Getting Ready For Busy Season

It’s coming… that time of year that can sometimes fill the experienced practitioner with the feeling of dread. It can also fill our hearts with a feeling of anticipation, as it is the practitioner’s most positive cash-flow period too!

Yes, busy season is just around the corner.

Depending on the type of firm you’re at, you could either be looking at several hundred tax returns passing over your desk or starting some of the firm’s biggest audits. Or both!

This is the time of year when organization is key to success.

Are you really ready to face the onslaught? Are you well rested and eager to get back into it after the holiday season and ready to take on the world, or tired, even jaded, at the thought of jumping back on to the busy season merry-go-round?

For those firms who have recruited in the fall and are geared-up, ready for the busy season, things should be falling nicely into place. Planning sessions for how and when those bigger audits are going to be started and who is going to do what by when should reap rewards, and maybe you have some co-op students coming in to rip through those tax returns, but what about the smaller practice with only a handful of staff?

In such cases it’s usually a case of ‘all hands on deck’ and everyone putting in the extra effort (and hours) to get through the sheer volume of work that needs to be completed in a relatively short period of time.

Again it comes down to organization.

If you’re still looking to hire and we’re now in January, chances are that you won’t find someone until after busy season.

Unless there are mitigating circumstances, few candidates would be prepared to jump ship just before or during tax season.

How candidates conduct themselves during this time of year can be a good indicator of what type of employee they are likely to be when they have joined your firm.

Someone prepared to leave their existing firm during this time is likely, but not always, to be someone who might leave you in the lurch in years ahead should they decide to move on in a few years time.

Nobody likes to learn of a key employee leaving during his or her employer’s time of greatest need. Indeed I have seen many a counter-offer tabled during this time of year in an attempt to keep the employee on board. However, usually such measures are pretty futile.
In many cases it just defers the employees departure - the employee accepts the raise in salary and stays on for tax season only to take on a new role shortly after busy season, at an even higher salary thanks to the raise you just gave them.

But, as I said earlier, there are sometimes mitigating circumstances, and these need to be taken into account too.

Some perfectly acceptable reasons for candidates to move in busy season:

· “I cannot get sufficient audit hours at my present firm so I have to move on in order to get a balanced work experience now that I’ve passed the UFE.”

· “My firm is downsizing and I am last in, therefore first out.”

· “There is no opportunity for growth or advancement. This will be my fourth year here and the fourth time I have done the same work for clients ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. I’m getting bored.”

· “I was promised a promotion after last tax season, and it still hasn’t materialized. I don’t think there is ever going to be the chance to advance with this firm.”

· “I’m getting very concerned. My firm still hasn’t implemented any Quality Control procedures. Sure they bought the QAM from the Institute, but it’s still sitting on the floor of one of the Partner’s offices – cellophane seal still intact!”

· “I was promised a raise this time last year, it never happened, then I was promised a raise in the fall, still nothing. I am dropping behind my peers at other firms. My skill levels have increased year on year, my chargeable hours are good and I’m one of the firm’s top performers, but still no salary increase or bonus. I want to make progress but being paid what I am now means that the Partners still see me as being at one level, when my skill set has developed way beyond that.”

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does cover some of the main reasons that I and my team, as recruiters in the public accounting domain, would have no trouble accepting as bone-fide reasons for wanting to move on, despite the time of year.

It’s a testing time for any firm, even one with all their ‘ducks in a row’.

The challenges ahead can be magnified by losing a key staff member at such a critical time, so as an employer, what are you doing to make sure this doesn’t happen to you?

© MFA Group 2007