April 2, 2025 • 55 mins
Episode 65 of CPA Life is a particularly special episode—a re-broadcast of John Randolph’s appearance on Who's Really The BOSS with Rachel and Marcus Dillon of Dillon Business Advisors! In this collaboration, John shares insights into the recruiting landscape in public accounting from his perspective as Principal at Benaiah Consulting, delving into what he sees as keys to healthy recruitment: work-life balance, a positive firm culture, flexible working arrangements, and decisive leaders, to name but a few. Rachel and Marcus recount their recent recruiting experience where they found going it on their own wasn’t working out, and they have been thrilled with their experience letting John and Benaiah handle things. John is full of practical advice on hiring practices, compensation ranges, and fostering lasting employee relationships—this is one episode you won’t want to miss.
Get the full show notes and more resources at CPALifePodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Thanks for tuning in to CPA Life'sspecial rebroadcast of John Randolph's
appearance on the who's really the Bosspodcast with Rachel and Marcus Dillon.
They discuss their firm's experience withBenaiah Consulting, and John shares his
insider insights into the recruitmentlandscape in public accounting.
(00:22):
Welcome to who's reallythe boss and CPA Life.
Welcome back to another episodeof 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 guysand talk to you a little bit about your business and our business and
(00:45):
everything going on in the staffingworld as it pertains to accounting.
Absolutely.
Thanks for being here, man.
So, John, give us a little selfintro because we actually have come to know you a lot more really.
So give us self intro of whoyou are and you can share as much or as little as you'd like.
(01:07):
So that's, that's alwayskind of a loaded question.
Um.
Husband, 28 years, dad of twogirls that are amazing young women.
My wife and I used to joke when our kidswere little and say that, uh, you know,
you're doing a halfway decent job ifother adults enjoy being around your kids.
Hmm.
Now that our kids are grown, we get griefwhen we don't invite them somewhere.
(01:31):
And so we've changed that saying andflipped it a little bit and say, you
know, you did half a decent job if youradult children enjoy being around you.
Yeah.
So we enjoy the fact that we getto be around our little girls.
Uh, I say little girls grown womennow, but uh, I've owned Benaiah
Consulting Group as it sits, as thebusiness that is today for eight years.
We focus strictly on partneringwith what I refer to as.
(01:53):
Locally owned, small tomid-size CPA firms, advisory firms and consulting firms.
So love the niche that we're in.
Love the people that we deal withbecause just like you guys, your small business owners just like I am, love
the fact that we can provide the type ofsolutions we can provide to firms like
you guys and not worry about, Hey, how'sthis gonna fit into our business plan?
(02:14):
What about the other big Fortune500 clients or big four firms?
We are narrowly focused on solvingthe problems of firms like you.
Well, John, can I ask you one morequestion about the name of your business about Consulting Group?
Can you tell me a littlebit about where did the.
Absolutely.
So the way that I tell the story is inthe Old Testament, when you get into
(02:38):
the book of Second Samuel, it startstalking about David's mighty man.
And David, in effect had what we wouldrefer to today as his own secret service.
So David had his Secret servicedetail, 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 scriptureabout Benaiah, but there's about four or five references to Benaiah.
(03:00):
But the first one is, one of the featsthat he accomplished was he chased
a lion into a pit on a snowy dayand killed it with his bare hands.
Through that process, I read a book calledIn a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.
It is about chasing lions in your life.
And instead of turning and runningwhen things get tough, digging in,
leaning into God and figuring outa way to come up with a solution.
(03:23):
So that's how the name of the firmcame 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 inlife, Marcus, I was le wrestling with some serious lions.
Uh, I think we all go throughphases of life where we do that.
Yeah, that's good stuff.
I think that's gonna be addedto my, um, bookshelf right in the next, or my coming up reads.
(03:48):
That's good.
Before we get started, we like toalways ask our guests the best piece of advice they've ever been given.
That way if our conversation goessouth or sideways, at least we've
left the listeners with somethinggood right from this episode.
So, best piece of adviceyou've ever been given.
(04:09):
Um, that's a really hard, that'sprobably the hardest question to answer.
Thinking about, you know, wetalked about beforehand, um.
I, I've been very blessed.
I grew up in a house where my parentswere married 68 years and, and my dad
was just a blue collar, hands, dirtymechanic guy that owned his own business.
(04:29):
Mom was a school teacher, so therewas always banter in our house and wisdom being thrown around.
My dad didn't talk a lot of it whenhe did, it was usually pretty profound and probably one of the biggest things
that I took away from my life athome 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 wayof always telling me, look, I'll, I'll invest in you.
(04:52):
I'll help you succeed.
I'll do all the things that youwant and need me to do as your dad
and as a supporter, but I'm nevergonna work more at it than you are.
So I've, I've always kept that in mindthat, 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
(05:19):
daughters have come to call them, thatthey 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'slike from a previous generation, like it's, it's usually something that's handed
down and continues to be handed down, soI'm sure you know, I. 20 years from now, your grandkids or, you know, different
(05:43):
generations will be saying, you know, thisis what was taught to me, so it's cool.
Yep.
Yeah, you, you gotta love that.
Yeah.
Well I appreciate youjoining us here today.
I'm gonna give a little bit ofbackground how we've come to know you,
um, and then how we've specificallybeen working with you here recently.
So, John, you have a podcast, the CPA LifePodcast, and you asked me to be on that.
(06:05):
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, butwas 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 foreverybody else was what you did with me.
So, um, but CPA Life, youcan go check that out.
(06:26):
We'll link to it as well.
A lot of great stuff there.
I've had some friends that have beenon it and listen to them and got to know them more too in that process.
So you're a great.
Interview kind of through thepodcast and probably through your day job, what you do with recruits.
So thank you.
Um, but yeah, here recently, obviouslywe've been connected even after that kinda reached out to you, we had
(06:47):
a, a need, uh, for a team member,a client controller specifically,
which, similar background to a taxmanager out there in the open market.
You know, just like anybody that lovesdoing stuff ourselves, we took a stab at it to try to fill that position ourselves.
First, I. Yeah, just in that processI was like, there's probably somebody else we really trust and know that we're
(07:09):
connected to, to kind of help us withthis process because of some frustrations
that we were seeing in those initialresumes and responses we were getting.
So we reached out to youabout that time and um, it was after a team member had left.
So after November, kind ofDecember timeframe, not the best time to hire somebody.
(07:29):
Um, people have alreadykind of found their.
Next job prior to tax season.
So yeah, I think that'swhat led us to engage you.
And then you were able to find usa great, you know, crop of resumes.
One of those we interviewed,ultimately hired, she starts next week.
So excited for her journey withDBA, but that's kind of how we've.
(07:53):
Recently worked with John, just soeverybody knows Rachel, is there anything else to add to that?
No.
But before, um, John, I ask you all thequestions and the magic and the secret sauce of how you find great people.
I just wanna share that.
Marcus, will you share what wedid before we reached out to John with very little success?
(08:16):
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, youknow, thing, um, around your picture.
Every time we do that, we seem to geta lot of additional followers for DBA.
I think your posts get boosted as wellbecause you're an EM hiring employer, so that's prob probably part of the
(08:38):
LinkedIn algorithm, but we only makingmoney, so, so they're gonna boost that.
Yeah.
And so we, we spent I think over twoto three weeks, maybe it went a month.
We spent about five or 600 bucks, youknow, 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, allindustries, all backgrounds, all nations.
(09:00):
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 successwith 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.
(09:22):
So we've had that luck before.
But this time around, it justgot our head shaking, like, what is going on in the market today?
The people that we have inour mind, do they even exist?
Right?
And so that's what we did.
We used LinkedIn, which hasproduced results in the past.
Uh, man, way back when we've, weused Craigslist at one time for a job posting, and that was, that was fun.
(09:44):
So we've, we've kind ofused some different things.
Indeed, Craigslist.
But here recently it was LinkedIn, so.
Rachel, that was what you werekind 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 yousee when accounting firms come to you?
(10:06):
Where are they looking or do theytypically just, are they smarter than us and just come to you first?
No, I, I think that, uh, I thinkthat everybody, regardless of what it is that we're trying to do, ob
now, obviously there are things thatwe look at as individuals, business owners, homeowners, whatever it is.
There are things you look at andgo, you know what, that's outside of my scope and my bandwidth.
(10:26):
If, if there's something that goeswrong here at the house that has to do
with electrical or plumbing, there'sa 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'twork, 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 wasgonna be about 250 yards, basically
(10:51):
a ravine to, to steer some wateraway from the house where we built.
And I'm looking at it andI'm thinking it's dirt.
It can't be that hard.
I, I mean, I drove askid 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.
(11:13):
Dug about 60 feet of itin nine and a half hours.
Got off that thing and called adirt guy, got a bid, $6,000 and I
told my wife, that's gonna be thebest $6,000 I've ever spent, ever.
Had I not done that, I would'vewalked outside, seen that trench for the next, however long we live here.
(11:35):
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 todo those things to learn.
You know what, maybe that'snot in my wheelhouse.
So in answering your question, yeah, thatthat's a normal process and a normal step that I think everybody goes through to
(11:55):
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 tospend, or I don't have the money to spend.
It's a multitude of things, but that'stypically what we'll see is those are
the resources that people are leaningon and they're great resources at times.
Yeah.
Let's start with the big question.
(12:16):
Are there qualified in qualityaccounting professionals?
Available to work.
I think we're being told somethingdifferent that there are none.
So if you just find like a living,breathing person, um, hire them.
But are there qualifiedand quality accounting professionals available to work?
(12:40):
Easy answer.
Yes, there are.
They're out there.
It, it's just a matter of puttingin the time, energy, and effort to,
to find those people, to engage withthose people, to know where to go.
To know what to say.
Here's the, the biggest challenge Ithink that most firms don't understand, and maybe they do, and maybe maybe most
(13:02):
public accounting firm leaders don'twant to address it or deal with it, or they don't think it really affects
them, and that is the industry as awhole, from an employment standpoint,
doesn't have the greatest reputation inthat 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 bigfour or top a hundred national firm.
(13:27):
And so that's, that's the newsthat's getting out there on Reddit.
Ongoing concern on Glassdoor.
That's what people are seeing isthis 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 littlebit more than, than just the surface.
(13:49):
I'll give you some numbers.
I'm a huge stat person.
We track pretty much anything andeverything we can track in our system.
Played baseball all throughhigh school, college.
It, it allowed me to get a collegedegree, so I love numbers, love stats.
We did a survey 2019.
We redid that survey last year.
One simple question, wesent it to 600 people.
(14:11):
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, andthis was only sent to people with a public accounting background.
If you've made a job change in the last18 to 24 months, or you're contemplating making a job change in the next 18 to 24
(14:31):
months, did you or would you respond to ajob posting from another CPA firm in 2019?
83% of the people saidthey did not or would not.
In 2024, 78% of the people saidthey did not, or they would not.
So we're getting better.
We're getting better.
But again, I like to take thatand put it in real live numbers.
(14:54):
If there's 10 people that arequalified for a job that someone posts
qualified, forget whether they'reinterested, they're just qualified.
Seven to eight of them are nevereven gonna send their resume in.
That leaves two to three, that's it.
Two to three that are gonna raise theirhand and say, Hey, I'd like to know more.
Yeah, I think that likedata, uh, I love that.
(15:15):
And I'm gonna ask you about someother data that you shared here
recently in a post, but I. Ithink first, so people do exist.
They're out there.
Part of it, and you may speakto this, like what we see is.
When we test, like even our teamand do some just general testing Enneagram or things like that to
learn more about ourselves and eachother and how we work better together.
(15:39):
A lot of accountants are loyalists, right?
And so a lot of accountants livethrough and you get calloused and you.
Sometime in your career, you wore thosehours 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 andI were, were talking about like, Hey,
what would it look like to get somehelp on placing someone in this role?
(16:02):
You went through, like how you identifypeople who could even be looking potentially for a change or have recently
had a change, and maybe it wasn't thechange that they thought it was gonna be.
Could you give a little bit ofbackground about that process?
What you and your team do to even like gofind or go touch those qualified people?
(16:23):
Like you said, people with publicaccounting backgrounds that have actually worked in accounting.
So I, I think that one of the thingsthat gives us a little bit of an
advantage in the space that weplay in is this is all that we do.
And while that may not seemlike it's that big of a deal.
It's, it's huge.
(16:45):
Um, I spent, uh, Marcus, Rachel, I,I spent half my career with two large
national recruiting firms that are knownfor their accounting finance practices.
When you've got sitting on your desk.
A job wreck that is from a staffaccountant at a manufacturing company to a financial analyst at a bank,
(17:07):
to a senior auditor at a publicaccounting firm, and a CFO at a hundred million dollar manufacturing company.
And that's just four or five of the30 that you have sitting on your desk.
And when you multiply that to a teamof five, to eight to 10 people, now
you've got 50 to a hundred drop jobwrecks that you're juggling as a team.
You are speaking to anybody and everybodythat's got a background in accounting.
(17:31):
You are doing that from theprocess of, let's face it, sales.
So you're gonna shoot at the closesttargets 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 minuteswe are told, I hate what I do.
(17:51):
Get me outta here.
I don't wanna be in public accounting.
So if I'm sitting at anotherrecruiting 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 thathave nothing to do with public accounting.
(18:14):
Let's talk about those.
In our business, all wedo is public accounting.
That's it.
So I don't have controller CFOjobs to talk to people about.
I don't have a senior accountant ata 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.
(18:36):
I got a tax senior manager.
That's what I've got on my desk.
That's it.
So we are spending all daylong reaching out and engaging with people in that space.
We are sending emails, we aresending InMails on LinkedIn.
We are farming our database.
We, we've got anywhere from.
(18:59):
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 250to 300 messages that are going out on a daily basis to people just touching base.
And with, with AI today and withtechnology 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 inthat that that creates a lot of personalization through the conversations
(19:23):
that we're having and documentingand 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 starttalking, 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 fruitfor six months to a year.
(19:44):
It may not be for four years, but we'regonna continue to pull on that thread.
We're gonna continue toengage with that person.
We're gonna continue to talk to thethat person because there's going to be opportunities that may check the
right boxes that we've been able tolearn about what's important to them.
And a lot of times we'll have peoplesay to us that we reach out to you, Hey, now's not a good time.
(20:04):
Hey, that sounds like a greatopportunity, but I'm happy where I'm at.
We are gonna do everything that wecan to continue to stay in front of those people on a consistent basis.
Yeah.
One quick question, because wetalked about loyalist and you
just mentioned people that say,I'm not in a position to change.
How silent does it go fromJanuary through April?
(20:27):
Um, it's, it's pretty, I mean, it's prettysilent from a proactive perspective.
We, it's, it's funny 'cause theway that we design our outbound engagement is it's pretty high.
You know, throughout the year it ebbs andflows, but it's pretty high in November.
(20:48):
Gets higher in December, getsa little higher in January, and then we start tapering off and
we are virtually non-existent insomeone's emails, text messages.
Um.
Anywhere that we don't have arelationship already, we are silent because I know that I am the last person.
Whether it's someone that's hiringor somebody that's looking to make
(21:09):
a job change, I'm the last personthey 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 peoplecoming back, even if that response rate is, Hey, thanks, I'm busy.
Our response rate is less than about2.5% from about mid-March till.
Around the week before the 15th.
(21:31):
Week before the 15th, we start tosee a little bit more engagement.
Pick up.
Yeah.
They're just, they're just watchingstuff, 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 thatlast week and at two o'clock in the morning when they're shutting down
their computer, they're thinking, letme just see what might be out there.
'cause I'm dying right now.
A
glimmer of hope to get through the week.
(21:51):
Right.
You know?
Exactly.
Yeah, I think that that'sprime opportunity when people
are at that breaking point ofI'm never doing this again.
That pain, the pain of staying thesame gets greater than the pain
of even entertaining a differentsolution or a different opportunity.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, definitely.
There's a, there's a little windowin there right at the end, before the deadline, um, and then a few days after.
(22:17):
Something happens and they start to forgetday 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 yearsin a row ourselves with what we were willing to sacrifice and take on and
say yes to, because it's just for afew weeks and then it'll get better.
(22:40):
Thankfully, we no longer operate that way.
So tell me John.
You mentioned that you know, thecandidates that you're talking to or
prospective candidates that you'retalking to, they'll latch onto something.
What are some of those thingsthat candidates latch onto the,
that gets them excited enough tocontinue exploring an opportunity?
(23:02):
Um, it, it's Rachel, it'sreally not rocket science.
We, when we talk to candidatesand we hear that, get me outta here, don't want to do this.
What we'll typically ask candidatesat 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 intowhy, what is it about what you're doing that is just so horrific?
(23:30):
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, butwe 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.
(23:51):
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 thingsand then we'll talk to 'em about.
What do you like about what you do?
You've been there two years, fiveyears, eight years, 10 years.
You've been in the industrythat long, whatever it may be.
You obviously don't hateeverything about it.
(24:12):
Tell me what it is that getsyou going in the morning.
I love the variety.
I. I love to make a differencein the clients that I work with.
I love the fact that the clientsthat 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 complexityof the work that I do.
(24:34):
So we hear a lot of those same things.
So when, when we talk to candidates andwe speak to them about things that are
gonna check the right boxes, we focus onthe 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 thatI'm not gonna be told in January that I gotta have 60 to 65 billable hours
(24:58):
already, or I'm gonna work for a firmthat 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 Fridaybecause I didn't work enough hours.
Those are huge.
The ability for people to have theflexibility to have a life from eight to five work for a firm that
(25:23):
understands that, hey, I got two kidsthat are under the age of 12 years
old and, and sometimes curve balls flyat me that I just don't see coming.
I need somebody that understands that andsomebody that understands that, while it may seem like a natural outflow for you
guys or a lot of the other clients we workwith, you'd be surprised still to this day, how many people just don't get it.
(25:46):
They don't get it.
So those are things that when wetalk to people, their eyes light up, they get a smile on their face.
They're excited aboutwhat we're talking about.
Compensation obviously plays into that.
But I, I think that we're at a pointin the world today in accounting
where there's not a huge disparityin compensation between firms.
(26:07):
There's some, there's definitely some, butthe thing that I talk to candidates about constantly whenever we start talking about
compensation, especially if there's othercomp on the table from other opportunities
they're looking at, is you're gonnaearn every dime of that compensation.
They're going to get theirvalue out of you at that comp for what they're paying you.
(26:31):
We've got a candidate that just tookan offer for another firm versus an
offer we had on the table that was aeight 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, but175,000 plus a $10,000 sign-on.
And I'm very well awareof who the firm is.
(26:52):
I know how they treat their people, and Ilet the person know, look, you're, you're gonna earn every dime at 1 70, 1 75.
You are, you're gonna workfor the money you're getting.
And if you're okay withthat, God bless you.
Go knock the cover off the ball.
Yeah.
I think that's really helpful.
So obviously a lot of accountantslisten to us, uh, ramble on and talk about our mistakes.
(27:15):
They probably all just backedup and highlighted what you shared as far as compensation.
So can you share, you know, 'causegoing 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 rangeof compensation, but.
(27:35):
What are some acceptable ranges for reallylooking at three different roles, right?
Like an entry level, maybebookkeeping, accounting, and then like you said, that tax manager.
I think that's a really important role.
And then the other one is everybodyis looking for, you know, hopefully that director level, that advisor,
that that leader that can kindof get plugged into the firm.
(27:57):
So could you share some like ranges ofwhat you see and even what impacts those ranges on those three different roles?
Absolutely.
You know, on that first tier thatwe're talking about, that, that staff accountant, bookkeeper, accounting
specialist kind of person, I think a lotof the things that drive compensation there is, do we need a degree?
Do we not need a degree?
(28:18):
If we need a degree, does it haveto be any accounting degree or would
you look at somebody with just, youknow, any kind of a bachelor's degree?
You know, so trying to understand whatsome 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'veseen that are a little higher.
(28:39):
There's some that, well, we reallyhaven't seen any that are lower.
We'll, typically if we see somethingthat's lower, we'll try to advise people.
I. Hey, you're, you're probably notgonna have a lot of success, or they
haven't had success, and now they'retalking to us and we'll let them know.
That's why they haven't had success.
But stereotypically, that's kindof a range that we'll see at that level and is a workable range.
(29:01):
Again, depending on, depending on theskillset they're looking for, someone's looking for a degree with two to four
years experience, they're obviouslygonna be at the higher end of that range.
If they're looking for somebodythat is non-graded with two or three
years experience, there's a widerange in there they can look at.
Okay.
At that manager level, there'sa pretty big window there.
(29:22):
A lot's gonna be driven by firm size.
A lot's gonna be driven.
And, and when I say firm size, again, asI, 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'snot a drastic difference in compensation.
Once you start getting at a managerlevel and above, now you start getting at partner level, principal level.
(29:44):
Yeah, there gets to be somedifferences there because maybe
there's a few more dollars to workwith that are incentive based.
But at that tax manager level, we areseeing anywhere from, um, here's, here's the best way to answer that question.
If I talked to a client and they saidthey're looking for a tax manager, and the compensation was under $90,000,
we'd be really hard pressed to findsomebody, even if we were looking for somebody that wasn't certified yet.
(30:09):
So at least 90,000 is kind ofwhere we are advising clients.
They need to be from a managerperspective, 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 wefeel like we can bring value to the table with a client at that advisor level.
(30:35):
That senior manager, director level ofa person, again, depending on the size of the firm, we're gonna be looking
for a client that's compensatinganywhere from about 130, 140.
And north of that is is wherewhere we would need to see compensation to be competitive.
And again, a lot of it justdepends on size of the firm.
(30:56):
Some of it becomes in that level,some of it does become geography.
You know, we've, we've got a clientthat's in Buffalo, New York that just
hired a senior manager over theirtrust and estate group through US.
Comp range we were at wasa little bit north of 200.
We were looking at people with comparableexperience in New York City and those guys were making 350 to 400,000.
(31:20):
And you know, my advice to those guyswas, Hey, stay working in New York City because you're not gonna make
that outside of New York City unlessyou 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, taxingauthorities there.
Um, yeah.
But no, that, that's really, that'sreally helpful, those ranges.
(31:43):
There was a lady that, that I spokewith, I ironically, for y'all's role, that had the background that
we were looking for, had all of thethings that check the right boxes.
She's in la.
Hmm.
I mean, she was not gonnabudge off 1 70, 1 75 base.
And I told her, I said, look, I'm,I'm gonna be honest with you, in,
(32:03):
in the market you're in, you'reworth every dime you are asking for.
I can't sit here and tell youthat you're not gonna get it.
You're probably gonnaget it from somebody.
I just don't have that on the rolesthat 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 orSan Francisco, she'd probably get what she was looking for.
(32:25):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit about,or tell all of us a little bit
about, are people still looking forcompletely in office, local positions?
Do you see mostly hybrid to remote?
What is the makeup of the businesscandidates you're working?
(32:46):
Request for location.
Here's the best way Ican 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 seniormanager, director, principal, partner.
Obviously you get a little higher.
(33:06):
There's some more nuances, but let's justsay staff, accountant, up to a manager.
Our time to fill on a role likethat is between 30 and 45 days.
Hybrid role in office.
Two, three days a week.
And, and when I say hybrid, I'mnot talking, Hey, we're flexible.
They can be in the officewhenever they want.
I'm talking, there's a schedule.
We need people in the officeMonday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Friday, whatever it may be.
(33:28):
Time to fill on a role likethat is between 45 days and three months, 100% in office.
Our time to fill on a role like that isabout seven and a half to eight months.
So we've, we've got aclient in, uh, the DC area.
They're pretty much in office full-time.
They're off on Fridays, butthey're pretty much in office.
(33:50):
Full-time and through our talent advisorymodel, we, we worked with them, took on all of their recruiting this past year.
We were able to fill ninepositions 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 workingon that job in January of 24.
(34:12):
We had a candidate start in January of 25.
We had, we got to the altar with acouple of people, but when it came down to really thinking about getting
in my car four days a week and drivingto the office, they pulled out.
Are there any other,I'll call them red flags.
(34:33):
But kind of that gives a candidate pause.
So you've kind of presentedthis opportunity with a company.
Maybe they've had adiscovery call with them.
Is there anything that they startto get cold feet or, or give pause?
Like, I don't know if I wannaproceed with this company?
I think probably the biggest thingthat we see there is a slow process.
(34:57):
People wanna work forpeople that are decisive.
Know how to make decisions.
You know, we all sell candidates.
Everything you do in this processis a part of the interview process.
Everything you do well, thatsword has two sides to it.
Everything that you do as a businessowner and a business leader is a part of the interview process.
And if things get delayed, ifthere's no communication, if things just drag on, that's a red flag.
(35:23):
We try to get clients to understand.
When you interview people, you need toapproach 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 stepsin the process and we're gonna expedite those and move those along.
But hire, or no, not hire, we're passing.
(35:46):
They don't fit.
My experience has been in three decadesof doing this, whether I'm hiring people for me or interviewing people
for my clients, when I hang the phoneup, when I end a Zoom call, when I walk out of an interview, there's a
part of me that knows that I know thatI know this is a yes or this is a no.
Now there is a small percentage thatI'm not sure, and if that's where
(36:09):
we fall, then let's figure out whatdo 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 usto either hire or don't hire?
I think that if firms can move thatprocess along or effectively communicate about what the delays are, what's slowing
(36:29):
things down, because those are things thatpeople are going to take into account when
they start looking at how do they managetheir people, how do they run their firm?
What am I gonna encounter whenI step into this organization?
So what you're saying is don't reach outto people at nine o'clock on a Saturday because they, they see that you're working
(36:51):
at nine o'clock on a Saturday, and theymay see that as part of their future, so they may opt out of moving forward.
If people are going to do that, I wouldstrongly advise, begin that message with.
Hey, I normally am notworking on Saturday, but I'm catching up on some stuff.
I'll, I'll some.
This past Saturday, Cindy was gone.
(37:11):
So I'm work it was, thatwas Sunday afternoon.
I typically shut offFriday at five o'clock.
Unplug I'm out.
Um, but Sunday I was working.
I was sending emails to people whileI was bouncing back and forth between my office here and the game and there,
but I was sending every email andsaying, 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.
(37:32):
If you're working oryou'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 greatobservation, Marcus, because there are people that will do that.
And I can tell you, speakingfrom experience, years ago I was
interviewing for a regional VPjob with a firm outta Houston.
And the only communication I, I wasn'tactively looking a recruiter that reached out to me and the only communication I
(37:57):
would ever get from the president of thecompany was somewhere between 11 at night and three in the morning Every time.
And after about two weeks ofthat, I decided, you know what?
I don't think that's thekinda life I wanna buy into.
Yeah, no, that's good.
I'll share a little bit about our mostrecent, um, hiring process, which follows how we typically do our hiring process.
(38:21):
Um, but typically whenwe have a candidate.
I will have a discovery call with them.
While it looks and sounds a wholelot like an interview, I don't
really ask any technical accountingquestions 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?
(38:41):
Obviously on camera we hire remotepeople, so that's kind of like, can they join the meeting with me?
Does all of their technology workor do they know how to address it?
If it doesn't, I, I mean, I amliterally analyzing every single thing during that call, even though.
Not asking technical accounting questions.
(39:02):
And then I saved that for the people whowould probably know the answers better than I do to those kinds of questions.
But this last time, so we had thediscovery call with our candidate and then, uh, and then we had
already decided as a leadershipteam if we're going to proceed.
Two dates and times.
Like we had already said it.
We had already put holds on our calendarjust in case, so that way before Tiffany who will be working with us.
(39:28):
But that way before Tiffany andI got off that call, we already went ahead and scheduled that.
And one was for like a day laterand one was for the Monday after the weekend that was coming up.
And so they were very quickto come in, which I don't typically like to move that fast.
I like to take time in between tothink about all of the things, to pray
(39:51):
about it, you know, to hear or seeanything that ha comes up in between.
But that was really underMarcus's suggestion of like, no, we need to move fast for this.
Like this time we need to go evenfaster 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.
(40:14):
That way everyone has had the opportunityto ask questions and we don't have to go back to the candidate again.
It's either, at that pointit'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 doall of that and move quickly.
But John, I know you asked why areyou having another interview already?
(40:39):
Why is this not just an offeror a thank you for trying?
Um, and so I, I appreciate thatlistening time is of the essence.
I, I think that, you know, one of thethings that we try to do is understand what does the process look like.
And that's why I said if the answer isyes after that initial conversation and there's other calls that need to be, had,
(41:01):
other discussions need to be had likeyou guys did, let's get those set up.
Let's get this thing moving along.
You know, we, there's a couple ofmastermind groups and leadership groups in the staffing industry that
I'm a part of, and we were talkingabout this the other day in one of our groups, and I said, look, I don't
have a problem if the process isthree steps long or 13 steps long.
What I have a problem with is if theprocess is 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13 days long.
(41:24):
That's where it becomes a problem.
Because what I think that we fail tounderstand when we're hiring and, and we try to convey it to the clients that
we work with, is we may reach out to acandidate that maybe they're not actively looking today, but if they sit down
and they put together a resume and theysend that resume to us, I don't know statistically what that number is, but I
(41:47):
gotta believe it's north of 90% of thosepeople 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 andsee what else is out there.
So they're gonna pop open indeed.
They're gonna pop open LinkedIn.
They're gonna go to their LinkedInmessages and look at the 37 different messages they've got in the last
three days from recruiters and seeif anything looks interesting there.
(42:09):
So this candidate that we talkedto on Monday that wasn't looking
at all somehow by Thursday, hasfive different opportunities.
They're juggling.
So again, real life example.
Recruited a candidatelast Friday for a client.
Presented to 'em on Monday.
She got a resume to me on Sunday.
She did a first interviewon Tuesday with that client.
She has a second interview, finalinterview tomorrow, but between Tuesday and today, she's already got
(42:34):
an offer on the table from anotherfirm and has a final interview next Monday with another firm.
So it's just that type of pacethat's gotta somehow figure out.
How do we juggle, getting comfortablewith the situation, but also addressing
the needs of what's happeningin the marketplace right now.
All right.
I got two questions for you, man.
Uh, I'm trying to leavelisteners better off.
As a firm owner, how do weprotect our team from recruiters?
(42:57):
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 talkedabout was exactly that subject.
I think probably one of the biggestthings that firm owners can do to, to create an environment and
(43:19):
a culture that they are putting uproadblocks from firms like ours.
Open, honest, candid communication.
I think one of the things thatpeople need to understand is people don't leave because of compensation.
People don't leave becausesomething bad happened yesterday.
They leave because there's been acompiling of things that have brought them to a. This point again, as as
(43:46):
an analogy, my wife and I do marriagementoring and marriage coaching, and one of the things that we always talk
to people about is ultimately, sometimeswhat causes a marriage to fall apart is not the salt and the green beans.
And what I mean by that is oneof the biggest fights I ever saw my parents get into ever.
Was over how much saltwas in the green beans.
Now what I didn't know was therewas a lot of stuff that was going on underneath at that time that ultimately
(44:10):
caused my dad to blow up about howmuch salt was in the green beans.
Obviously, they worked through itand 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 thesalt and the green beans, because they didn't get the raise they were
wanting or because they didn't getthe promotion they were wanting.
They leave because it's just oneof a stair step or compiling of the things that have been frustrating,
(44:32):
and that's driven by lack ofcommunication, lack of transparency.
Being open and honest with yourpeople 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 doto get to the next level?
What does a compensationincrease look like?
If you do X, Y, Z, what doesthat look like and what's the timeframe that that looks like?
(44:53):
That is huge.
In the world that we live in today.
The other thing is create an environmentwhere people feel trusted, respected, they don't feel micromanaged.
Now obviously there are people maybethat aren't delivering at a level they need to be delivering at, and
there's gonna be a little bit of atighter reign put on those people.
But I think that so many times thelazy thing to do as a leader, and
(45:15):
I've been there, is you manage toyour lowest common denominator.
And if this is the person that'scausing us to do all the things that
we do that aren't good, we, we justmake everybody else live to that.
And, and I think that that is completelywrong in the world we live in today.
We've got a group of people inthe marketplace today that want to be trusted, that wanna be given
latitude, that want to be given theopportunity to get the work done.
(45:38):
Sometimes not at the times that we wantthe 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'tmatter what we say, what we dangle in front of 'em, what we offer 'em,
(46:03):
statistically speaking, the response wealways get is, thanks, but no thanks.
We keep the list of those firmsand the reason why is those firms
become the firms that we startdoing business development with.
Those are the firmsthat we wanna work with.
That's good.
Yeah.
Take care of your people, candidconversations, you know, all the stuff that you know you should be doing.
And then because recruiters, sometimesyou have a negative, you know?
(46:27):
There's just a negative approach,you know, with, with recruiting.
Mm-hmm.
And you're taking my people, andthen, you know, Intuit sends a
postcard to the office asking,you know, for all this stuff.
And it's like, I hear your peopleand your people are gonna throw those things away, or not respond, but Yeah.
Like it's a building andmaybe one day it's, they open that email on the wrong day.
Absolutely.
(46:48):
Absolutely.
You're not gonna be able to wina hundred percent of the time.
Yeah.
But if you're winning more times thanyou're losing and holding onto your people, then, then that's a win because
at, at the end of the day, you may notbe a right place for somebody today after they've been there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years.
Just like somebody in your firm that'sbeen there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years may
not be the right person for whereyou need to get to be tomorrow.
(47:10):
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 thosesituations 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.
(47:30):
Yeah.
All right, so one of my last questionsand then I'll throw it back to Rachel,
for people that are gonna take a stabat trying to hire themselves, right?
How long before they really.
Like that job posting goes staleand they really need to reach out to somebody like you that's qualified.
And then how do they know when they'reworking with a good recruiter or not?
(47:54):
So first part of your question, I thinkit really comes down to the individual and
what do they value their time at if, ifsomebody has the bandwidth to spend hours.
Looking at resumes of FirestoneTire changers and no disparaging remark to Firestone Tire Changers
that wanna be accountants, andthat's not an exaggeration.
(48:15):
We get at least one of those a month.
If you wanna spend your time diggingthrough 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 amagic answer for how long.
It just really comes down to where, wheredo you place the value in your time?
I. In doing that?
(48:35):
Yeah.
Do you have the bandwidth to do it?
Do you have the energy andthe patience level to do it?
Because again, let's face it, if you'rerunning 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 workwith more times than not.
(48:56):
So more times than not, you are theperson, as the firm owner that's doing that screening and something tells me,
you tell me if I'm wrong, somethingtells me you're not doing that at two
o'clock in the afternoon or 10 o'clock inthe morning on a Tuesday or a Thursday.
You're doing that at eight o'clockat night while you're trying to watch the latest episode of friends, you're
doing that on Sunday afternoon at twoin the afternoon while you're trying to watch the a FC championship game.
(49:21):
That's when you're doing it.
Mm-hmm.
And more firms than not don't havea 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 breathingand sighing, shaking their head.
Wondering why, why are you doing this?
(49:42):
So, oh, that, that still happens.
It doesn't matter that we work here.
Um,
somebody has boundaries inour house and someone, those boundaries are a little looser
than the other.
So someone, someone needs tounderstand where those boundaries lie.
Yeah.
That's a whole other conversation we canhave outside in our marriage coaching.
Okay, there you go.
(50:03):
So I, I would say a lot of it just dependson the individual when it comes down to.
How do you know if you'reworking with a good recruiter?
To me, that's an easy answer, andthat is are you working with somebody that understands your business?
You guys get that you are a fairly niche.
Advisory consulting, taxadvisory accounting firm.
(50:25):
You know who your customers are, and ifcustomers come to you that are outside of your wheelhouse, you either dig in really
deep to understand them, to determinewhether or not you can work with them.
And then if you work with 'em, youknow there's gonna be more work to
understand who they are, or you'regonna pass on 'em and say, Hey.
We're probably not the bestresource for you today.
I think that that working with recruitersthe same way, somebody that understands your business, somebody that understands
(50:49):
the needs of a locally owned small tomid-size CPA firm is hyper critical.
We talk to a. Potential brandnew client that was referred to us out of Memphis the other day.
You know, he's worked with three or fourother recruiters and he was talking about how, you know, I'm getting CFO resumes
of people that used to be tax peopleor somebody that was the tax manager at company A, B, C. But they've been
(51:12):
outta public accounting for 13 years andyeah, they're doing taxes, but they're working for a $2 billion organization.
They, they don't understandwho our clients are.
So.
As a firm owner.
I think that digging into with thatrecruiter, Hey, how much of your business makeup is in public accounting?
How much of your business makeup inpublic accounting is outside of the top a hundred CPA firms out there?
(51:34):
What percentage of your placementslast year were with locally owned small to mid-size public accounting firms?
Oh, and by the way, if this doesn'twork out, what's my recourse from a financial standpoint?
Because I'm not a hundredmillion dollar firm.
I'm a $4 million firm, $5 million firm.
So cutting you a check.
Let's just say at a hundredthousand dollars, average fee's gonna be 25 to $30,000.
(51:55):
That's a lot of money.
So when I cut that check, what's myrecourse if this doesn't work out?
And if, uh, if that's Matt fromMemphis, I owe him a text back 'cause he was asking about it.
Um, so we're talking atfour today, by the way.
Good.
John, I just want you to know thatwe often get asked by our accounting friends, so firm owners and firm
(52:20):
leaders in accounting firms, how do wehire, have we ever used a recruiter?
How much does it cost?
Was it worth it?
And even though our candidate hasn'teven had their first day when we're
recording this, I can say that itwas a hundred percent worth it.
And I think that's a testament to you.
Thank you.
(52:41):
And integrity of wanting what's best,both for our firm and for the candidate.
Because it's what's bestfor both of those things.
Yes, there's a little incentivebecause if it doesn't work out, you
have to start all over and look for anew candidate to fill that position.
But I think honestly, even thecoaching and encouragement that you provided during the process for both
(53:03):
sides, for the candidate as well asfor us to make sure that we both got
the best fit possible, uh, was verymuch appreciated and very much worth.
It doesn't even matter how it plays out.
You know, after that firstprocess, the beginning, the whole process with you was top notch.
And just for anybody who'swondering, would we do it again?
(53:25):
Yes, we would do it again.
Uh, just so.
Painless and, uh, fruitful andencouraging of an experience that we would a hundred percent do it again.
I appreciate it.
That, that, that really means alot because we, uh, when we started down this path in 2018, I made it
very clear to my family as wellas our staff and our team that.
(53:48):
We are, we're gonna work withpeople that are just like us.
We're gonna work with people thatare small business owners that
every single time they write acheck, there's some weight to it.
We are not gonna work with firmsthat we're just one of the masses.
That means that we're probably notgonna have a ton of volume from clients.
That's okay.
We wanna make a difference one firmat a time, one person at a time.
(54:08):
And we know that that's gonna continueto build upon itself if we do that
right, and we do it with everybody'sbest interest in mind, and it's worked.
Well, thank so much.
Thank you for taking the time.
Thank you for answering all of ourquestions 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.
(54:30):
I appreciate the opportunityto 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 inthe industry, in the space itself.
I've referred several people toyour collective cohort because I think that what you guys are doing
to help people run more effectiveand efficient firms is amazing.
(54:51):
So you guys keep doing what you're doingas 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 listeningto 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 timetoday and, uh, we'll see you soon.
(55:12):
Thanks a lot.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite podcasting app.
Leave a five star rating andvisit our website for links and show notes at CPALifePodcast.com.
We'll see you next time on CPA Life!
(55:41):
ProfessionalProductions.net
Thanks for tuning in to CPA Life'sspecial rebroadcast of John Randolph's
appearance on the who's really the Bosspodcast with Rachel and Marcus Dillon.
They discuss their firm's experience withBenaiah Consulting, and John shares his
insider insights into the recruitmentlandscape in public accounting.
(00:22):
Welcome to who's reallythe boss and CPA Life.
Welcome back to another episodeof 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 guysand talk to you a little bit about your business and our business and
(00:45):
everything going on in the staffingworld as it pertains to accounting.
Absolutely.
Thanks for being here, man.
So, John, give us a little selfintro because we actually have come to know you a lot more really.
So give us self intro of whoyou are and you can share as much or as little as you'd like.
(01:07):
So that's, that's alwayskind of a loaded question.
Um.
Husband, 28 years, dad of twogirls that are amazing young women.
My wife and I used to joke when our kidswere little and say that, uh, you know,
you're doing a halfway decent job ifother adults enjoy being around your kids.
Hmm.
Now that our kids are grown, we get griefwhen we don't invite them somewhere.
(01:31):
And so we've changed that saying andflipped it a little bit and say, you
know, you did half a decent job if youradult children enjoy being around you.
Yeah.
So we enjoy the fact that we getto be around our little girls.
Uh, I say little girls grown womennow, but uh, I've owned Benaiah
Consulting Group as it sits, as thebusiness that is today for eight years.
We focus strictly on partneringwith what I refer to as.
(01:53):
Locally owned, small tomid-size CPA firms, advisory firms and consulting firms.
So love the niche that we're in.
Love the people that we deal withbecause just like you guys, your small business owners just like I am, love
the fact that we can provide the type ofsolutions we can provide to firms like
you guys and not worry about, Hey, how'sthis gonna fit into our business plan?
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What about the other big Fortune500 clients or big four firms?
We are narrowly focused on solvingthe problems of firms like you.
Well, John, can I ask you one morequestion about the name of your business about Consulting Group?
Can you tell me a littlebit about where did the.
Absolutely.
So the way that I tell the story is inthe Old Testament, when you get into
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the book of Second Samuel, it startstalking about David's mighty man.
And David, in effect had what we wouldrefer to today as his own secret service.
So David had his Secret servicedetail, 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 scriptureabout Benaiah, but there's about four or five references to Benaiah.
(03:00):
But the first one is, one of the featsthat he accomplished was he chased
a lion into a pit on a snowy dayand killed it with his bare hands.
Through that process, I read a book calledIn a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.
It is about chasing lions in your life.
And instead of turning and runningwhen things get tough, digging in,
leaning into God and figuring outa way to come up with a solution.
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So that's how the name of the firmcame 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 inlife, Marcus, I was le wrestling with some serious lions.
Uh, I think we all go throughphases of life where we do that.
Yeah, that's good stuff.
I think that's gonna be addedto my, um, bookshelf right in the next, or my coming up reads.
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That's good.
Before we get started, we like toalways ask our guests the best piece of advice they've ever been given.
That way if our conversation goessouth or sideways, at least we've
left the listeners with somethinggood right from this episode.
So, best piece of adviceyou've ever been given.
(04:09):
Um, that's a really hard, that'sprobably the hardest question to answer.
Thinking about, you know, wetalked about beforehand, um.
I, I've been very blessed.
I grew up in a house where my parentswere married 68 years and, and my dad
was just a blue collar, hands, dirtymechanic guy that owned his own business.
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Mom was a school teacher, so therewas always banter in our house and wisdom being thrown around.
My dad didn't talk a lot of it whenhe did, it was usually pretty profound and probably one of the biggest things
that I took away from my life athome 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 wayof always telling me, look, I'll, I'll invest in you.
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I'll help you succeed.
I'll do all the things that youwant and need me to do as your dad
and as a supporter, but I'm nevergonna work more at it than you are.
So I've, I've always kept that in mindthat, 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
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daughters have come to call them, thatthey 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'slike from a previous generation, like it's, it's usually something that's handed
down and continues to be handed down, soI'm sure you know, I. 20 years from now, your grandkids or, you know, different
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generations will be saying, you know, thisis what was taught to me, so it's cool.
Yep.
Yeah, you, you gotta love that.
Yeah.
Well I appreciate youjoining us here today.
I'm gonna give a little bit ofbackground how we've come to know you,
um, and then how we've specificallybeen working with you here recently.
So, John, you have a podcast, the CPA LifePodcast, and you asked me to be on that.
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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, butwas 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 foreverybody else was what you did with me.
So, um, but CPA Life, youcan go check that out.
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We'll link to it as well.
A lot of great stuff there.
I've had some friends that have beenon it and listen to them and got to know them more too in that process.
So you're a great.
Interview kind of through thepodcast and probably through your day job, what you do with recruits.
So thank you.
Um, but yeah, here recently, obviouslywe've been connected even after that kinda reached out to you, we had
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a, a need, uh, for a team member,a client controller specifically,
which, similar background to a taxmanager out there in the open market.
You know, just like anybody that lovesdoing stuff ourselves, we took a stab at it to try to fill that position ourselves.
First, I. Yeah, just in that processI was like, there's probably somebody else we really trust and know that we're
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connected to, to kind of help us withthis process because of some frustrations
that we were seeing in those initialresumes and responses we were getting.
So we reached out to youabout that time and um, it was after a team member had left.
So after November, kind ofDecember timeframe, not the best time to hire somebody.
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Um, people have alreadykind of found their.
Next job prior to tax season.
So yeah, I think that'swhat led us to engage you.
And then you were able to find usa great, you know, crop of resumes.
One of those we interviewed,ultimately hired, she starts next week.
So excited for her journey withDBA, but that's kind of how we've.
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Recently worked with John, just soeverybody knows Rachel, is there anything else to add to that?
No.
But before, um, John, I ask you all thequestions and the magic and the secret sauce of how you find great people.
I just wanna share that.
Marcus, will you share what wedid before we reached out to John with very little success?
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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, youknow, thing, um, around your picture.
Every time we do that, we seem to geta lot of additional followers for DBA.
I think your posts get boosted as wellbecause you're an EM hiring employer, so that's prob probably part of the
(08:38):
LinkedIn algorithm, but we only makingmoney, so, so they're gonna boost that.
Yeah.
And so we, we spent I think over twoto three weeks, maybe it went a month.
We spent about five or 600 bucks, youknow, 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, allindustries, all backgrounds, all nations.
(09:00):
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 successwith 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.
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So we've had that luck before.
But this time around, it justgot our head shaking, like, what is going on in the market today?
The people that we have inour mind, do they even exist?
Right?
And so that's what we did.
We used LinkedIn, which hasproduced results in the past.
Uh, man, way back when we've, weused Craigslist at one time for a job posting, and that was, that was fun.
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So we've, we've kind ofused some different things.
Indeed, Craigslist.
But here recently it was LinkedIn, so.
Rachel, that was what you werekind 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 yousee when accounting firms come to you?
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Where are they looking or do theytypically just, are they smarter than us and just come to you first?
No, I, I think that, uh, I thinkthat everybody, regardless of what it is that we're trying to do, ob
now, obviously there are things thatwe look at as individuals, business owners, homeowners, whatever it is.
There are things you look at andgo, you know what, that's outside of my scope and my bandwidth.
(10:26):
If, if there's something that goeswrong here at the house that has to do
with electrical or plumbing, there'sa 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'twork, 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 wasgonna be about 250 yards, basically
(10:51):
a ravine to, to steer some wateraway from the house where we built.
And I'm looking at it andI'm thinking it's dirt.
It can't be that hard.
I, I mean, I drove askid 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.
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Dug about 60 feet of itin nine and a half hours.
Got off that thing and called adirt guy, got a bid, $6,000 and I
told my wife, that's gonna be thebest $6,000 I've ever spent, ever.
Had I not done that, I would'vewalked outside, seen that trench for the next, however long we live here.
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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 todo those things to learn.
You know what, maybe that'snot in my wheelhouse.
So in answering your question, yeah, thatthat's a normal process and a normal step that I think everybody goes through to
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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 tospend, or I don't have the money to spend.
It's a multitude of things, but that'stypically what we'll see is those are
the resources that people are leaningon and they're great resources at times.
Yeah.
Let's start with the big question.
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Are there qualified in qualityaccounting professionals?
Available to work.
I think we're being told somethingdifferent that there are none.
So if you just find like a living,breathing person, um, hire them.
But are there qualifiedand quality accounting professionals available to work?
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Easy answer.
Yes, there are.
They're out there.
It, it's just a matter of puttingin the time, energy, and effort to,
to find those people, to engage withthose people, to know where to go.
To know what to say.
Here's the, the biggest challenge Ithink that most firms don't understand, and maybe they do, and maybe maybe most
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public accounting firm leaders don'twant to address it or deal with it, or they don't think it really affects
them, and that is the industry as awhole, from an employment standpoint,
doesn't have the greatest reputation inthat 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 bigfour or top a hundred national firm.
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And so that's, that's the newsthat's getting out there on Reddit.
Ongoing concern on Glassdoor.
That's what people are seeing isthis 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 littlebit more than, than just the surface.
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I'll give you some numbers.
I'm a huge stat person.
We track pretty much anything andeverything we can track in our system.
Played baseball all throughhigh school, college.
It, it allowed me to get a collegedegree, so I love numbers, love stats.
We did a survey 2019.
We redid that survey last year.
One simple question, wesent it to 600 people.
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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, andthis was only sent to people with a public accounting background.
If you've made a job change in the last18 to 24 months, or you're contemplating making a job change in the next 18 to 24
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months, did you or would you respond to ajob posting from another CPA firm in 2019?
83% of the people saidthey did not or would not.
In 2024, 78% of the people saidthey did not, or they would not.
So we're getting better.
We're getting better.
But again, I like to take thatand put it in real live numbers.
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If there's 10 people that arequalified for a job that someone posts
qualified, forget whether they'reinterested, they're just qualified.
Seven to eight of them are nevereven gonna send their resume in.
That leaves two to three, that's it.
Two to three that are gonna raise theirhand and say, Hey, I'd like to know more.
Yeah, I think that likedata, uh, I love that.
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And I'm gonna ask you about someother data that you shared here
recently in a post, but I. Ithink first, so people do exist.
They're out there.
Part of it, and you may speakto this, like what we see is.
When we test, like even our teamand do some just general testing Enneagram or things like that to
learn more about ourselves and eachother and how we work better together.
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A lot of accountants are loyalists, right?
And so a lot of accountants livethrough and you get calloused and you.
Sometime in your career, you wore thosehours 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 andI were, were talking about like, Hey,
what would it look like to get somehelp on placing someone in this role?
(16:02):
You went through, like how you identifypeople who could even be looking potentially for a change or have recently
had a change, and maybe it wasn't thechange that they thought it was gonna be.
Could you give a little bit ofbackground about that process?
What you and your team do to even like gofind or go touch those qualified people?
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Like you said, people with publicaccounting backgrounds that have actually worked in accounting.
So I, I think that one of the thingsthat gives us a little bit of an
advantage in the space that weplay in is this is all that we do.
And while that may not seemlike it's that big of a deal.
It's, it's huge.
(16:45):
Um, I spent, uh, Marcus, Rachel, I,I spent half my career with two large
national recruiting firms that are knownfor their accounting finance practices.
When you've got sitting on your desk.
A job wreck that is from a staffaccountant at a manufacturing company to a financial analyst at a bank,
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to a senior auditor at a publicaccounting firm, and a CFO at a hundred million dollar manufacturing company.
And that's just four or five of the30 that you have sitting on your desk.
And when you multiply that to a teamof five, to eight to 10 people, now
you've got 50 to a hundred drop jobwrecks that you're juggling as a team.
You are speaking to anybody and everybodythat's got a background in accounting.
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You are doing that from theprocess of, let's face it, sales.
So you're gonna shoot at the closesttargets 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 minuteswe are told, I hate what I do.
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Get me outta here.
I don't wanna be in public accounting.
So if I'm sitting at anotherrecruiting 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 thathave nothing to do with public accounting.
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Let's talk about those.
In our business, all wedo is public accounting.
That's it.
So I don't have controller CFOjobs to talk to people about.
I don't have a senior accountant ata 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.
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I got a tax senior manager.
That's what I've got on my desk.
That's it.
So we are spending all daylong reaching out and engaging with people in that space.
We are sending emails, we aresending InMails on LinkedIn.
We are farming our database.
We, we've got anywhere from.
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Somewhere in the neighborhood of 250to 300 messages that are going out on a daily basis to people just touching base.
And with, with AI today and withtechnology 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 inthat that that creates a lot of personalization through the conversations
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that we're having and documentingand 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 starttalking, 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 fruitfor six months to a year.
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It may not be for four years, but we'regonna continue to pull on that thread.
We're gonna continue toengage with that person.
We're gonna continue to talk to thethat person because there's going to be opportunities that may check the
right boxes that we've been able tolearn about what's important to them.
And a lot of times we'll have peoplesay to us that we reach out to you, Hey, now's not a good time.
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Hey, that sounds like a greatopportunity, but I'm happy where I'm at.
We are gonna do everything that wecan to continue to stay in front of those people on a consistent basis.
Yeah.
One quick question, because wetalked about loyalist and you
just mentioned people that say,I'm not in a position to change.
How silent does it go fromJanuary through April?
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Um, it's, it's pretty, I mean, it's prettysilent from a proactive perspective.
We, it's, it's funny 'cause theway that we design our outbound engagement is it's pretty high.
You know, throughout the year it ebbs andflows, but it's pretty high in November.
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Gets higher in December, getsa little higher in January, and then we start tapering off and
we are virtually non-existent insomeone's emails, text messages.
Um.
Anywhere that we don't have arelationship already, we are silent because I know that I am the last person.
Whether it's someone that's hiringor somebody that's looking to make
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a job change, I'm the last personthey 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 peoplecoming back, even if that response rate is, Hey, thanks, I'm busy.
Our response rate is less than about2.5% from about mid-March till.
Around the week before the 15th.
(21:31):
Week before the 15th, we start tosee a little bit more engagement.
Pick up.
Yeah.
They're just, they're just watchingstuff, 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 thatlast week and at two o'clock in the morning when they're shutting down
their computer, they're thinking, letme just see what might be out there.
'cause I'm dying right now.
A
glimmer of hope to get through the week.
(21:51):
Right.
You know?
Exactly.
Yeah, I think that that'sprime opportunity when people
are at that breaking point ofI'm never doing this again.
That pain, the pain of staying thesame gets greater than the pain
of even entertaining a differentsolution or a different opportunity.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, definitely.
There's a, there's a little windowin there right at the end, before the deadline, um, and then a few days after.
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Something happens and they start to forgetday 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 yearsin a row ourselves with what we were willing to sacrifice and take on and
say yes to, because it's just for afew weeks and then it'll get better.
(22:40):
Thankfully, we no longer operate that way.
So tell me John.
You mentioned that you know, thecandidates that you're talking to or
prospective candidates that you'retalking to, they'll latch onto something.
What are some of those thingsthat candidates latch onto the,
that gets them excited enough tocontinue exploring an opportunity?
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Um, it, it's Rachel, it'sreally not rocket science.
We, when we talk to candidatesand we hear that, get me outta here, don't want to do this.
What we'll typically ask candidatesat 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 intowhy, what is it about what you're doing that is just so horrific?
(23:30):
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, butwe 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.
(23:51):
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 thingsand then we'll talk to 'em about.
What do you like about what you do?
You've been there two years, fiveyears, eight years, 10 years.
You've been in the industrythat long, whatever it may be.
You obviously don't hateeverything about it.
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Tell me what it is that getsyou going in the morning.
I love the variety.
I. I love to make a differencein the clients that I work with.
I love the fact that the clientsthat 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 complexityof the work that I do.
(24:34):
So we hear a lot of those same things.
So when, when we talk to candidates andwe speak to them about things that are
gonna check the right boxes, we focus onthe 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 thatI'm not gonna be told in January that I gotta have 60 to 65 billable hours
(24:58):
already, or I'm gonna work for a firmthat 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 Fridaybecause I didn't work enough hours.
Those are huge.
The ability for people to have theflexibility to have a life from eight to five work for a firm that
(25:23):
understands that, hey, I got two kidsthat are under the age of 12 years
old and, and sometimes curve balls flyat me that I just don't see coming.
I need somebody that understands that andsomebody that understands that, while it may seem like a natural outflow for you
guys or a lot of the other clients we workwith, you'd be surprised still to this day, how many people just don't get it.
(25:46):
They don't get it.
So those are things that when wetalk to people, their eyes light up, they get a smile on their face.
They're excited aboutwhat we're talking about.
Compensation obviously plays into that.
But I, I think that we're at a pointin the world today in accounting
where there's not a huge disparityin compensation between firms.
(26:07):
There's some, there's definitely some, butthe thing that I talk to candidates about constantly whenever we start talking about
compensation, especially if there's othercomp on the table from other opportunities
they're looking at, is you're gonnaearn every dime of that compensation.
They're going to get theirvalue out of you at that comp for what they're paying you.
(26:31):
We've got a candidate that just tookan offer for another firm versus an
offer we had on the table that was aeight 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, but175,000 plus a $10,000 sign-on.
And I'm very well awareof who the firm is.
(26:52):
I know how they treat their people, and Ilet the person know, look, you're, you're gonna earn every dime at 1 70, 1 75.
You are, you're gonna workfor the money you're getting.
And if you're okay withthat, God bless you.
Go knock the cover off the ball.
Yeah.
I think that's really helpful.
So obviously a lot of accountantslisten to us, uh, ramble on and talk about our mistakes.
(27:15):
They probably all just backedup and highlighted what you shared as far as compensation.
So can you share, you know, 'causegoing 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 rangeof compensation, but.
(27:35):
What are some acceptable ranges for reallylooking at three different roles, right?
Like an entry level, maybebookkeeping, accounting, and then like you said, that tax manager.
I think that's a really important role.
And then the other one is everybodyis looking for, you know, hopefully that director level, that advisor,
that that leader that can kindof get plugged into the firm.
(27:57):
So could you share some like ranges ofwhat you see and even what impacts those ranges on those three different roles?
Absolutely.
You know, on that first tier thatwe're talking about, that, that staff accountant, bookkeeper, accounting
specialist kind of person, I think a lotof the things that drive compensation there is, do we need a degree?
Do we not need a degree?
(28:18):
If we need a degree, does it haveto be any accounting degree or would
you look at somebody with just, youknow, any kind of a bachelor's degree?
You know, so trying to understand whatsome 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'veseen that are a little higher.
(28:39):
There's some that, well, we reallyhaven't seen any that are lower.
We'll, typically if we see somethingthat's lower, we'll try to advise people.
I. Hey, you're, you're probably notgonna have a lot of success, or they
haven't had success, and now they'retalking to us and we'll let them know.
That's why they haven't had success.
But stereotypically, that's kindof a range that we'll see at that level and is a workable range.
(29:01):
Again, depending on, depending on theskillset they're looking for, someone's looking for a degree with two to four
years experience, they're obviouslygonna be at the higher end of that range.
If they're looking for somebodythat is non-graded with two or three
years experience, there's a widerange in there they can look at.
Okay.
At that manager level, there'sa pretty big window there.
(29:22):
A lot's gonna be driven by firm size.
A lot's gonna be driven.
And, and when I say firm size, again, asI, 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'snot a drastic difference in compensation.
Once you start getting at a managerlevel and above, now you start getting at partner level, principal level.
(29:44):
Yeah, there gets to be somedifferences there because maybe
there's a few more dollars to workwith that are incentive based.
But at that tax manager level, we areseeing anywhere from, um, here's, here's the best way to answer that question.
If I talked to a client and they saidthey're looking for a tax manager, and the compensation was under $90,000,
we'd be really hard pressed to findsomebody, even if we were looking for somebody that wasn't certified yet.
(30:09):
So at least 90,000 is kind ofwhere we are advising clients.
They need to be from a managerperspective, 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 wefeel like we can bring value to the table with a client at that advisor level.
(30:35):
That senior manager, director level ofa person, again, depending on the size of the firm, we're gonna be looking
for a client that's compensatinganywhere from about 130, 140.
And north of that is is wherewhere we would need to see compensation to be competitive.
And again, a lot of it justdepends on size of the firm.
(30:56):
Some of it becomes in that level,some of it does become geography.
You know, we've, we've got a clientthat's in Buffalo, New York that just
hired a senior manager over theirtrust and estate group through US.
Comp range we were at wasa little bit north of 200.
We were looking at people with comparableexperience in New York City and those guys were making 350 to 400,000.
(31:20):
And you know, my advice to those guyswas, Hey, stay working in New York City because you're not gonna make
that outside of New York City unlessyou 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, taxingauthorities there.
Um, yeah.
But no, that, that's really, that'sreally helpful, those ranges.
(31:43):
There was a lady that, that I spokewith, I ironically, for y'all's role, that had the background that
we were looking for, had all of thethings that check the right boxes.
She's in la.
Hmm.
I mean, she was not gonnabudge off 1 70, 1 75 base.
And I told her, I said, look, I'm,I'm gonna be honest with you, in,
(32:03):
in the market you're in, you'reworth every dime you are asking for.
I can't sit here and tell youthat you're not gonna get it.
You're probably gonnaget it from somebody.
I just don't have that on the rolesthat 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 orSan Francisco, she'd probably get what she was looking for.
(32:25):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit about,or tell all of us a little bit
about, are people still looking forcompletely in office, local positions?
Do you see mostly hybrid to remote?
What is the makeup of the businesscandidates you're working?
(32:46):
Request for location.
Here's the best way Ican 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 seniormanager, director, principal, partner.
Obviously you get a little higher.
(33:06):
There's some more nuances, but let's justsay staff, accountant, up to a manager.
Our time to fill on a role likethat is between 30 and 45 days.
Hybrid role in office.
Two, three days a week.
And, and when I say hybrid, I'mnot talking, Hey, we're flexible.
They can be in the officewhenever they want.
I'm talking, there's a schedule.
We need people in the officeMonday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Friday, whatever it may be.
(33:28):
Time to fill on a role likethat is between 45 days and three months, 100% in office.
Our time to fill on a role like that isabout seven and a half to eight months.
So we've, we've got aclient in, uh, the DC area.
They're pretty much in office full-time.
They're off on Fridays, butthey're pretty much in office.
(33:50):
Full-time and through our talent advisorymodel, we, we worked with them, took on all of their recruiting this past year.
We were able to fill ninepositions 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 workingon that job in January of 24.
(34:12):
We had a candidate start in January of 25.
We had, we got to the altar with acouple of people, but when it came down to really thinking about getting
in my car four days a week and drivingto the office, they pulled out.
Are there any other,I'll call them red flags.
(34:33):
But kind of that gives a candidate pause.
So you've kind of presentedthis opportunity with a company.
Maybe they've had adiscovery call with them.
Is there anything that they startto get cold feet or, or give pause?
Like, I don't know if I wannaproceed with this company?
I think probably the biggest thingthat we see there is a slow process.
(34:57):
People wanna work forpeople that are decisive.
Know how to make decisions.
You know, we all sell candidates.
Everything you do in this processis a part of the interview process.
Everything you do well, thatsword has two sides to it.
Everything that you do as a businessowner and a business leader is a part of the interview process.
And if things get delayed, ifthere's no communication, if things just drag on, that's a red flag.
(35:23):
We try to get clients to understand.
When you interview people, you need toapproach 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 stepsin the process and we're gonna expedite those and move those along.
But hire, or no, not hire, we're passing.
(35:46):
They don't fit.
My experience has been in three decadesof doing this, whether I'm hiring people for me or interviewing people
for my clients, when I hang the phoneup, when I end a Zoom call, when I walk out of an interview, there's a
part of me that knows that I know thatI know this is a yes or this is a no.
Now there is a small percentage thatI'm not sure, and if that's where
(36:09):
we fall, then let's figure out whatdo 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 usto either hire or don't hire?
I think that if firms can move thatprocess along or effectively communicate about what the delays are, what's slowing
(36:29):
things down, because those are things thatpeople are going to take into account when
they start looking at how do they managetheir people, how do they run their firm?
What am I gonna encounter whenI step into this organization?
So what you're saying is don't reach outto people at nine o'clock on a Saturday because they, they see that you're working
(36:51):
at nine o'clock on a Saturday, and theymay see that as part of their future, so they may opt out of moving forward.
If people are going to do that, I wouldstrongly advise, begin that message with.
Hey, I normally am notworking on Saturday, but I'm catching up on some stuff.
I'll, I'll some.
This past Saturday, Cindy was gone.
(37:11):
So I'm work it was, thatwas Sunday afternoon.
I typically shut offFriday at five o'clock.
Unplug I'm out.
Um, but Sunday I was working.
I was sending emails to people whileI was bouncing back and forth between my office here and the game and there,
but I was sending every email andsaying, 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.
(37:32):
If you're working oryou'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 greatobservation, Marcus, because there are people that will do that.
And I can tell you, speakingfrom experience, years ago I was
interviewing for a regional VPjob with a firm outta Houston.
And the only communication I, I wasn'tactively looking a recruiter that reached out to me and the only communication I
(37:57):
would ever get from the president of thecompany was somewhere between 11 at night and three in the morning Every time.
And after about two weeks ofthat, I decided, you know what?
I don't think that's thekinda life I wanna buy into.
Yeah, no, that's good.
I'll share a little bit about our mostrecent, um, hiring process, which follows how we typically do our hiring process.
(38:21):
Um, but typically whenwe have a candidate.
I will have a discovery call with them.
While it looks and sounds a wholelot like an interview, I don't
really ask any technical accountingquestions 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?
(38:41):
Obviously on camera we hire remotepeople, so that's kind of like, can they join the meeting with me?
Does all of their technology workor do they know how to address it?
If it doesn't, I, I mean, I amliterally analyzing every single thing during that call, even though.
Not asking technical accounting questions.
(39:02):
And then I saved that for the people whowould probably know the answers better than I do to those kinds of questions.
But this last time, so we had thediscovery call with our candidate and then, uh, and then we had
already decided as a leadershipteam if we're going to proceed.
Two dates and times.
Like we had already said it.
We had already put holds on our calendarjust in case, so that way before Tiffany who will be working with us.
(39:28):
But that way before Tiffany andI got off that call, we already went ahead and scheduled that.
And one was for like a day laterand one was for the Monday after the weekend that was coming up.
And so they were very quickto come in, which I don't typically like to move that fast.
I like to take time in between tothink about all of the things, to pray
(39:51):
about it, you know, to hear or seeanything that ha comes up in between.
But that was really underMarcus's suggestion of like, no, we need to move fast for this.
Like this time we need to go evenfaster 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.
(40:14):
That way everyone has had the opportunityto ask questions and we don't have to go back to the candidate again.
It's either, at that pointit'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 doall of that and move quickly.
But John, I know you asked why areyou having another interview already?
(40:39):
Why is this not just an offeror a thank you for trying?
Um, and so I, I appreciate thatlistening time is of the essence.
I, I think that, you know, one of thethings that we try to do is understand what does the process look like.
And that's why I said if the answer isyes after that initial conversation and there's other calls that need to be, had,
(41:01):
other discussions need to be had likeyou guys did, let's get those set up.
Let's get this thing moving along.
You know, we, there's a couple ofmastermind groups and leadership groups in the staffing industry that
I'm a part of, and we were talkingabout this the other day in one of our groups, and I said, look, I don't
have a problem if the process isthree steps long or 13 steps long.
What I have a problem with is if theprocess is 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13 days long.
(41:24):
That's where it becomes a problem.
Because what I think that we fail tounderstand when we're hiring and, and we try to convey it to the clients that
we work with, is we may reach out to acandidate that maybe they're not actively looking today, but if they sit down
and they put together a resume and theysend that resume to us, I don't know statistically what that number is, but I
(41:47):
gotta believe it's north of 90% of thosepeople 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 andsee what else is out there.
So they're gonna pop open indeed.
They're gonna pop open LinkedIn.
They're gonna go to their LinkedInmessages and look at the 37 different messages they've got in the last
three days from recruiters and seeif anything looks interesting there.
(42:09):
So this candidate that we talkedto on Monday that wasn't looking
at all somehow by Thursday, hasfive different opportunities.
They're juggling.
So again, real life example.
Recruited a candidatelast Friday for a client.
Presented to 'em on Monday.
She got a resume to me on Sunday.
She did a first interviewon Tuesday with that client.
She has a second interview, finalinterview tomorrow, but between Tuesday and today, she's already got
(42:34):
an offer on the table from anotherfirm and has a final interview next Monday with another firm.
So it's just that type of pacethat's gotta somehow figure out.
How do we juggle, getting comfortablewith the situation, but also addressing
the needs of what's happeningin the marketplace right now.
All right.
I got two questions for you, man.
Uh, I'm trying to leavelisteners better off.
As a firm owner, how do weprotect our team from recruiters?
(42:57):
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 talkedabout was exactly that subject.
I think probably one of the biggestthings that firm owners can do to, to create an environment and
(43:19):
a culture that they are putting uproadblocks from firms like ours.
Open, honest, candid communication.
I think one of the things thatpeople need to understand is people don't leave because of compensation.
People don't leave becausesomething bad happened yesterday.
They leave because there's been acompiling of things that have brought them to a. This point again, as as
(43:46):
an analogy, my wife and I do marriagementoring and marriage coaching, and one of the things that we always talk
to people about is ultimately, sometimeswhat causes a marriage to fall apart is not the salt and the green beans.
And what I mean by that is oneof the biggest fights I ever saw my parents get into ever.
Was over how much saltwas in the green beans.
Now what I didn't know was therewas a lot of stuff that was going on underneath at that time that ultimately
(44:10):
caused my dad to blow up about howmuch salt was in the green beans.
Obviously, they worked through itand 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 thesalt and the green beans, because they didn't get the raise they were
wanting or because they didn't getthe promotion they were wanting.
They leave because it's just oneof a stair step or compiling of the things that have been frustrating,
(44:32):
and that's driven by lack ofcommunication, lack of transparency.
Being open and honest with yourpeople 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 doto get to the next level?
What does a compensationincrease look like?
If you do X, Y, Z, what doesthat look like and what's the timeframe that that looks like?
(44:53):
That is huge.
In the world that we live in today.
The other thing is create an environmentwhere people feel trusted, respected, they don't feel micromanaged.
Now obviously there are people maybethat aren't delivering at a level they need to be delivering at, and
there's gonna be a little bit of atighter reign put on those people.
But I think that so many times thelazy thing to do as a leader, and
(45:15):
I've been there, is you manage toyour lowest common denominator.
And if this is the person that'scausing us to do all the things that
we do that aren't good, we, we justmake everybody else live to that.
And, and I think that that is completelywrong in the world we live in today.
We've got a group of people inthe marketplace today that want to be trusted, that wanna be given
latitude, that want to be given theopportunity to get the work done.
(45:38):
Sometimes not at the times that we wantthe 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'tmatter what we say, what we dangle in front of 'em, what we offer 'em,
(46:03):
statistically speaking, the response wealways get is, thanks, but no thanks.
We keep the list of those firmsand the reason why is those firms
become the firms that we startdoing business development with.
Those are the firmsthat we wanna work with.
That's good.
Yeah.
Take care of your people, candidconversations, you know, all the stuff that you know you should be doing.
And then because recruiters, sometimesyou have a negative, you know?
(46:27):
There's just a negative approach,you know, with, with recruiting.
Mm-hmm.
And you're taking my people, andthen, you know, Intuit sends a
postcard to the office asking,you know, for all this stuff.
And it's like, I hear your peopleand your people are gonna throw those things away, or not respond, but Yeah.
Like it's a building andmaybe one day it's, they open that email on the wrong day.
Absolutely.
(46:48):
Absolutely.
You're not gonna be able to wina hundred percent of the time.
Yeah.
But if you're winning more times thanyou're losing and holding onto your people, then, then that's a win because
at, at the end of the day, you may notbe a right place for somebody today after they've been there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years.
Just like somebody in your firm that'sbeen there 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years may
not be the right person for whereyou need to get to be tomorrow.
(47:10):
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 thosesituations 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.
(47:30):
Yeah.
All right, so one of my last questionsand then I'll throw it back to Rachel,
for people that are gonna take a stabat trying to hire themselves, right?
How long before they really.
Like that job posting goes staleand they really need to reach out to somebody like you that's qualified.
And then how do they know when they'reworking with a good recruiter or not?
(47:54):
So first part of your question, I thinkit really comes down to the individual and
what do they value their time at if, ifsomebody has the bandwidth to spend hours.
Looking at resumes of FirestoneTire changers and no disparaging remark to Firestone Tire Changers
that wanna be accountants, andthat's not an exaggeration.
(48:15):
We get at least one of those a month.
If you wanna spend your time diggingthrough 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 amagic answer for how long.
It just really comes down to where, wheredo you place the value in your time?
I. In doing that?
(48:35):
Yeah.
Do you have the bandwidth to do it?
Do you have the energy andthe patience level to do it?
Because again, let's face it, if you'rerunning 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 workwith more times than not.
(48:56):
So more times than not, you are theperson, as the firm owner that's doing that screening and something tells me,
you tell me if I'm wrong, somethingtells me you're not doing that at two
o'clock in the afternoon or 10 o'clock inthe morning on a Tuesday or a Thursday.
You're doing that at eight o'clockat night while you're trying to watch the latest episode of friends, you're
doing that on Sunday afternoon at twoin the afternoon while you're trying to watch the a FC championship game.
(49:21):
That's when you're doing it.
Mm-hmm.
And more firms than not don't havea 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 breathingand sighing, shaking their head.
Wondering why, why are you doing this?
(49:42):
So, oh, that, that still happens.
It doesn't matter that we work here.
Um,
somebody has boundaries inour house and someone, those boundaries are a little looser
than the other.
So someone, someone needs tounderstand where those boundaries lie.
Yeah.
That's a whole other conversation we canhave outside in our marriage coaching.
Okay, there you go.
(50:03):
So I, I would say a lot of it just dependson the individual when it comes down to.
How do you know if you'reworking with a good recruiter?
To me, that's an easy answer, andthat is are you working with somebody that understands your business?
You guys get that you are a fairly niche.
Advisory consulting, taxadvisory accounting firm.
(50:25):
You know who your customers are, and ifcustomers come to you that are outside of your wheelhouse, you either dig in really
deep to understand them, to determinewhether or not you can work with them.
And then if you work with 'em, youknow there's gonna be more work to
understand who they are, or you'regonna pass on 'em and say, Hey.
We're probably not the bestresource for you today.
I think that that working with recruitersthe same way, somebody that understands your business, somebody that understands
(50:49):
the needs of a locally owned small tomid-size CPA firm is hyper critical.
We talk to a. Potential brandnew client that was referred to us out of Memphis the other day.
You know, he's worked with three or fourother recruiters and he was talking about how, you know, I'm getting CFO resumes
of people that used to be tax peopleor somebody that was the tax manager at company A, B, C. But they've been
(51:12):
outta public accounting for 13 years andyeah, they're doing taxes, but they're working for a $2 billion organization.
They, they don't understandwho our clients are.
So.
As a firm owner.
I think that digging into with thatrecruiter, Hey, how much of your business makeup is in public accounting?
How much of your business makeup inpublic accounting is outside of the top a hundred CPA firms out there?
(51:34):
What percentage of your placementslast year were with locally owned small to mid-size public accounting firms?
Oh, and by the way, if this doesn'twork out, what's my recourse from a financial standpoint?
Because I'm not a hundredmillion dollar firm.
I'm a $4 million firm, $5 million firm.
So cutting you a check.
Let's just say at a hundredthousand dollars, average fee's gonna be 25 to $30,000.
(51:55):
That's a lot of money.
So when I cut that check, what's myrecourse if this doesn't work out?
And if, uh, if that's Matt fromMemphis, I owe him a text back 'cause he was asking about it.
Um, so we're talking atfour today, by the way.
Good.
John, I just want you to know thatwe often get asked by our accounting friends, so firm owners and firm
(52:20):
leaders in accounting firms, how do wehire, have we ever used a recruiter?
How much does it cost?
Was it worth it?
And even though our candidate hasn'teven had their first day when we're
recording this, I can say that itwas a hundred percent worth it.
And I think that's a testament to you.
Thank you.
(52:41):
And integrity of wanting what's best,both for our firm and for the candidate.
Because it's what's bestfor both of those things.
Yes, there's a little incentivebecause if it doesn't work out, you
have to start all over and look for anew candidate to fill that position.
But I think honestly, even thecoaching and encouragement that you provided during the process for both
(53:03):
sides, for the candidate as well asfor us to make sure that we both got
the best fit possible, uh, was verymuch appreciated and very much worth.
It doesn't even matter how it plays out.
You know, after that firstprocess, the beginning, the whole process with you was top notch.
And just for anybody who'swondering, would we do it again?
(53:25):
Yes, we would do it again.
Uh, just so.
Painless and, uh, fruitful andencouraging of an experience that we would a hundred percent do it again.
I appreciate it.
That, that, that really means alot because we, uh, when we started down this path in 2018, I made it
very clear to my family as wellas our staff and our team that.
(53:48):
We are, we're gonna work withpeople that are just like us.
We're gonna work with people thatare small business owners that
every single time they write acheck, there's some weight to it.
We are not gonna work with firmsthat we're just one of the masses.
That means that we're probably notgonna have a ton of volume from clients.
That's okay.
We wanna make a difference one firmat a time, one person at a time.
(54:08):
And we know that that's gonna continueto build upon itself if we do that
right, and we do it with everybody'sbest interest in mind, and it's worked.
Well, thank so much.
Thank you for taking the time.
Thank you for answering all of ourquestions 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.
(54:30):
I appreciate the opportunityto 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 inthe industry, in the space itself.
I've referred several people toyour collective cohort because I think that what you guys are doing
to help people run more effectiveand efficient firms is amazing.
(54:51):
So you guys keep doing what you're doingas 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 listeningto 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 timetoday and, uh, we'll see you soon.
(55:12):
Thanks a lot.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite podcasting app.
Leave a five star rating andvisit our website for links and show notes at CPALifePodcast.com.
We'll see you next time on CPA Life!
(55:41):
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