinds of roles

Dedicated Resources is a solution offered where continuity is key and taps into all levels and skillsets of finance and accounting. A Dedicated Resource can be supplied for the following functions:

• Chief Financial Officers (CFOs)
• Controllers
• Accounting managers
• Audit/assurance
• Tax, staff & senior accountants
• Billing specialists
• Treasury
• Financial analysts
• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Payroll
• Bookkeepers
• Credit/collections
• Cost accounting
• Banking, business & strategy consulting
• Asset management
• Funds & investments
• Risk management
• Budget analysts
• SOX compliance
• SEC reporting professionals

Beacon Hill offers comprehensive financial staffing solutions. We realize a Dedicated Resource isn't always the ideal solution. Given we have multiple options to ensure you have the help you need, we are confident that we can find the solution that works best for you. 
 

Learn More About Dedicated Resources