The Wize Way

Episode 147: Top 5 Hiring Mistakes That Cost Firm Owners Thousands

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 147

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Hiring the right team members can make or break your accounting or bookkeeping firm. But let’s be real — hiring isn’t an exact science. 

Many firm owners rush the process, skip critical steps, or make costly mistakes that impact their team and bottom line.

In this episode of The Wize Way Podcast, WizeTalent Coach Dani and Kristy Fairbairn dive deep into the 5 biggest hiring mistakes that could be costing your firm thousands (or more). 

Discover 1 bonus mistake that many firms still make. They discuss why hiring offshore can be a game-changer and how WizeTalent’s 44-step hiring process ensures firms find and retain top talent.

If you’re struggling with hiring or want to build a team that truly supports your firm’s growth, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you hire smarter and avoid costly missteps.

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PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:

1. Take the Wize Accountants Scale Scorecard – Find out your potential to scale and the next steps you should follow – Start Your Scorecard

2. Download our famous Wize Freedom Strategy Map for FREE - Find out the 96 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here

2. Need to Hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here

4. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time- poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, so welcome to today's session. We will be talking about the top five mistakes that firms make in the hiring process. But before we get into that, there is. I just want to tell you guys a little bit about WizeT alent. So, um, what we do is we're sort of like recruiters, but we're more than that. We're very transparent with how we do things. So, with Wize Talent, we have a 44- step hiring process, and our clients are a part of the entire process, from start to finish. So there's nothing that we do that our clients don't see. That makes us quite unique compared to other recruiters out there. So we're very proud of that. So, yeah, like I said, today's topic is about the top five most expensive hiring mistakes.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

And you know, we all know, that hiring isn't easy. It's one of those things where it's not the easiest thing because it's not an exact science. That's always what Jamie says. He says that it's not an exact science. At the end of the day, we are working with humans, so there's always going to be trial and error. There's always going to be issues that arise. Yeah, it's not always easy, but we make it work, and that's why we have steps in place. So with today's session, we're going to try and give you as much information as possible so that you know what to avoid, basically, and how to hire the right way.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yes, I resonate with some of these mistakes personally from, fortunately, a long time ago, before I started getting the help wise talent and understanding how to do things a much better way. But look, one of the most expensive mistakes you can make is hiring too quickly. You're just desperate; you're eager, you think I really just need to put someone in it's. You know it's not that hard; they're trained, so they should be a good fit for my company. So you put them in, and you spend some time onboarding them. You buy them equipment, do the training, you start introducing to the client work, maybe to clients, and then you realise they're not a good fit for you and you rushed in too fast. It's remembering that key rule of slow to hire, quick to fire. Whilst in the hiring process, you want to be responsive, get interviews booked quickly, and keep things moving through the funnel quickly. You don't want to make the hiring decision too quickly because it can cost you so much more than an extra month or two waiting for the right person. And you know, even in my current recruitment process that I'm in looking for a new team member. I could easily make a quick decision on someone who seems great in the interview, but I have to follow the process and due diligence of getting the reference checks, doing the skills test, allowing other candidates to come through to and comparing so that we can avoid the costly mistake of the wrong hire. It can disrupt your team members. Nothing is worse than bringing the wrong personality into your business and losing a good, solid person you've had for a while because they just can't gel with that person. Sometimes, we can have our blinders on and not see those traits that everyone else can see, and that causes great disruption. So yeah, that's definitely a big one and misleading job descriptions. They're either too detailed, and who wants to read war and peace in a job description, or they're not detailed enough, and you get a whole heap of candidates applying who've got no charts but the job description. Or they're not detailed enough and you get a whole heap of candidates applying who've got no charts, but the job description's not clear or they're not qualified but you haven't been specific enough.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So, really working hard on your job description, making sure it's clear, concise but also different, you know that little bit of point of difference to other job ads, make yourself stand out. And you know, don't be boring. The number of times I've had candidates refer to. The video link that's in my job description for our positions is amazing. It really does stand out from the rest, and you can create a video that you can use for all sorts of job ads. You don't have to create a new video every time. Just look at how you can be super clear with your job description, all the tasks that need to be done, identifying the kind of attributes you need in your new hire, not missing out the important things. If they must have experience with a software or industry, don't miss it out. But don't belabor the point too much and list every industry that your firm works with because there are some commonalities. So, yeah, keep it simple.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Not doing reference checks oh, the torture that brings me the thought of people not doing reference checks. The torture that brings me the thought of people not doing reference checks. The things that we've caught in the way that Wise Talent does their reference checks. It's not just an offshore problem with false reference checks. It does happen everywhere. I've had team members in Australia who seemed great with great resumes and great interviews. I was so excited to get their reference checks back. Turns out they were trying to give them themselves, and I could have made a really costly hiring decision if I hadn't followed the process and used a really good system to make sure that you could validate and endorse the integrity of the references. So it's vital, even if it's a friend of a friend, to get those reference checks. You know, Dani, you would see it a lot, wouldn't you, with the number of candidates who firm own and say I love them like I do. But those reference checks sometimes come back not as favourably.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

It's very important, yeah, because you just don't know, and a lot of them will use friends, even family, to try and be their own referee. So definitely do the references properly. So if you can. So, we personally use Xref. So if you can use something like that that can detect if there are integrity issues, because, yeah, unfortunately, we've caught a lot of people that way.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah. And then the next one not testing their skills. Again, you know we talk about what we are looking for, the key attributes, and the role we're hiring for. So you could say, when you're hiring a client manager, you're looking for the soft skills, the personality, the ability to shift gears and communicate effectively. They don't need to be the most technical people. We discussed that our production manager is the most technical to support client managers. But you still need to test the skills of the client manager. They still need to come back with some foundational knowledge of the work that they'll be doing and the work that they'll be reviewing. And again, in the past, I've had some great candidates come through who have, you know, a long history in the industry, have worked for some good firms, should be quite good, and their scores in the testing has come back incredibly low. And you know, again, it's avoiding a costly mishiring situation process there if you don't understand their skills, and not everyone tests well, of course I get that, but you know, do the tests yourself if you want to get an idea of what the candidates are going through. They're not high- pressure situations, but you know, without knowing the skills of the person, you're going to have another misfire on your hands potentially. So that's one to avoid.

Kristy Fairbairn:

And we've got some tests of our own in the wise marketplace. Thomas and I've created some. I've got some for bookkeeping, Thomas has created for accounting because we've seen, you know, candidates come through firms that we mentor that you know aren't quite cutting the mustard. So how can we help identify those people and also pick out the good performers? By having some good tests, and there's account tests. Some people use disk testing. There are lots of skills test options out there. It's just really important you understand the test and the kind of things it's identifying so it can help you guide yourself into the candidates. But also, don't lower the bar because you're desperate. It goes back to that hiring too quickly. If they're under the benchmark of passing, they're under the benchmark. It's not a successful test, you know. Don't try and force yourself into making the decision and, last but not least, not onboarding a candidate properly.

Kristy Fairbairn:

This is one that can really catch you out by surprise. Either. You know the team member doesn't feel as secure and supported as they thought they would early on, so they don't want to stay. It's a competitive market out there at the moment. People are getting multiple job offers. So they might find that when they've joined your firm, it doesn't actually feel as good as they thought from another interview. So they want to go back to one of the other roles they applied for. You know, there are a few different ways of really dropping the ball on onboarding: overwhelming them, putting them under too much pressure early on, not training them properly, not showing them the support that your firm has.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So, you know, I definitely encourage you to look at your onboarding process. I know that it's one that my firm has had to build out quite extensively. It's quite a lengthy process now that we have it, but it's helped us have far better staff retention than we used to. We used to be a bit of a churn- and- burn firm with some positions. That wasn't right until we worked out how to really make a team member feel welcome and cared for from the get-go.

Kristy Fairbairn:

And also, you want to have some good tests in place, you know, with the practical application of the work that they're doing, so you can see that they have the potential to achieve the full role that you have for them without. You know, sometimes there's only a type of work done once a year. So how are you going to identify that if it's just been done? So, look at the onboarding process to give the candidate the best chance to understand the expectations of the work and really see how it flows in your business. So, just to recap on my five mistakes to avoid hiring too quickly. Misleading job descriptions.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Mistakes to avoid hiring too quickly, misleading job descriptions, not conducting reference checks, not testing their skills, and not onboarding a candidate properly. Yeah, thanks, Kristy. That's a lot of great information in there. And I do want to add one more in there as well, and this is a bit controversial, but I know some firms are still not, you know, on board with this.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

But having remote staff, like working remotely, there are still firms who are adamant that they need their staff to be in the office, and it's just nowadays, it's just not the case. I mean, if you look at us here at Wize, we don't have a physical office. We work all over, and we have people all over the world, but I've hired senior client managers who work remotely for, you know, for their teams, the firms that they've joined. It's just that it is you. You're basically opening up a whole other thing, so you're not just stuck to your location. You can basically be opening up a whole other thing, so you're not just stuck to your location. You can basically hire great staff all over. So that's something to keep in mind as well. If you are open to remote workers, it will be a lot easier to find great staff out there because you aren't just limited to your location.

Kristy Fairbairn:

I think it's a great point. There are still some brick- and- mortar firms, so you do still need some people in the office, but it's worth considering. Do you need everyone in the office, or do you have a core team that can service the office? Or are you looking at a flexible arrangement? Do you have someone who can commute within an hour? Which is so foreign to a Tasmanian. Anything more than 15 minutes is a day trip.

Kristy Fairbairn:

But you know, if you think of your local area, is an hour's commute acceptable for some people, or you know 45 minutes. So could you do a flexible hybrid model that they have a couple of days a week in the office or four days a fortnight in the office and then you still get that client face time if needed or whatever the need for having them in the office is, without limiting them to the full five days? Some people just find they're more in flow and productive when they work from home. Other people want that team office environment to be productive. So, yeah, I think it's definitely the time to be flexible in your thinking. Yeah, absolutely.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So, Kristy, what advice would you give to firms who are currently hiring at the moment or looking to hire very soon? Yeah, what sort of advice would you give them?

Kristy Fairbairn:

I mean, firstly, speak to you. No, if you are looking to hire, it's being really clear on the position you're looking to fill. Have you done your capacity planner and your WizeHub? Are you able to easily identify the type of person? Is it a grinder? Are you looking for an intermediate or senior bookkeeper or accountant? Are you looking for a production manager, or are you looking for a client- facing position in a client manager? Be really clear on what you're looking for and make sure that it fits into your budget and your capacity planner, that you've got the space for the person and you know.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Get the hiring process underway. It's the sooner you get the ad up and running, the sooner you can start filtering through the candidates. So yeah, that's sort of the extent of my advice. Just go. Always. You know, I think we identified in the beginning in the chat that we're always looking to hire. I think we identified in the beginning in the chat that we're always looking to hire, and I'm always much happier when I'm adding to my team, not replacing, but really depending on what your goals are in your business. If you're scaling, if you're growing, then yes, you are always going to be looking to hire.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So, having a well-oiled process internally. That means as soon as you identify you will need a new team member in a month or two months time. You can hit the lever today, and the better you will be at attracting the right candidates, because you know again, the market is forever changing. You would see this a lot, Dani, that you know who was applying for jobs yesterday may not be applying for jobs tomorrow, or there might be more people tomorrow. We see it.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So it fluctuates so much at the moment the volume of candidates and quality of candidates from one job ad to the next. So, yeah, being able to go quickly, but again, having a stringent hiring process in place, like the checklist that Wize Talent uses to make sure that you follow the ., That that you don't skip ahead, that you're grading the process along the way so that you have an indication of, based on the reference text, based on the interview, based on the skills test, how likely is this candidate to be a successful one for you? And don't lower the benchmark to make it work because you're desperate. Be clear, as we say, act fast, get the ad out fast, and interview ., Don't don't make the final decision too quickly. Yeah, exactly, and having a checklist is great for that.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So we use like a candidate scorecard checklist and that also it removes, it takes the emotion out of things because someone could interview really well. But then we do this checklist, and we're like, well, they don't actually have the skills that we're looking for. So, yeah, if you can create something like that, it's definitely handy.

Kristy Fairbairn:

And we're accountants and bookkeepers. We love a good checklist.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yes, exactly. So, what can firms do to stay ahead of the game? Because you know everyone is hiring at the moment, so it's very competitive. So what kind of advice would you give there competitive?

Kristy Fairbairn:

So, yeah, what kind of advice would you give there? Continue to speak to your team, and make sure they have their needs are being met and identify what they are. I know for me, my senior production manager is in the Philippines, and she is a great help to me in identifying what things are like in the economy and environment for the team when we're looking to hire. What cost of living has shifted, what does she think is fair in entitlements and benefits and things for our candidates? Always be open to shifts and changes in the market.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Look at the salary packaging that you have. Look at you know the way that you can provide enticements and incentives throughout the process with team members. You know, I think they're the main things for actually securing the hire when you make the job offer. But even in the recruiting and hiring process. I know some firms have created some really great join us pages on their website. You know we are thinking about sales landing pages for new clients. You also need to create it for new hires. You want to be the firm that they desire to work for.

Kristy Fairbairn:

You know, a couple of years ago, we had a great senior bookkeeper candidate interview with me, and initially, he turned me down. He got offered a job with more money, and he thought that was where he wanted to be. But he thought about it for a bit longer and came back and said. Actually, I really love the way that your business operates and the values you talked about in your video. I'd like to work with you, he celebrated his two-year anniversary with us a month or two ago. So you know, it's not always about the dollars and the packages. It can be about how your firm represents itself.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So look at the marketing you can do for yourself from a recruitment process. I don't think you should allow yourself to get stale by having a perpetual job ad running. You know, with the ad I've got currently, I've had some candidates say to me, 'Oh, I've seen the job's been up for a little while, so maybe it's already gone.' It's only been up for like two and a half, three weeks. It's not expired yet. So if you just have a long-standing ad because you know you're always adding, you will have candidates turned off by that because they will assume that you would have found someone or think, oh, what's wrong with you that you haven't found anyone in six months of advertising. So also consider the way that you are presenting yourself to the marketplace and and don't have the the risk of being stale. Um, yeah, I'd say they're sort of my top points, Dani. Anything that I've not covered that you've seen recently? No.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So yeah, that last bit was probably something that I was going to say about. Yeah, we have had candidates who wonder about some firms because they are offering a lot of money, but they just the way they present themselves. Even their website, the look of their website is quite dated. And that that's sort of like a turnoff because candidates are like, we want you know, we want to know that they're working with like zero. Want you know, we want to know that they're working with like zero or whatever it is they. They want to know that. You know, there are processes and things that are going to make their job easier, whereas, if you've got like a dated website, some people just assume everything's going to be done manually, and it's going to make their job harder.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So, yeah, something to consider as well.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah, and I think you know, often we can think I don't have a physical office, my team are all remote and you know, if I had an office space I could have it look fantastic and flashy and fresh and modern and as soon as a candidate would walk in for an interview they would get that sense from my environment. But because it's remote, I have to present my brand in a different way. My online presence has to be representational of what I want candidates and clients to see. So, yeah, I think it's important to think about the way that your website is presenting and the information on there because candidates do look you up. They do assess if your team looks happy in their team photos. You know, it's funny, some of the photos that get posted of people, and they just look miserable in their role. So you want really fresh, happy team photos. You want to look like the kind of environment people want to work for, whether it's going to be an online, remote role or an in-office role. Still, that online presence. You know, if ever you're recommended to use a plumber or an electrician, you generally look them up online first, even though a friend's told you to contact them. So just as candidates will also look you up online before they apply or before they accept an interview. So keep that in mind. Yeah, absolutely.

Kristy Fairbairn:

I used to be terrified of offshoring all up, but then the thought of direct hire was terrifying. Had a colleague who had team members in the Philippines, and I engaged someone for four hours a week because I just wanted to dip my toe in to see what it was like to have someone outside of Australia doing the work, and I wasn't too sure how it was going to go. And now I've got, I think, six or seven people in the Philippines. I absolutely love it. I love them. What they bring to my business is amazing, and there are people that's all. They're just somewhere else, so there's no real big difference I've found in hiring someone in Melbourne for me as a Tassie girl to hiring someone in the Philippines.

Kristy Fairbairn:

The more involvement you can have in the hiring process and in the engagement process, the better. So utilising a service like Wize Talent, and this is not a sales pitch at all, this is just, you know, my experience, but what I was able to learn in my first hiring with Wise Talent has helped me continue to hire offshore with the processes that they've created. So, it really is something to consider for your first direct hire with an offshore team member.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Use something like Wize Talent, where you get checklist processes and hiring guides that you can use on repeat for every new hire, whether it's on or offshore, so that you can have that direct contact and avoid some of those mistakes that you get from outsourcing firms. And it also, in the long run, costs you a lot less. When you can hire direct versus paying a BPO or outsourcing business, then the employee is better off, and you're better off overall. Some of the outsourcing firms don't give the full salary increase to the team member, and oftentimes what gets deducted from their pay is significant, so what they're actually taking home is quite a bit less than what you're paying them. So, yeah, there are a few things to consider in the quality of candidates that you can get from a BPO because the satisfaction levels tend to be lower than having a direct hire.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Satisfaction levels tend to be lower than having a direct hire, and they do. I do know that some BPOs, I guess, like to recycle candidates, so if a firm isn't happy with someone and they decide to let them go, the BPO doesn't actually let the candidate go. They bench them until another firm comes along, and then they just give that candidate to the next firm, which isn't, which it's. It's like a cycle, basically. And yeah, it's not great, and yeah, I've just seen about a targeted interview question.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So, yeah, that's something that, with wise talent, what we do is we've got it's like an eight page interview guide. So it is quite detailed. It generally goes for about an hour, but it's a great way for us to see to just we've got all these questions and, yeah, it's a great way for us to see if this person um actually has the skills or not, because we cover things on their second most recent job and their most recent job as well. If you do think of anything else, you can definitely email me. My email is just below there. But yeah, if you need any help with the hiring process, you can book a one-on-one call with me, and I'd be happy to show you our entire hiring process from start to finish, but that's pretty much it for today. Thank you. Thanks, Dani. Thanks for tuning in.

Wize Mentoring:

If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five-star review. For more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wizementoring. com/ podcast to download a free copy of the Accountant's 20-Hour Workweek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you on the next episode.