Are you a hiring firm in desperate need of talented auditors?

Are you and your fellow hiring managers despairing by a lack of suitable candidates in your area?

The skills shortage is a huge issue in public practice right now, particularly in audit. But the good news is that if you are prepared to rethink the way in which you deliver your firms’ audit obligations we can provide you with talented, qualified accountants who are ready to hit the ground running. In fact we can get them to you this week and some are ready to start as early as next!

What’s the catch?

There’s no catch, but these auditors are only looking for remote work so if that’s not a way of working that you’ve considered before, our message to you is simple: why make life much harder than it needs to be. There’s plenty of audit workflow that can be done by a remote auditor. If you and your team are stretched to breaking point and you’ve yet to adapt to enable remote auditors to ease your burden, perhaps you’re a martyr!

If you’re still not convinced that employing auditors on a fully remote basis is something that would work for your firm, let us offer you some more information.

How does remote working operate in practice?

In much the same way that you would in the office, you offer your staff a desk and the IT equipment that they need to get started.

There are several IT systems you can use to ensure a seamless and joined up working approach. Microsoft Teams is the most popular but there are alternatives. A decent IT company will support you easily with your remote setup if you don’t have one in house.

Your cloud based accounting software systems will work from anywhere that there is an internet connection so your remote auditors will be able to prepare work in exactly the same way that they would in the office.

When it comes to meetings, they all take place via your software system so you might have some staff in the office dialing in individually or in a meeting room with a big screen and some joining from their remote locations.

If you need your auditors to work in the field from time to time, this can be discussed with the remote staff on a case by case basis. Some firms include a requirement that auditors attend on location with expenses covered up to 15 days per year or similar. But remember that this need for a physical presence will limit the pool of readily available auditors you can fish from. The more flexible you can be around using your in office team for field work and your remote staff for desk based work, the more candidates you’ll be able to get working to help you manage your audit backlog and relieve the stress and pressure that you and your team are likely experiencing.

Will remote working work for your firm?

The answer is that you won’t know until you try.

The skills shortage isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so if you’re struggling to find the staff that you need to fulfill your firms’ audit obligations, that situation is likely only going to get worse. And to compound that, if you don’t try and solve the situation, you’ll risk losing the great staff that you do have and then you’ll be feeling the squeeze even more!

So there you have it, a potential solution that could really make a huge difference to your stress levels as a hiring manager.

Here’s our MD Garry Howling offering an actual anonymised case study of how this has worked in practice for a firm whose audit provision has been transformed!

‘We’ve been working on a retained basis for a firm for a long time. Though we were able to present this firm with talented auditors, they still weren’t able to fill enough of their empty audit seats and the team and clients alike suffered as a result. We reminded the hiring managers regularly about the availability of an army of remote workers but this concept initially was way outside of their comfort zone. Eventually the team realised that they had no choice but to give remote working a chance. Fast forward several months and this firm are kicking themselves that they didn’t make this adjustment sooner. The new staff they have employed are thriving, existing staff are much happier and clients are benefitting as a result. Everyone is a winner!

We don’t as standard notify our clients about auditors who are only seeking remote work. There’s so many of them, we don’t want to bombard you. So, the onus is on you to reach out to us if you want to tap into this talent pool. To reiterate, these auditors are ready and waiting to get stuck in almost immediately so reach out to us without delay if you’re ready to learn more about them. You can contact our team on info@publicpracticerecruitment.co.uk or call us on 0333 577 7787.

We look forward to helping you alleviate the pressure that we know is so commonplace in audit right now!