Based on the increased accountant recruitment activity we’ve seen in the past month, there’s a fair chance many of you have shortlisted promising candidates about now and getting interviews arranged.
Before deciding which interview questions to ask, an employer of accountants needs to know what they are looking for. Luckily for you, that work has been done by the collective might of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA), who put considerable research into what makes an effective accountant in a world shifting from compliance to advisory work.
The ACCA identified 7 core competencies associated with success in a changing accounting world.
So, what are the most effective interview questions to use to uncover whether your accountant candidate is likely to perform in a changed world?
They won’t be the questions you were using a few years ago, so click through to get interview questions specifically for accountants in 2020 from Lominger, the world’s most well-respected developers of quality competency/behavioural interview questions:
Before we run through the competency interview questions, let’s quickly review what competency-based interviewing is and whether you need support in delivering this technique.
This method is hardly new but remains the most highly rated interview technique in structuring interviews to get consistent results and is based on the premise that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.
The core element is to insist that candidates provide you with specific examples of actual experiences and to avoid hypothetical scenarios and generalisations at all costs.
If you are not trained in Competency or Behavioural Interview Techniques, we strongly recommend that you bring someone who is onto your recruitment panel until you get trained and comfortable.
1. Technical & Ethical
“The skills and abilities to perform activities consistently to a defined standard”
Ethics:
Technical
Interviewing people on how good they are technically is never as good as asking them to prove their technical competence. Take a look at www.accountests.com for a suite of accounting technical tests to add to your selection process
2. Intelligence
“The ability to acquire and use knowledge: thinking, reasoning and solving problems”.
3. Creativity
“The ability to use existing knowledge in a new situation, to make connections, explore potential outcomes, and generate new ideas”
4. Digitally Savvy
“Awareness and application of existing and emerging digital technologies, capabilities, practices, strategies and culture”
5. Emotional Intelligence
“Ability to identify your own emotions and those of others, harness and apply them to tasks, and regulate and manage them”
6. Vision
“The ability to predict future trends accurately by extrapolating existing trends and facts and filling the gaps by thinking innovatively”.
7. Experience
“The ability and skills to understand customer expectations, meet desired outcomes and create value”
Tell me about a situation where the lack of focus around the customer lost you the business.
What follow-up action did you take?
Author Bio
Steve Evans has a whole career dedicated to enabling employers to attract, recruit, develop, and retain talented individuals and teams, with particular expertise in candidate testing and assessment before jointly setting up Accountests in 2013. Accountests deliver the world’s only online suite of annually updated and country-specific technical knowledge tests for accountants and bookkeepers. www.accountests.com
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways we can help you grow your Accounting or Bookkeeping business:
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4. Work with the Wize Guys privately
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