With the right employees in place, an organisation’s business challenges are half-way solved.

The statement above is even more apt in a country like Nigeria. With a large pool of skilled and talented people, it’s expected that getting the right personnel shouldn’t pose much serious challenge to businesses. While there may be no shortage of talent in Nigeria, identifying the right ones and retaining them continue to be recruiters’ nightmare. This challenge pervades recruitment for virtually all skilled roles in the country; including accounts & finance roles.

This blog highlights 10 factors to consider in the hiring process to recruit good accountants in Nigeria.

The need to recruit good accountants

Regardless of its size, every business organisation needs an accountant. For many start-ups, the owner or a surrogate may take the role of the accountant (book-keeper) together with other functions. But as the business grows, it’s crucial to engage the services a professional accountant.

Large organisations would employ scores of accountants performing different roles – mostly towards an ultimate goal. Aside from capturing financial transactions with a reasonable level of accuracy, the 21st century accountant is expected to be fully business-minded and must be able to directly or indirectly offer reasonable advice to business managers/owners on business survival, growth and sustainability. This responsibility typically involves several duties, such as:

Formulation of financial policy
Financial planning, budgeting & budgetary control
Formulation/Compliance with internal controls
Recording, categorization and presentation of financial reports.
Cost management & control
Financial analysis and reporting
Safeguard of business assets and investments

Such – and as widely acknowledged – the role of a competent accountant in the success of a business cannot be over-emphasized. The question then is what it really takes to recruit a good accountant either for just accounting responsibility or combined with a financial management role.

To start with, there appears to be quite a dearth of very competent candidates for finance and accounts position in the Nigerian job market. From our interactions with hundreds of candidates for various Finance and Accounts roles for clients in the last couple of years as Recruitment Consultants of repute in Nigeria, findings show that getting candidates who comprehensively meet essential competence requirements for various accounting and finance roles is not an easy task. This paucity of competencies calls for recruiters and employers to dig really deep if they desire to recruit very good candidates.

What to test for

Either as recruitment consultants, employers or recruitment agency, the following competencies are important evaluation criteria in the process of recruiting good accountants.

1. Test for sound understanding and practical application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This is the bedrock of accounting upon which capturing of transactions, reporting, planning and analysis rest. For a fact, a candidate that falls short in this gets you nowhere.

2. Particularly test for strong understanding of double entry principles. We find it shocking that many accountants – chartered and not – of varying years of experience, fall short on simple understanding of basic double entry principles. For instance, and as simple as it may seem, complete entries for a simple sales transaction is a nightmare to many candidates.. It’s shocking to hear some of them attribute this to automation – “after all accounting software does the double entry processing”. This simply can’t be logical.

Link to read more https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/how-to-recruit-great-accountants-in-nigeria/