Let’s talk for a minute about hiring tax preparers, or getting hired as one.
We had our team retreat for my own tax office team this week and one of the hottest topics in our leadership meeting was whether or not we should hire another tax preparer or two for the upcoming tax season.
- I spoke with CPA Adam Shay recently and hiring tax preparers was top of mind for him, too.
- To hire or not to hire–and how to hire–has become a frequent topic in our small group, interactive Mentor Support Sessions, even to the point where Members are sometimes hiring each other right out of the meetings 🙂
- And our Chief Support Officer, Glen Wielandt, is receiving requests from tax employers looking for tax preparers for this upcoming season.
Few quick tips to share with you, then, of stuff I’ve learned from not only hiring a good number of tax preparers over the years, but also hearing from our Pronto Tax School Members about your hiring experiences:
- Try hard to make sure that the math works for any new hire’s real life. Meaning, put yourself in that person’s shoes and work with that person to figure out whether whatever you’re offering to pay them is going to work for them financially. Sometimes making that math work may involve coordinating with other employers of tax preparers to help a tax preparer “piece together” 2 or even 3 opportunities into a level of earnings that works for their financial situation. You may even discover that the math tells you that you need to raise prices for your services, in order to create a workable earning opportunity for a new hire. With inflation / cost-of-living such a challenge these days, tax employers may need to “get creative” to both avoid overpaying new hires and avoid bringing on teammates who, if you’re not careful, may get bitter about the level of pay they’re receiving.
- Use online self-study training to conserve your valuable time, then “supplement” online self-study with in-person interactions to make the person feel important (they are). So for example, some Pronto Tax School Members ask new hires to complete the Pronto Tax School Basic Income Tax Course and/or the Business Tax Verified Training Program with CPA Adam Shay, and then they’ll meet with the new hire once per week for an hour to go over any questions, go over examples in your tax software, build team spirit, etc. If the new hire doesn’t actually do the online self-study course, doesn’t show up to the weekly meeting, and/or shows up to meetings with no questions, well then I guess you know where you stand, right? And you didn’t need to invest dozens of your own hours to find out. And on the other side of the coin, for new hires that do engage with online self-study, they’re getting solid training without you having to do the training yourself. #winwin
- Be specific about what you need and expect…and about what YOU, as the employer, are going to do to help that new hire meet (or exceed!) your needs and expectations. For example, “In order for this to work for our business, we need and expect you to prepare 200 tax returns, at an average fee of $225, between the dates of January 20th and April 20th. To help you hit those goals, we are going to funnel 150 of our existing clients to you, to shift some weight off our senior team members and get you going. We expect you to earn at least 15 positive Google Reviews and at least 50 referrals from those 150 clients, and we will teach you how to earn reviews and referrals from happy clients. Do you have any questions about these needs and expectations?” Or you could always try the old “we expect you to show up on time and try hard” complete lack of any specifics and see how that goes? 🙂
Hope these tips help and please also feel free to reply back to this email with any needs you may have related to hiring tax preparers, or being hired as a tax preparer for this upcoming tax season.
You can view our Membership Plans here and you’ll see that our “top level” Membership, the Dream Team Membership, includes direct recruiting of tax preparers from within our network (recruiting efforts are led by our Chief Support Officer, Glen Wielandt, who has 40+ years worth of tax industry experience). Last year, we helped dozens of tax pros hire and be hired and we’d love to do even more of that “opportunity connecting” this year, if it’s something you want from us.
