Every now and then you stop long enough to look back and realise just how far you’ve come. That moment hit me recently when I worked out that I’ve now been in recruitment for 27 years. Twenty seven. It feels like a lifetime.
I started back in September 1998, before LinkedIn, before AI sourcing tools, before automation. It was just a phone, a notepad, and a drive to prove I could make things happen.
After a few years of learning the ropes, I was headhunted into a start up business and helped build it from the ground up into a team of more than 80 people. Years later, I launched my own firm and did it again, another 80 person business built entirely from scratch.
Across those years, I’ve managed, trained, and led hundreds of recruiters and overseen more than 20,000 placements. That’s 20,000 career moves, 20,000 hiring decisions, and roughly £80 to £90 million in recruitment revenue.
This isn’t about boasting. It’s about perspective. Because when you’ve seen that much hiring, you start to understand what separates the firms that get recruitment right from the ones that just get by.
What follows are the common threads that the best accountancy firms have in place. They’re the things that make recruitment faster, easier, and more valuable, not just for filling jobs but for building the future of the firm.
1. Clarity and Ownership Drive Great Recruitment
The best firms don’t leave hiring to chance. There is structure, rhythm, and ownership. Everyone involved knows exactly who is responsible for each part of the process, outreach, screening, scheduling, feedback, and offer.
That clarity matters. When any part of the chain breaks, everything slows down. Candidates lose confidence, communication drifts, and decisions take longer than they should.
Recruitment works best when everyone knows their role. The hiring manager gives constructive feedback, HR coordinates communication, finance issues offers and approvals, and recruiters ensure the experience stays professional from start to finish.
When this is done well, the process feels effortless, but it only happens when there’s a clear framework that everyone buys into.
Ownership is the key. Recruitment is not someone else’s job. It’s a shared responsibility that reflects the values and professionalism of the business itself.
2. The Candidate Journey Starts Long Before a Vacancy Exists
For most firms, hiring starts when someone resigns. By then, you’re already on the back foot.
A candidate’s perception of your firm has usually formed long before you ever speak to them. In today’s world of social media, you have the ability to influence that perception months or even years in advance.
Good firms prepare for that moment. They invest in high quality careers pages, culture stories, short videos, and well designed information packs. They help recruiters tell their story in the right way.
When a recruiter speaks to a potential hire, those materials become the follow up that reinforces the message. A candidate can hear about the firm and then see it for themselves. That’s when interest turns into engagement.
The psychology is simple. When people can picture themselves in your environment, they start to imagine a future there.
3. Recruitment Is Marketing
Every interaction with a candidate tells them what it’s like to work for you. That includes the tone of your outreach, the speed of your replies, the way interviews are organised, and how feedback is delivered.
Even candidates who don’t get the job should walk away thinking, that’s a firm I’d love to work for one day.
That kind of reputation isn’t built through adverts. It’s built through how you treat people, directly and through your recruiters.
Recruiters are an extension of your brand. The way they describe you, the professionalism of their communication, and the care they show reflects back on your firm. If you only focus on filling vacancies and ignore how you’re represented, you risk long term damage to your reputation.
Every candidate interaction, every conversation, every rejection is marketing. Done well, it becomes a steady stream of positive word of mouth that strengthens your brand year after year.
4. Data Builds Resilience
In recruitment, your data is one of the most valuable assets you have.
For recruiters, data means relationships, client, contact, and candidate information captured and nurtured in a system. A well maintained database gives you a huge commercial advantage because it tells you who the right people are and where they are likely to move next.
The same applies to firms. If you receive CVs and applications year after year, you’re sitting on something valuable. Ten years ago, few accountancy practices had the systems to manage this properly. Today, affordable applicant tracking systems make it easy.
If used well, that database becomes your in house recruitment engine. You can reconnect with past applicants, track people as they progress, and fill more roles without external help.
But capturing data is only part of the story. The real value comes from how you use it.
Treat your database as a community, not a filing cabinet. Share updates, successes, and insights even when you’re not hiring. Today’s audit juniors are tomorrow’s senior managers. If they already know your firm and like what they see, half the work is done before the vacancy goes live.
That’s how the best firms turn data into attraction.
5. LinkedIn Is a Missed Opportunity for Most Firms
Most accountancy firms have a LinkedIn company page because they have to, employees need it to list where they work. But few firms use it properly.
From a recruitment perspective, a strong LinkedIn following is one of the simplest ways to build your reputation as an employer. Yet most firm pages have only a few hundred followers and post inconsistently.
Imagine if your firm’s page had ten thousand accountants following it, people across audit, tax, and advisory who regularly see your news, promotions, and culture updates. They may never apply directly, but they form perceptions. They tell colleagues. They talk about you.
That is influence.
Even if you’re a mid tier independent, that presence lets you look and feel like the firm to join in your market. And when people do decide to move, you’re already on their radar.
Recruiters do this naturally. I’ve built a network of over twenty thousand professionals by being deliberate about it. Firms can do exactly the same, and the followers stay with the business long after individuals move on.
LinkedIn isn’t just a sales platform. It’s where perception is formed, and perception drives recruitment.
6. You Still Need Recruiters, Just Use Them Smarter
This isn’t about replacing recruiters. Great recruiters bring reach, speed, and insight that few in house teams can replicate.
But if you’re spending six figures a year on recruitment fees and not seeing that number fall over time, something needs to change.
The goal should be partnership, not dependence. Your internal team should handle the bulk of hiring and use external specialists for hard to fill, senior, or niche appointments.
Firms that strike that balance build resilience. They reduce spend without sacrificing quality. Over time, they become less reliant on agencies while still benefitting from the best the market has to offer.
7. Measure What Matters
Good recruitment businesses measure everything because the data tells a story. It reveals performance patterns, training needs, and credibility points that strengthen their pitch to clients.
But most in house teams measure little beyond whether a role was filled.
In accountancy, firms analyse every figure imaginable, margins, utilisation, client growth, yet rarely apply the same discipline to recruitment.
Recruitment data offers some of the clearest clues about what is working and what is not.
It starts with the basics.
Time to hire – how long does it take to fill a role, and can you plan earlier for roles that always take longer
Interview to offer ratio – if you’re interviewing lots of unsuitable people, screening needs improvement
Offer acceptance rate – every declined offer signals something about perception, salary, or process
Retention – who leaves, when, and why Do exit interviews identify patterns
Talent balance – are you top heavy, bottom heavy, or well structured through the middle
Each of these tells a story about your process, your people, and your culture.
When measured properly, recruitment becomes a diagnostic tool that helps you predict challenges, improve retention, and make better long term decisions.
8. Recruitment, Retention and the Culture That Sells Itself
Recruitment is only one part of the wider people ecosystem. Hiring well gets people through the door, but what happens next decides how long they stay.
The same attention that goes into recruitment should go into development, engagement, and leadership.
Career frameworks, appraisals, salary reviews, and training plans are not paperwork. They are the foundations of retention. When people understand how to progress and feel supported, they stay longer.
Great frameworks need great managers. The best firms invest in developing their leaders, encouraging feedback, communication, and a shared sense of purpose.
Nobody expects people to stay forever, but if your average tenure increases from six years to ten, the financial difference is enormous. You save on recruitment costs and keep more of the expertise that makes your firm valuable.
This is where culture becomes critical.
Culture is not a slogan or a Friday perk. It’s the sum of your values lived daily. The firms that thrive are those whose culture is visible, consistent, and authentic.
But visibility matters. A great culture that no one can see is a wasted advantage. Your brand, marketing, and recruitment materials should reflect how it feels to work at your firm. That’s what attracts like minded people and creates loyalty.
In today’s market, culture sells, but only if people can see it.
9. Recruitment Is a Strategic Engine, Not a Reaction
Recruitment has a bigger influence on a business than most people realise.
It’s often seen as a reactionary service, something you switch on when someone resigns. But recruitment standards shape the long term strength of a firm.
When recruitment slips, performance follows. Just because you’re a great business today doesn’t mean you’ll still be one in five years if you take your eye off the people strategy.
Every part of your firm can be first class, your clients, your technology, your services, but if the people side falters, the impact is immediate and profound.
The best firms know this. They challenge themselves constantly. What can we do better What can we measure How can we create new perceptions among people who haven’t even thought about joining us yet
Because perception is reality. You can be the best firm in the world, but if the market doesn’t see it that way, it doesn’t matter.
The truth is that most firms have levelled up in the past decade. Flexible working, wellbeing programmes, better benefits, these are now the norm. Staying ahead means thinking differently about people.
Recruitment must sit at the heart of that. It’s not the only ingredient of success, but it’s one of the most vital.
That’s why I help firms bring recruitment back into their core thinking, treating it as a strategic engine for future success, not an admin function.
10. Let’s Talk
If you’re an accountancy firm and some of this resonates, if you’re already strong but know you could be sharper, or if recruitment isn’t yet a central part of your people strategy, I’d be happy to talk.
I can review your current setup, identify opportunities to improve, and help you design or implement the systems you need. That could be a full consulting project, an interim management arrangement, or simply a confidential discussion about where to start.
And of course, if you need help filling key senior or executive roles, that’s still what I do every day, and I love it.
You can book a call directly here:
calendly.com/patrick-genesis/chat-with-patrick-bell-genesis
About the Author
Patrick Bell is Managing Director of Genesis Recruitment, a specialist in senior and executive appointments within accountancy practice across the North of England. Over 27 years he has overseen more than 20,000 placements, built and led two recruitment businesses from the ground up, and helped firms design talent strategies that make hiring faster, cheaper, and better.