Redefining Recruitment: A Progressive Approach with Allan Fisher

Allan Fisher is the founder of Premier Financial Search, an accounting talent recruitment firm he established in Southern California in 2001. PFS works with local, Regional and National CPA Firms and Family Office Groups in California, Washington, New York, Florida, Texas and The Midwest. A leader in the placement of public accounting professionals, the mission of PFS is to be the point of connection between exceptional accounting and finance talent and elite organizations. PFS works to understand and identify short-term and long-term objectives, allowing its specialists to provide strategically planned opportunities that maximize outcomes.

Transcript:

Hey everybody. We are back with another episode of the CPA Life Podcast, the podcast that shines a bright light on the public accounting space and some of the leaders and insiders that are aggressively working to create a more people-centric, modern-minded culture versus the century-old “we’ve always done it like that” culture that’s permeated the industry for a long time. Today we are continuing a series that we started a couple of weeks ago, where we’re spending time speaking with other recruiters and talent acquisition professionals who have intimate knowledge of the industry because this is the industry segment that they have built a business around supporting for multiple years.

We are joined today by Allan Fisher, who’s the president and founder of Premier Financial Search, an executive recruiting and staffing firm that, for the last 23 years, has focused on building partnerships and providing solutions to CPA firms across the country. Allan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

We’re gonna be digging into a lot of different topics that we’ve kind of emailed back and forth about, and I can’t wait to hear your take on some things. Something tells me that we’re probably gonna share some similar mindsets and thought processes as we go through that. But one of the things that we typically like to do before we really dig into a lot of the topics that we’re gonna talk about is to give folks a little bit of the flavor of your background and how you arrived at the point of your career where you are today because if you are like most folks, recruiting in the talent space was not something that you probably set out to do 20 plus years ago, correct?

Absolutely. Fell into it like most of us.

Yep. So tell me kind of where your career started and how you took a left turn and went down this path.

I was an accountant, in-house, for a publicly held company that had no revenue. This was during the dot-com boom, and you could see the writing on the wall in the accounting department that without earnings, without revenues, my job as well as the jobs of a lot of other people, were gonna disappear at some point soon. So I was referred to a recruiter who helped me find my next accounting job. My background—my degree is in marketing—so they said, “You know, with your degree in marketing and a couple of years in accounting, you’d be a great recruiter.” I had no idea what it was. I just knew that it wasn’t accounting, and I was at a point in my life where if I fell completely flat, it would’ve been okay because the year before, I think I made $38,000. So they were offering me a draw of $2,500 a month. Knowing that I could almost replicate my salary plus an opportunity for commission, I was in. Of course, I had no idea what the profession was, and within my first six weeks, the four people in the office, which were another executive recruiter, an outside salesperson, the branch manager, and a staffing person all quit or were fired.

Oh my gosh!

I was there alone, but not gonna give up. I had made a decision that I wasn’t gonna go back to accounting. It was sort of a blessing in disguise that everybody left because it was sink or swim, and I decided I was gonna swim.

It’s amazing how those trying moments really kind of are defining for us. People always laugh when I tell ’em my first job outta college. I have a degree in journalism. Kinda like you, I kind of fell into this. My first full year as a writer, I made $14,000. When I moved into recruiting, I thought there’s no way I’m gonna make less than that. I know I’m gonna make more than that, but I didn’t know until the middle part of the first day it was a 100% commission. I just assumed they’re not paying me less than $14,000. When I found out it was straight commission, I sat down with my boss and said, “Hey, I will be back tomorrow, but I gotta go figure out what I’m gonna do in the interim.” It’s amazing how you know the old adage, the story of burning your boats, it’s amazing when that happens. In your case, people quitting, it’s sink or swim, there’s not a whole lot of options. So talk to me about kind of that first year and how you were able to figure things out in an environment where you were pretty much the last man standing.

I was really fortunate that we had—so I worked for a national staffing firm, and we had five offices in my region, which is Southern California—and my area manager at the time said, “If you promise not to quit, I’ll come to your office a day a week. You come to my office a day a week, and then by phone, we’ll assign a couple of other mentors.” She did exactly what she said: She came to the office, she spent time, she mentored me. She could see that I was a willing student. I had two other mentors, and it was the same. It was, “Look, as long as you ask good questions, as long as you don’t give up, as long as you’re willing to take the advice that we give—you can push back if you think that what we’re saying is completely unrealistic,” but these were seasoned veterans. They all had 20 years of experience, and for me, I was in awe. I was 26 at the time. They had unbelievable experience and success. I’m sure you can relate, John—when I started, we had a phone and an industry guide. We didn’t even have a phone book. It was just a big, thick yellow book of companies in certain industries laid out by SIC code.

Yes!

I came in where we had a fax machine. We weren’t even on email yet. The people that I started with, they were telling me stories about how they would send résumés in the mail. They would put a résumé in the mail and then they would call three days later to say, Hey, did you get it? We were thinking of how advanced we were because we had a fax machine and we would get a receipt saying that the fax went through.

I was fortunate—when we started, it was accounting and finance, and it was too early on to even know that there was a difference between accounting and finance. I was in a building where it was almost all CPA firms and we had three mid-size CPA firms in the building. I was the first one in the office, I was the last one to leave, and during tax season, just realized I’m seeing these same people here at 6:30 in the morning and at eight o’clock at night. There must be something to that.

There was somebody who I met in the parking garage, it was just one of those conversations where, you know, “I see you here and you’re working 14 hours a day every day. What is it that you do?” She said, “I’m a tax senior and I work at the firm on the third floor. What do you do?” “I’m a recruiter.” A couple of days later we’re in the elevator together and she hands me her résumé and says, call me. She had three years of experience and she worked at what was considered a top 50 firm in Los Angeles. She said, All I care about is I wanna work at a firm that’s bigger. So I took out the LA Business Journal Book of Lists—she worked for the number, call it 47 firm in LA—I just called firms 1 through 46, which of course included, back then it was the Big Six.

Yeah.

I’m still waiting on a return phone call from the managing partner of Deloitte. But as I made my way down that list, I was getting calls back. So I was leaving a lot of voicemails. And by the time I was done, I had six firms that said, “I’d like to know more about your candidate.” Six out of 46 was a pretty amazing ratio. What I recognized was, partners will respond—the partners, at least in LA, are very much what you see is what you get. My voicemail was pretty much to the point: “I’m representing a candidate with three years of experience working at a top 50 firm, looking for a larger firm, and they’re in touch with the market.” What I said resonated with them. The candidate went on all six interviews, ended up with three offers, and had a 25% salary increase.

Wow.

So not only was I hooked on recruiting, but I think I realized there’s something about partners that, their style just works really well with mine, which is what you see is what you get, and as long as you’re honest about what you’ve got, they’ll respond. That was the beginning. So that happened maybe six months into my recruiting career. I was in a deficit up to that point because of the draw versus commission, and very soon I was back in the black. From that point on, nine months in, I never looked back. I knew—it was at the nine-month mark where I knew I would be a recruiter for the rest of my career.

It is amazing when you have some success in this business. Anytime I interview people, inevitably the question comes up sometimes of, “Hey, what are the highs and what are the lows?” I’ll always tell people, “Here’s the highs: You’re gonna walk out of this office sometimes, and you’re gonna say, I can’t believe I get paid to do this. And then there’s gonna be days that are the lows that you’re gonna walk out and you’re gonna say, they don’t pay me enough to do this.”

Yeah, and both of those things coexist on a daily basis.

Yes, they do. They absolutely do. As a long-term person in this business, I was sitting at the table one night talking to my daughters—they’re older now—but they were little and they were old enough to start to understand what dad did for a living. One of my girls asked me, “Dad, what do you love about your job?” I said, “I absolutely love dealing with people. I absolutely love the fact that you can take somebody and put them in a better position, that gives them more opportunity to create for their family a better life. You also can impact an organization that’s got a hole that needs filling, and this person could answer problems that could take ’em to the next level. I absolutely love the fact that we get to deal with people and do that.” My other daughter said, “Dad, what do you hate about your job?” I said, “We have to deal with people.” There’s a double-edged sword to this that I think anybody that deals with the public sector, even our clients, CPAs, there’s probably a little bit of truth in that in their life as well. Wouldn’t you agree?

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s the best of all things, and it’s the worst of all things. But you nailed it, that there’s something amazingly gratifying about making a good placement because you know that you’re improving somebody’s life, usually in more than one aspect, whether it’s a shorter commute, more money, greater partner track opportunity, different leadership, maybe it’s a niche that they want to get involved in. At the same time, potentially you found the next star, maybe the next partner for the firm that you’re working with.

Years before I went into recruiting, I worked at a car audio store. We sold car stereos and while the buyer may get a lot of love and satisfaction out of his new six-disc changer in his car. That stereo gets nothing out of the relationship with the consumer. Now we’re able to really change the lives of people on both sides.

You’re absolutely right. The ability to impact multiple people in the midst of working together and building those relationships. There are a lot of things that we’ve messaged back and forth that I want to dig into and kinda get your take on in the industry because there’s been a lot of movement over the last five to six years, and definitely in the last two to three years within the space, private equity coming in with a more modern mindset that I think has to be in place today if you want to attract the talent that’s out there today. One of the questions I wanted to ask you is, when you look at what’s going on the desk of not only you but the ten people on your team, what are some things that you’re seeing that your clients are doing, from well to exceptionally well, that are somewhat setting them apart in the acquisition and retention game? Because right now it’s really a two-sided coin—for years, I think that leadership in public accounting just accepted the fact that, Hey, we’re gonna have 18, 20, 25, 30% turnover. The problem with that today is there’s not as many people flowing in the front door as are going out the back door if that’s still what’s going on, so it’s a necessity for firms to work on both sides of that equation and do them both exceptionally well. What are some things that you are seeing that your clients are doing or that you’re advising your clients to do to begin to set them up to succeed? Bringing people in and holding onto what’s there as well as the new people coming in the door.

Yeah, I love that question. We’ll start with retention. You’re right about the 18 to 20% turnover—that has been—it’s been accepted. We could argue why it has just been accepted, but that’s been the status quo. That changed in 2021, definitely in 2022, where I think firms still accepted that was going to be the case. Of course, we had what the world is calling the Great Resignation, which probably peaked late ’21, early ’22. Then what happened in 2022 is firms said it’s becoming way too expensive for us to allow this to continue. During the early days of Covid, a lot of firms found themselves in a position of becoming very empathetic towards their employees; it really pushed firms to become understanding about the human condition, first in terms of what’s going on medically: Are there people at our firm who have had Covid? What about their loved ones? It was really understanding, whether it was mask mandates, vaccinations, but really trying to be beyond the right side of any of those gray areas, but also understanding there were certain people that just couldn’t come back to the office because they were caring for their loved ones, they had their kids doing school via Zoom, and it was really just trying to be the understanding, sympathetic and empathetic employers.

That might have been the first time that employees really got a glimpse into their firm’s management philosophy. Prior to that, you didn’t know, and you really didn’t care. This was really the first point—I would say it was a point of inflection in the market. Most firms did a phenomenal job. When people would resign, a lot of firms were caught off guard and they said, “Wait a minute, we didn’t understand some of those things that were on your mind. Give us the opportunity to course correct.” Now, any recruiter prior to Covid could give you a list of reasons, and I think if you were to search “counteroffer and resignation” on Google, you’d probably get a trillion responses. We’re really good at having a comeback for why you should never accept a counteroffer. In ’22 and ’23, I would say our arguments were moot, because there were a lot of firms that prior to this did not really have an understanding of where the shortcomings were, whether it was with salary, with benefits. And firms did a phenomenal job of making things better.

So in ’21 and ’22, that was the first time in my career I ever saw firms give market adjustments. That’s totally separate from salary increases. These were market adjustments. This is a one-time, you are under market, we’re gonna increase you so that the playing field is more level. At the same time, firms increased their benefit offerings to be more competitive. They increased their 401(k) contributions. Firms that were at 0% went to two, they went to three. Firms that were at three went to five. Better medical plans. Firms that never had maternity and paternity leave were creating those plans. And a list of other benefits to just make the firm a really desirable place to work. At the same time, we started to have a little bit of fear about a recession, and of course, inflation and cost of living were raging out of control. So attrition probably hit an all-time low. So we went from the Great Resignation to what people are calling the Great Stay. And firms, for the first time, they felt we are doing all the things necessary to become a destination of choice and people want to stay. So I think if you were to look across the industry, let’s forget about the big four, where they have attrition for other reasons, but if you were to look across the industry, attrition in ’23 and ’24, it might have been about 5%.

So on the retention front, firms did a really good job. That’s starting to change this year. You can’t have a situation where attrition is three to 5% in a profession where historically there is an up-or-out mentality. In serving a lot of my clients and me just being able to do a virtual x-ray over most firms, we have underperformers in the market. And the market I would describe as inefficient. In an efficient market, we have a normal amount of attrition. It creates a little bit of a carousel effect where people leave one firm to go to another, those seats are filled by people that find that firm to be a better option. But when everybody stays put, firms maybe have the right number of people, but not necessarily the right people. What we’re seeing now is a push to return to office—I think firms are trying to figure out how to make sure they have the right people on the bus—and in some cases, they’re gonna allow people to opt out. Attrition has been great. I would actually argue, attrition’s been a little too low. On the talent acquisition side, the biggest selling point that firms have is leadership.

I’d agree.

Culture. Philosophy. HR and talent acquisition usually do a good job of conveying that, but nobody conveys it better than leadership. The firms that still have their partners, even a managing partner, involved in the interviews make a huge difference. So it always puzzled me when a firm goes out to market and there is an attractive piece of business that they want, they’ll send their two most dynamic, engaging, rainmaking partners out to secure that new piece of business. When it comes time to bring somebody in on the market, somebody who could be a future partner, they say, well, their time is too valuable, we’ll have people in HR or talent acquisition, maybe a COO, get involved. And I think they’re leaving too much to chance. I would say, let’s make sure that we’ve got the best people available to interview. So many interviews have gone virtual, which means the firm really has an opportunity to showcase who and what they want the way they want.

Make sure that you’ve got a representative group on the interview. I always want to see that there’s both a male and a female interviewing—particularly if you’re interviewing a female candidate—have a diverse group of people—whether it’s inclusive, whether it’s the age of the people—but it also has to be people that understand the importance of interviewing and understand the importance of securing talent. They have to be cheerleaders. They have to be people that can confidently say why this is a firm of choice because any candidate you’re interviewing has options. They could interview at a different firm every day for the rest of the year and not run out of options. So in about an hour, we’ve got to nail the interview. In that first example of rainmaking partners, they’ve got their pitch down. They know the things to say, they’ve done their research on the company, they are the stars. But when we approach interviews, we don’t. Do they understand the right questions that they should be asking? Do they understand the right way to make sure that the firm is put in the best possible light? Are they taking the time to look at the résumés, to know who it is they’re interacting with? Do they look at the education? Do they look at the other firms? Do they look for commonalities? The amount of effort that we put into getting new business is 10-to-1 the effort that most firms put into attracting new talent.

You know, it’s interesting you use that analogy, Allan, because that’s one of the things that I constantly talk to our clients about—the importance of being proactive in the hiring process, regardless of what’s going on inside the four walls of your organization, so you have every job filled that there’s an open seat for. If you’ve got a complete book of business and you’re at capacity, do you completely shut off business development and wait until you lose that account? Or, are you still softly tilling that ground so that if and when something does happen and you increase capacity, whether it’s because we brought in somebody new or we lost a client, we’ve got a pipeline of stuff that we’re dealing with? We don’t approach it the same way on the talent acquisition side: we wait until either we win a big account—now our people are overworked—or we lose an account. Since we’ve lost that account, now we’re stressing because it made up 22% of our overall revenue. Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? We lose a top player, same type mindset happens. If you’re always approaching it, like you’re talking about, from a BD perspective, from the standpoint of this is something we’re always doing and we’re putting our best foot forward when we do it every time, it’s amazing, I think, what would happen if that just little switch flipped in the mindset of most leaders of firms today.

That’s where philosophy is so important. We describe that, the word we use is “progressive.” Progressive firms, they’re always gonna hire and add capacity because they know that if they have another A player, it just gives them the freedom to bring in a couple of extra clients that next $250,000 of revenue. They know it makes sense for them to be upgrading current talent that they have—progressive. So we noticed that progressive firms were open-minded to hiring people remotely, which was a game changer in the first couple of years during and post-Covid. Firms said geography no longer matters, we want the best talent irrespective of where they live. We have more business coming in than we know what to do with. Capacity is the issue. If you’re only gonna look at who exists within five miles of your office, you’re gonna be disappointed. It’s gonna stunt your growth. When you say geography no longer matters, then it’s okay, how many people do you need, and how quickly?

Yeah, it absolutely is a game changer. I have a client here in the Dallas area that retired recently but started a firm 47 years ago and was one of the top five local firms here in the marketplace. His mindset—anytime I would call him with a candidate, regardless of whether or not they had an opening—was that it’s amazing how when I hire A players, even when I’m not looking, work just always shows up. It always does. I think you’ve probably lived that, and I’ve lived that as well from a recruiting perspective because there’s arguments that could be made. At what point do you add somebody else to your team? Well, my mindset has always been if there’s an A player out there, I’m gonna bring that person in because it’s amazing how the work always shows up whenever we bring that person in the door. So I think you’re right, that progressive mindset tends to set firms apart when it comes to talent acquisition and when it comes to retention, there are firms that just look for more creative ways to do those things and do them well.

You mentioned a minute ago, you know, just the simple act of knowing who it is that you’re talking to and having studied that person’s résumé and looked through that résumé. I mentioned my daughters a minute ago, and when my daughters were starting to get into the professional world and start the interviews and I would prepare them for interviews, I would always tell them, “Look, if anybody ever asks you right out of the door when you sit down, ‘So tell me a little bit about yourself,’ that is code for either one, I hate interviewing, I don’t like doing it, so why don’t you start this process for me? Or, the second thing they’re probably saying is, ‘Hey, I haven’t taken a chance to read your résumé yet, so if you could fill in two minutes of space by telling me about yourself, I’ll glance through your résumé for the first time.’ ”

Yeah.

I think it’s still that way in the world that we live in today in our space in accounting.

There’s something lazy about that statement. You get one chance now. In the old days—to me, pre-Covid—you might have been going up against one other firm, and that firm was a mile away. Now you’re going up potentially against unlimited firms. As an example, if you’re in Dallas, you’re not just going up against firms in Dallas, which philosophically may be exactly the same as you. Well now you’re going up against firms in California and New York and Atlanta and Chicago that philosophically are very different in terms of the ways they treat people. So lazy sticks out, and with that one opportunity to make a first impression, it’s unlikely the candidate’s gonna want that second interview.

Thanks for joining us for part one of John Randolph’s conversation with Allan Fisher of Premier Financial Search. Part two will air March 19th. Be sure to subscribe to hear this and all the rest of our episodes, and learn more about the show at CPALifePodcast.com. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.

Redefining Recruitment: A Progressive Approach with Allan Fisher

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