Attracting new business isn’t the issue, but recruiting skilled staff to service it is, by Ewan Spraggon
This is particularly true for us, an accountancy based professional services firm that relies on not only technically skilled teams but also on individuals that can build mutually beneficial relationships with our clients. We receive dozens of CV’s every week from would be Baker Tilly team members, and almost without exception (on paper at least) they have the necessary qualifications and experience to tick the right boxes. We need more than that though. We need them to be able to speak with a client about their hopes and fears, be genuinely interested in them and how we can help them deliver on those hopes and allay their fears. We need our staff to be future focussed for us as a business as well as our clients. We need them to see potential in everything we do and be prepared to work hard to unlock it. We need them to not only welcome and adapt to change, but to drive it. And we need them to deliver all of this within their own persona, bringing their unique take on life to the table.
We seek out candidates who are highly driven and ambitious and who will value and nurture the relationships we build with our clients. As you can imagine, there aren’t many people out there with these skills, and previous few are accountants.
