Build Your AI-Team: The Future of Hiring in Accounting

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Hello everyone, how we all doing? We're gonna go ahead and get started in just a second. Just seeing if anyone's here. I want to say hello in chat box, what you've been up to, how you're getting on, anything nice happened over the weekend, etc, etc. I've just put my Christmas tree up yesterday. It's officially Christmas in my house which is exciting but I know a lot of you Americans, you have Thanksgiving first so do you have to wait and put your tree up after it's let me know. I make it on the hour actually straight away so if anyone does pop into the comments I will say hey but if not I will also get started. Organized Books says hi. Not sure what your name is but hello to you. Nice to have you here. The session today is going to be around how to use AI to help with your hiring process and how to build a team of people who are or AI how to build a team that is is equipped and ready to use AI and optimized for that.

Anne Harper is here from Canada. Really enjoying the AI academy. So welcome Anne. Glad you're enjoying it. Caitlin is here. Tree is up but not decorated yet. Nice. And it's Karen Christie is here as well. All right, thanks everybody. Nice to see you all here. I'm going to go ahead and get started so let me bring up some slides. So for anybody who is new here we do work with a company called B1G1 and what that collaboration allows us to do is whenever we have an event like this where you are turning up live to one of our events, that registers as an event for us. And it means that we are allowed to make a donation on your behalf as a thank you you for you being here live. So when you turn up to live events, it's not only good for you that you're learning, but we're also giving back to people as well as a thank you for you being here. So thank you. You can see on the screen right now, if you are quick, there is a QR code where you can scan that and decide where you would like your charity donation to go to. Comes from our bank account, but you get to choose whichever cause is the most important to you. And I've also put a link into the chat box as well on YouTube so you can decide where you would like that to go to. Now, for anybody who is massively interested in AI and wants to get started with AI, we do have a couple of great resources that you can use to get yourself started. So we have two free guides. The first one is, and I'm just popping the links in the chat and you will see the QR code on the screen as well. The first one, Chat PT for accountants and Bookkeepers, that goes over six different practical use cases that you can use as an accountant or a book keeper to get started with chat gbt. So if never used it before, that's a good place to start. And it gives you those six ways in which you can use it so that you can just start to conceptualize what can I do with this tool and how can I use it for accounting specific tasks. So that's the first one. And then on the one on the right there is the bookkeeper's guide to thriving in an AI Future. So we know that bookkeeping is becoming increasingly automated as a task. And when AI improves and gets to that level, there will come a point where it is pretty much consistently automated. So if you are a bookkeeper or bookkeeping, bookkeeping is a large part of what you do as a service, then how can we move our services into a space where we are going to stay competitive and relevant and stay profitable? If bookkeeping is something that now takes us seconds to do. Okay, so that's what that one is about. And a bit of a way, you know, a bit of a guide on, on you know, where to put your focus instead in your business. So if you're interested in both of those, you just put your name and email address in and it's free, so you can go and grab those and get started on learning some stuff around ChatGPT and AI. We also have our community, so our AI community is again free. We also have the AI Academy which is a paid version, but you can join the the community for free. And within that community there is some free training as well. So all you have to do to unlock that training is just comment and like and share stories in the community area. And just for being an active member you will be rewarded with extra points that will help you unlock the free training that is in there. So there are several courses in there around ChatGPT, the different use cases, there's recordings there from the, the last time we ran our virtual summit and so on and so forth. As a course they're on privacy and security. So there's lots of free training in there that you could just unlock just simply by being a community member and lots of people in there sharing how they're using AI, asking questions that kind of get good discussions going and stuff like that. So that's a great place to be if you are interested in, you know, staying more on top of the latest news and being able to talk to other people about how they're using AI specifically for their accounting and bookkeeping needs. So check out that community. We've also just set up a brand new community which is the Value Pricing Academy now on a, the school platform for the same kind of and it has the same layout where if you are an active community member that shares a lot, talks a lot and gets involved and gets stuck in, then you can unlock some free training in there as well. So we've just made this live literally last week. So if you want to get in there and get early access to all of the stuff in there, then you can join that. Now I've just posted the, the link into the chat or I think I did, I might post the AI one twice. There you go. So I've just posted the link into the chat and then the QR code on the screen if you're very quick right now. So those are all of the announcements and resources I just wanted to make you aware of.

Let's go ahead then and jump in with the content for today. So today what we're looking at is how to, how to build a team around you that is strong with AI and that is going to perform really well in this new kind of AI and tech advanced landscape. So not necessarily just looking at hiring people, this could also refer to using AI tools within your business, streamlining your workflow, creating systems. What kind of things can we do to make our team strong around AI? But what we are primarily looking at today is that hiring process and how we can use ChatGPT to simplify and optimize the all of the different elements of that process that you would go through if you need to bring a new member into your team. So that's what we're looking at. So the first thing to kind of go over is just a little bit of. Let's just discuss a little bit about the, the new kind of workspace attitude, particularly post Covid it. So post, we're looking at kind of post Covid and then also with the AI, boom, how is that changing the workspace, the attitude towards workspaces and what kind of things we need to be putting into our jobs as attractive features to bring in the right kinds of people. And what kind of people are we looking for as well? So first of all, the new workspace, workspace attitude. So people are more inclined now to want to work remote or at least some sort of hybrid of a flexible working situation. This is particularly useful for people who are going to really benefit from that working from home. You know, if they've got young kids or they've got pets at home, and it's just more convenient for them to be able to work from home. Some people, they are more motivated when they are at home and they've not got somebody micromanaging them or they don't have the distractions of other people in an office. So remote work and being able to offer some level of flexibility in that is really something that is desired, I think, by a lot of job candidates these days. So if you can offer flexibility, at least in some sense, then that's going to be a powerful thing to add to your job description. So.

Offering flexibility, working from home, that could be that they work a couple of days in and a couple of days at home and you, you just give them that flexibility. In that sense, obviously it does come with the additional challenges and questions of then how do we manage a remote team? How do we, we bring cohesion into that team and make them work as a team? How do we manage different time zones? How do we change our communication style to monitor that? And that brings up a lot of those kinds of questions. Okay. And this is where it really does come down to using the right tools to be able to do that as well. So if you have a team that is largely remote, we're going to be looking more often now at using Tools like Slack and Zoom and tools like Loom, which is one we use where you film your screen and you can talk over the top of it. Tools like that are going to become more important in your business. And we can use AI to work out what those tools are and we can create systems as well to make sure that everybody in the team knows how to use those. But remote work is really powerful. Since COVID when people were working from home and they kind of realized, actually I don't need to be in the office. Obviously for some jobs that is different. But talking accounting and bookkeeping don't necessarily always need to be in the office in order to get work done. So it does really become as well about hiring for attitude so that, you know, we can make sure that we are bringing in the right kinds of people who are going to be self motivated. And that's something that we can test for when we do interviewing and screening. And we're going to go over all of that. We're going to go over how to create interview questions, screening questions and tests and stuff like that to try and find those right people.

So with the explosion of AI then and automation, there has been a change to the way we would approach our workflow. There is going to be a change to the kind of work we are doing. So it's less likely now that you are bringing somebody in to do manual tasks. And if you are bringing them in to do manual tasks, then you really need to reevaluate.

Because a lot of these manual tasks can now be automated and that is probably a better use of your time and your money and efforts. If you can get an AI to do something quicker, then get them to do that. But the human element will come in elsewhere. So those manual tasks that are now being automated, that's kind of data entry compliance sort of stuff around bookkeeping, that sort of simpler data entry, manual stuff, that's going to be moved towards an automation role.

So the role itself that you would be hiring for is likely going to be changing. So if you're bringing in.

Somebody into your team, they're not likely to be doing that data entry kind of role. They're more likely to be doing analysis and advisory and communicating with your clients and having meetings face to face and handling issues in that sort of sense than they are going to be doing data entry. So with that in mind, we need to understand what kind of skills we want to be bringing to the table so that somebody would excel in that role. If that's what the role now is, is what kind of person are we bringing in to do that role? Okay, so we want to be embracing people who have AI skills and who have the ability to work efficiently with AI in their toolbox. Okay. So they don't necessarily need to be an AI whiz, but they need to have some level of comfortability with AI. Okay. And then the last thing as well is, is.

In regards to that new, the workspace and the, and, and the attitude and knowing that we have this AI focus now or tech or, you know, being up to date and modern, it's really important to automate those manual tasks and then also cross skill the team that you already have. So if you do have a great team already and they are already pretty well skilled in that kind of advisory role or the analysis role, then we can cross skill those people by teaching them the AI skills. And the best way to do that is if you learn it yourself. You can then create systems in your business and share that training with other people or put them on a course where they can go and learn those AI skills because it's going to be valuable to you if they can learn how to do that and bring that skill set back to the business to then, you know, offer that additional, you know, information and what they can give back to the business. So a couple of things there. So then what is the, the new desired skill set? What kind of skills are we looking for in our team? And these are all, you know, these are all potential ones. And it is going to vary if you do have a drastically different approach to what you would like in a team. But some of the ones that are going to be more important now, now in this AI kind of and post covered era, AI literacy, as we've said, being competent and efficient in using AI and being comfortable in using AI as a tool. Because, you know, when AI first came out there was this kind of skepticism and there still is for some people where using AI is a bit of a cheat code. Whereas I think now, you know, when the calculator was introduced, that might have been a cheat code where you didn't need to learn how to do proper maths. But now we use a calculator quite comfortably and nobody judges anybody for it. So AI is, you know, we can view it in that same way where it's just another tool that is going to help us do our work quicker and that there doesn't need to be this, you know, cynicism around it. Of course, we do need to have safety around the way we are using AI. And I Have spoke before it in some session or live stream about making sure that your team, if you are having AI heavily used in your team to have some sort of policy in place where this is how we use it, this is how we handle data and this is how we stay safe with AI. That is also going to be an important thing to have in your business if you don't. So having AI skills is really important. Being able to do some level of prompt engineering is a really valuable skill these days. When AI and ChatGPT first came about, people were getting six figure salaries, you know, in the, you know, upwards of 300000 kind of dollars a year salaries just to be a prompt engineer and to create the prompts that would allow them to do certain tasks with chat GPT. So that skill is very, very valuable and it's something that bringing that into your team is really, really powerful. Whether that's by learning it yourself or by hiring somebody who has that skill set, that is a powerful skill to look for. Communication skills and social skills then are also massively important. So as you know, I'm talking a lot here around AI being a key thing as we kind of bring more AI into the business. This, it's also massively valuable to still have that community, human connection with people because it is a relationship based industry. So having a level of communication with your clients is really important. What is now more so important if AI is doing the data entry and your role is now more advisory, you need to be really good at communicating maybe some quite complex financial things, things to business owners who potentially aren't well versed in that financial language. So you're taking the, the, the figures, the numbers and communicating in a way that is easy and comfortable for that business owner to use and interpret. And that is massively valuable for them, you know, because they, they could go to AI and say these are my figures, what can I get do with that? But it might not be very simple for them. Whereas if you're there to help interpret that and implement those things into the business. So let's say you did some great, you know, tax planning work for them or something like that, they might be able to look at what chat duty has said, oh, you could do this and you could cut costs here and you could put a tax saving thing in here, but they might not actually be able to implement it. Whether that's a time restraint or they don't have the knowledge or they just don't want, want to do it and they want a professional to do it. So that's where your role comes in. And therefore having those communication skills is really important and kind of as well as just standard communication skills, particularly online communication skills. Because if we are working from remote businesses, whether that's, you know, communicating with your team or perhaps you have a remote virtual kind of space with all of your clients so that you can work with more clients further afield, having an online communication and being able to be comfortable with using tools like Zoom or online platforms, that's also really, really powerful. Now, of course, these are also tend to be things that we can teach, so it doesn't have to be that they inherently have these skills, but it's something that we could try and aim towards problem solving. And autonomy is also a great one. And I don't think that's, that's probably not something that's new, but particularly the way that this could be really useful is if people are working more independently from home, in their own spaces and they have access to tools like ChatGPT, what we would want them to do, if you want, you know, more time for yourself or you want to be able to delegate work more confidently to them, if they have problem solving skill set and they have a lot of autonomy me in the role that they're fulfilling, they can come up to a problem and solve it themselves by first going to something like chat gbt and then they can come back to you with, hey, I found this problem, but I found this solution. So I'm just going to tell you the solution and you can add that to your system. And that's something where they're now bringing even more value to you. So you want somebody who has the confidence to, you know, once they've settled in, has the confidence to address those problems themselves and use their own autonomy to come up with solutions. Because there are a lot of tools available to them that would allow them to do that. We also want people who are adaptable and have a growth mindset. So people who are, you know, maybe a little bit more stuck in the traditional ways and they are, you know, scared of AI and scared of using new tech that might be a block because. And you want to try and find people who are more adaptable and more willing to change to, to new systems that you implement as you grow as a business. So you want people who are willing and ready to kind of go along that journey with you. So that's just a bit of a kind of overview of what kind of things are we looking for in people and, and why are we looking for those things? You know, how has the landscape changed and therefore what role do they need to fulfill and what criteria do people need to really have and, and qualities do people need to have to be able to fulfill that role to a good level? So once we know all of that.

How can we then use ChatGPT then to actually start the hiring process and to actually start bringing people into the business? So if you're looking at a blank canvas now, I'm going to go through a couple of different things with you here. First of all, I'm going to ask for some general hiring advice and then we're going to ask for, we're going to create a job advert, we're going to create screening questions, interview questions, do skill tests and all that sort of stuff. So I'm going to jump into Chat DBT.

Over here.

And for anyone who hasn't used chatgpt before, I've created just, I've created a little project for Holder for myself here and I would recommend, if you are hiring somebody and that's a project that you're working on and you're trying to bring somebody into your team, create yourself a little project. And then what I really recommend that you do is I'll show you how to do this. If I create a new project, there's a little settings cog that says project only. Now what this means is project. I'll read that it's a project can only access its own memories and memories outside of the chat are hidden. So if you are building together a job advert or you're building your adding information in there, you're adding files. I like this project only memory function because it means that as I'm going through and creating my job advert, which I've had in one conversation here, I can then jump into another conversation and say, based on the advert I've just created, can you do this now? And it will remember that from the other conversation that you've had. So that was just a little, little tip before we get into this, is that if you are going to go in through this process and you want to keep everything together nice and neatly, I recommend a project and even more so, I recommend a project that has project only memory so that you can build upon what you're working on.

And if you needed to get, you know, outside information, then you can have a conversation outside of that project and then you can drag it in afterwards just to keep it neat. So let's start off by just getting a general kind of strategy on, on how to approach the hiring situation. So really basic prompt, give me a strategy on how to best hire for an accountancy firm. Now that's really basic. If you have more information about what you're trying to hire for, you know how to hire a qualified bookkeeper for a role in this kind of company that's based in the US Whatever extra information you can put in there, the more information the better. But I'm starting with something basic to show you what it can do and then we'll go through the different prompts of how to then expand on that. So give me a strategy on how to to best hire for an accountancy firm. So it's given me an overarching kind of strategy here. So number one is start with a clear, value driven job description. Now, when I teach marketing, one of the things that I say is the most important thing that you do is you always need to start from a point of knowing who your ideal client profile is. So what is your ideal client? Who do you want to work with? It's really important to start from that point because everything that you create after that point to attract that client is going to be based on the kind of client that you're trying to attract. Right? The language, the content that you create, where you post things, it all matters around that. So it's exactly the same strategy here. When you're trying to attract a team member, you want to have have real clarity on who you're trying to attract, what values they want to have, what qualities they want to have. And of course there is some leniency in that. But if you have good clarity on what role they need to fulfill, then that will mean that when you describe that role in the advert, that will hopefully attract the right people. When you create tests, that will attract the right people. When you are doing screening questions, that will attract the right people. If you have that first clear idea. Okay, so we're starting with a clear value driven job description.

So this is going to be. You want to communicate what the role is. So it's got some suggestions here. It could be a compliance account, a compliance accountant or bookkeeper, client manager, advisory accountant, internal operations assistant, or a trainee or junior role. And if you wanted to ask, you know, you could ask ChatGPT for a better name for that role. If you are kind of making something a little bit new, so maybe it's like somebody who is AI assisted, an AI assisted accountant or something like that, and it's a bit of a new role, then you can get it to help formulate that Role for you as well.

What responsibilities they're going to have. So we can expand on this instead of just something like prepare VAT returns. VAT returns, we're going to phrase it instead as deliver accurate VAT returns on time with minimal revisions. Improve client understanding through clear explanation of numbers. So we want things like that in there. We want the role, we want what responsibilities they are going to fulfill. Some success indicators perhaps. Okay, so what are the three to five KPIs? So that's key, key performance indicators that we would be looking at. So as you, as that person comes onto your team, how are you measuring their success? How are you measuring their performance? Because if they understand that then they can work towards, you know, climbing the ranks or getting the promotion or just, you know, being very good at their job, then they need to have something towards, to strive towards. So putting that in there might be something that's helpful to the, to the job advert.

Also things like benefits then and culture. So you want to have something in there around what your, what your workplace values are. You know, are you really laid back? Are you, do you work remote? Do you value family? You know, because you might have a company that is really strict and quite formal and very professional. Or it could be a, a company that's a little bit more hands off and we're happy for you to work remote. It could be a company that's like we, you know, if, if you know, for example, I'm just kind of making off the top of my head here, but if you're a company that works with, and you have a niche and you work with female run businesses and that's the niche that you work with as your clients, then maybe you also have a really strong understanding of female workers and that, you know, maybe they have extra needs, maybe they want to bring their kids into the workplace to sit with them or bring their pets in or whatever. You know, what kind of things that would match what the, what the workplace is about.

Come through in your values as well. And you know, if you are women centric in that particular example, then maybe you're attracting people who are also on the same value pathway. It the example I often use is people who would like to attract digital nomads. So if you get somebody who also works remote and lives that kind of lifestyle. So you know, I have a campervan and I often work from my camper van. I would have the knowledge to impart in your business to say I actually really get on with that idea and I can help a lot with your clients because I'm also in a similar situation. So you can try and find people who their, their culture and the way that they live and the way that they work also really applies to your business and your values and what you are trying to strive for and that their values match your values so that they are more committed and more engaged with the work that they're doing as well. So if, if they also align with those values then they'll probably be more, more driven to do the work to a high level because they also agree with those principles and those values. So a little bit off tangent there but benefits and culture. So what kind of things can. Are going to benefit them? What is the career progression that they could go through? Do you have flexible working arrangements? Is there extra training that you can put them on that's going to make them more qualified?

That kind of stuff. So what kind of stuff can we put into that job role to attract the right candidates? So, so that's creating the job, the job advert in mind. The, the values of the job. Number two is we want to attract the right candidates. Not the most candidates, but the right candidates. So this is looking at where are we going to be posting that advert once we have it? Because we want to be putting it in front of the, the right people. So where do the right people hang out? Where are the right people looking for jobs? Because we need to post on those places.

Some extra tips about what works best when you're posting. So it does suggest here having a short video. Now we know we talk about this a lot. That video is a really, really powerful communication tool. It's a very powerful way of making yourself stand out from others. So somebody who watches a 60 second video that explains the role might take it in better than somebody who quickly scans a written job description. So that might be something that you do to try and attract the right person.

Step three, use a two stage screening funnel. So we might have some screening questions before anybody actually gets to the interview stage, which it suggests here as three to five short questions such as what software are you most confident in and why? Describe a time you solved a challenging client issue. What area of accounting do you enjoy most? And why or why do you want to work for our firm specifically? So you might put a couple of questions in there and just sort of, you can do this in an online form that they have to submit along with their CV at something like that just to pre qualify anybody that's getting to the interview stage. So you don't want to Bring somebody in to the interview where that might take you an hour or however long you want to spend on that and invest a lot of time and effort in somebody who you could have pre qualified them by asking them a couple of questions first and cut them out and saved yourself some time in the interview process. So we're going to start with a couple of screening questions.

And then step two as well is giving them some sort of short practical test. So again, you could do this at different stages. If you have a way of testing somebody in an online space, you could get them to do the test and then use their score to see if they're worthy of an interview. Or you might like to take the approach of interviewing them first and then doing a skills test afterwards. So that's really up to your approach. But the skills test, it may be that you're testing something like getting them to reconcile a small bank feed or identify errors in a set of accounts, write an email explaining numbers to a client, or explain how they would use AI tools to work faster. If you're really, really focused on bringing in these AI skills, then what you might do is give them a problem to solve and say you're, you're able to use your. Here's a problem. We're happy for you to use any tools at your availability. If you want to use AI, go for it and then see how they would solve that problem and see what they come back with and watch how they do it as well. So it may be that you have some sort of test like that that you put them through just to see what their comfortability is with those tools. It doesn't mean that they need to be an expert, but just having some level of comfortability with it could be, you know, something that's a foot in the door to get them into the right role.

So then we also want to prepare for the interview. So the interview for behavior, culture and thinking, this is where we want to determine scenario questions. So here's a messy client file. How would you approach it? What checks do you run before filing? So we're checking here for technical ability. We're also checking for those communication style skills, those communication skills.

So we perhaps ask them a question that helps them demonstrate those skills. I think the interview process, you want to bring the best out in them so you're not trying to catch them out. We are trying to bring out the best in them. So what kind of questions can we ask and how can we set up that situation so that they are able to best shine and showcase Those skills. So give them a chance to communicate. That might just be in the back and forth that you have with them. You might just pick that up. What values do they have good values for? Accounting firms include accuracy, ownership, curiosity, kindness, proactive communication and integrity. You may have other ones that you want to add in there as well. Have a growth mindset and be tech comfortable. So your future team must be comfortable with AI, cloud, software, automation and learning new tools.

And offer quickly, offer the offer, give your offer quickly and then onboard them properly. So this goes beyond what we're talking about today. Today we're talking really about the hiring process. But once you have hired somebody, you then want to retain them and you want to give them the best chance to perform well. So it's really important that you onboard them correctly. You give them the training that they need. You have systems and processes in place that they can follow to learn the role, but also, you know, systems for if they're struggling, what do they do, how do they get extra support, whatever. It's good to have that onboarding system really, really properly set up and set out and get them started onboarding really smoothly to.

To, to give them the best chance to perform well. Okay.

And hopefully retain them as a team member. If they are a good team member. Then we also want to look at stuff afterwards as well, which is, you know, building a firm that people want to stay in. So we talked a little bit there about making sure they've got values that align, promote a learning culture. This is something I massively value in the work that I do is that Mark always really, really encourages us to learn more stuff. And when I learn more stuff, I can teach it back back to you guys. So it's always a bonus to me personally in my skill set and my career, but it's always also benefiting you guys and the business by being able to teach that back to you. So having a firm that people want to stay in because of these kind of things, encourage autonomy, recognize achievements, have a clear career progression that they can move through. Offer flexible working or encouragement, personal, personal development as well. Okay. Long term hiring as well. Then you might want to build something like a talent pipeline. So this is getting a little bit more advanced. If you know that you are going to need more people in your team, then maybe you can create a small kind of email list with the top 10 people and just keep them in the list. And whenever you do have opportunities for a new role, you, you've got people that you can reach out to who maybe didn't quite make the cut last time, but they were great candidates. That might be something that you, that you create, but that's kind of going a little bit ahead of the game here. Now what we want want to actually look at is let's take this advice that it's given us and break that down and show how we would use ChatGPT to do each of those elements. So we want to start with a clear value driven, driven job description. So let's start with that. Now for this prompt. I have taken a prompt from our prompt library in the AI academy. So there's one in there. If you are in our AI academy, then you can access this and this prompt is to help you build a job advert or description.

So it's got variables at the end of the prompt which means that, that you can input the in, you can copy and paste the prompt, put it into here, then just scroll down to the bottom and input the extra information that it asks for for your specific role that you're, that you're trying to promote. But I'll just give you a quick run through of this prompt then. So you're a talent branding specialist and copywriter with deep experience crafting compelling high converting job ads tailored to the professional service industry. So we always start by giving it a Persona.

You might need to give it extra context. So your expertise ensures that the job description powerfully conveys the firm's values, excites top tier professionals and aligns with strategic talent goals. Okay, we then give it its task. Your task is to write a world class job advert description for an accounting firm hiring for a specific role. To do so, you must first analyze the firm's website using your browsing capabilities. So this is a feature of this prompt is if you wanted to do this differently and you have maybe a document in your business that is your mission statement and your values of your business. You could upload that as a document and say here's some information about my business, or you could just type it in, here's some information about my business and here's some information about the role. But this particular prompt saves you a bit of a step there. If you have a website that has that information on it, you can give a link link to your website. It's going to go and scan that website, get an understanding of what your business is about and then suggest the job advert and the values and that sort of stuff based on your website. So that's how this prompt works. So step one, it's going to do the Website analysis. Step two is it, it's going to craft a short, punchy introduction to the firm. Then we have the role overview. So it's going to describe the open, open position using clear and compelling language. Step four is list five to seven key responsibilities. Step five is the candidate program profile. So describe what that ideal candidate is going to be looking like.

Step six is the benefits and culture and then step seven is a call to action. So how do we get in touch? We have some rules in there which is standard stuff and then we get to the variables at the end here. So for the variables, first of all we can put in our website. So I've just put in our website just for the purposes of this. So bear with whilst. It does become a bit meta because we work with accountants, but for this example we're hiring an accountant for our business who works with accountants. So it's getting a bit meta here, but I've just put ours in just for a demonstration. So the role title as well is accounts manager. What department are they working working in? So this could also, you know, if you're hiring a new accountant or you're hiring somebody for an advisory role or even if you're hiring a marketer or you're hiring, you know, an AI assistant, you know, this could work for different departments. It doesn't have to just be for an accounting role.

Key criteria then if there's anything that they specifically need to hit in this, this role, then you can add that information in here. So I just put a couple of random things in here. I've got, they want some level of accounting experience or qualifications, confident use of AI and accounting software, strong people skills and communication and adaptability and growth mindset. So the kind of things that we talked about earlier of the skill set that we would like to see. But if you specifically work with QBO or 0, for example, and you have a practice preference for each one and you want to see that they already have that skill and that confidence with that tool, then perhaps you put something like that in there. Now I will say generally what we want to be doing is hiring for attitude. We can teach somebody how to use qbo, we can teach that skill separately. If they've got a great attitude where they are willing to learn and to do that, that stuff, then it's more important that they have some, some general skill. Of course they need some level of skill, but they maybe don't need to be perfect on something because we can, we can build on that if they have a good attitude. So, and Then finally the call to action details. So how are they going to get in touch with you? And for this one they are going to complete an attached questionnaire and then maybe send their CV off as well. So here's what it's created for me.

First of all was the description At Value Pricing Academy we transform how accounting professionals work and are rewarded. We're on a mission to empower forward thinking accountants and bookkeepers to ditch the hourly treadmill, embrace value based pricing and build thriving, profitable practices. Founded by chartered accountant and bestselling author Mark Wickham In 2014, we combine deep subject matter expertise, bold innovation, including AI tools and a supportive global community. So it got all of that information from our website and it's pulled that together into the first little section About Us this is going to be the bit that hopefully draws in the kind of client, sorry, the kind of higher, the kind of team member that would also value those same things.

The role overview then. So what's the role that we are seeking? We're seeking an experienced accounts manager to join our accounting department and play a pivotal role in supporting our growth journey. As Accounts Manager you will lead core accounting processes, drive continuous improvement, especially via AI and accounting software, and act as a trusted partner to the wider team. Okay, so we've got a great role there. The key responsibilities we've got a couple of listed now I didn't give it anything specific so it's kind of just gone on off of a general basis of what an accounts manager might have to do. If you want to give it more instruction on this, you can take this as a the first draft and then edit it yourself or you can give it more instruction in your prompt. So some of the key responsibilities we're going to lead full cycle accounting operations, drive the implementation and use of advanced accounting systems and AI enabled tools to streamline workflows, improve data integrity and reduce manual effort. That's a good one. Provide insightful financial analysis and reports to support strategic decisions and drive process profit improvement initiatives. Manage relationships with internal stakeholders mentor, develop and coach more junior accounting staff. Okay, that's a potential one. Identify, recommend and lead process improvement projects that align with our value pricing ethos. Ensure compliance and relevant accounting standards, regulatory requirements and internal policy frameworks. Okay, so that's a good selection of what kind of responsibilities they might be looking at. Doing the candidate profile then what kind of things might they need qualify. So so qualified accountant would probably be be best here.

Aca, acca, cpfa. I think I put in that it was a UK based firm somewhere. So it knows that with at least five years of accounting experience, ideally within a professional service or vice versa. Advisory or technology enabled firm proven confidence in deploying and using modern accounting software. So cloud based platforms and familiarity with applying AI and automation. Outstanding people skills and communication skills. So able to engage with non finance colleagues, translate technical detail into plain language and build strong working relationships. Adaptable and tech savvy. So comfortable navigating chain change, identifying improvement opportunities and driving innovation. Growth oriented proactive mindset and a cultural fit. You believe in the power of value pricing, not just hourly billing. You care about working smarter, serving clients and supporting a meaningful message. So that is the candidate's profile. We then have some benefits and culture. So you're joining a vibrant globally connected community of accounting professionals on a mission. Mission to change the profession for the better. Opportunity to work with cutting edge AI tools and next generation accounting software professional growth. You'll be empowered to build and lead improvement, gain broad exposure and contribute to strategic initiatives. Flexible working environment that values rigid results over rigid processes. We believe in freedom with accountability culture rooted in collaboration, continuous learning and meaningful impact and the chance to make a tangible difference. So we also, as I mentioned, if you were here right at the start, B1G1, we work in charity. We work in collaboration with those charities. So that might mean a lot to people that we do something like that. So are you ready to apply? Here's how you would apply.

Please complete the attached questionnaire and send your CV to this email. So that's a great starting adventure that you've got. You can now go and adapt that if you want to add the more specific nuances of the role that you haven't included in the the prompt early on. So that's kind of the one that I've made. But remember that this prompt, you can copy and paste this and then where it says here the key criteria, you can just add more information into there if there's something specific that you want them to do in that role and any extra context you can just add add to the prompt. So that's the advert.

So the next step on this hiring strategy plan that we've got now that we've got the advert was to attract the right candidates. And as part of that, where are we posting that? So the next one that we have.

Is trying to find the best top posting locations for us to post this advert. So the prompt is suggest the top locations. I can post my job advert for an accounting role.

And again that's a very simple prompt there. If I wanted to be more specific, then I just add that to my prompt. So the recommended top 10 places we've got LinkedIn jobs.

Indeed.

And again, I think this is, it's, it's expecting that I am UK based because it has that knowledge that I use this chatgpt a lot. It knows I'm UK based so it's found me read as well. Read.co.uk which is UK based. ACCA careers, ICAU jobs, AAT job board, glass door is another one. Zero jobs or zero community groups. Accounting specific Facebook groups. So there might be groups online that are something like UK accounting jobs jobs or accounting and bookkeepers jobs and support might be groups like that where you can go in there and say I've got a job available and then niche talent communities. So something like these chartered accountants worldwide, women in accounting and so on and so forth. We are, we are the city diversity hiring. So you might find places like that if that's what you're trying to, to hire for diverse roles.

So, so now that I know that those are the places that I want to be posting, so the one that came up at the top there is LinkedIn jobs. It's not necessarily number one, it's just listed 10 for me. But if that's the one that I want to go with.

Then what I can now do is say, I've got my advert. How can I now, how can I best optimize my advert to reach the right people on these platforms? Give me your best, best tips. So first of all, I'm just asking in general and it's giving me some general tips. So number one is write the job title for the search, don't try and be creative. And this is important one, this is, this is to do with search engine optimization. So somebody's looking for a role. If somebody's looking for a role and you have named your role, Finance Ninja, they're not going to be typing that in. They're going to be looking at accounting roles in the usa, accounting roles in the Texas area, you know, job offer for accounting. Like what kind of things are they actually going to be typing in to look for? Because it's not going to be accountancy rock star, they're going to be looking for senior accountant, client manager, assistant accountant. So we want to make sure that our job title is something that somebody would search for so that it comes up more likely when they are searching it will rank higher, higher. So keep it clear and searchable, avoid internal language or quirky titles. And include the seniority, the function and the qualification where relevant. So this one says Senior Accountant Practice, ACCA or ACA Client Manager Accounting Practice. This one says Assistant Accountant AAT Level 3 +. So from that I've got straight away get quite a good amount of knowledge about what that role might include and I'd be interested to click on that and find out more. Whereas a finance ninja, probably not. It seems a bit unprofessional.

Front load the benefits straight up at the front. So the benefits are going to be what matters most to them. So open with a strong human intro and then your firm's key selling points. What is the impact of the role and why you not not just the job? So here's an example. Join a modern cloud led accounting firm where you'll manage your own client portfolio, work flexibly and progress quickly into a senior role. So that benefits them because they now they see what kind of work they're doing and there's also benefit for them to progress into a senior role. Use specific keywords throughout. So in the same way that we want to make this, make the title or the title of the post post, if we're posting on something like LinkedIn or Indeed and the job title role, we want to make sure that the right words and the keywords are used in that. We also want to make sure that throughout the advert we are utilizing those kind of keywords as well. So some stuff like this accounting accountant practice, client portfolio, these ACCA or ACA or AAT part Qualified bookkeeping, year End management accounts, Xero, Quick Box, QuickBooks, Payroll, whatever it is, if that's an important thing that you want people to be looking for, then use those words throughout the advert. Okay, so make the salary range visible, keep it scannable. So using bullet points is helpful for that. Highlight the progression that they can make. Make that really clear because that's what people tend to look for more. Be specific about client exposure and tech. So what are they? If it's something that they care about, then these, these are the tech tools that we use that might be something that you put on there. Show culture and flexibility. So if you have a hybrid remote option, if you have supportive leadership, if you have a training process that you put them through, tell them about that. You know it briefly, but give them some indication that that's what it's about. Add a call to action at the end. So make it simple for them to apply with your CV in 60 seconds. You don't need a cover letter or complete this form. You know, complete this questionnaire. If we're going to do screening questions, use the right posting method on each platform. So the other thing as well is in this particular prompt I said, can you give me tips that will optimize my advert generally? And these are some general good tips to to know. But what I've now asked asked is can you specifically optimize my advert for one of these platforms? So rewrite my job advert to optimize for LinkedIn. Following all the points you have just mentioned. If there are elements where you need more information about the role, be sure to ask me that or leave an insert here placeholder in the advert. Here is the current ad and then I've just copy and pasted the ad that it's already made for us and it's now going to optimize that for me for LinkedIn. So if I go down to the bottom, I can see that where this first started, my ad, the first thing it said was about us. And then at Value Pricing Academy we transform. So the very first line there was about us. It's not even about the person that you're hiring, it's about us. Like you want to be talking probably more about them and what they're going to be getting involved involved in. So for this, it's actually listed right up at the top a series of important bits of information. So accounts, accounts manager, tech forward, value driven accounting firm, ACCA or aca, the location and then you can insert that, whether it's remote or hybrid, the salary and the hours or whether there's some flexibility. And then it's kind of put these little head lines in throughout that and reframed the way that it's written, why this role matters, what you'll do. So those little headlines help to draw the attention a little bit more. I think that, you know, what you'll do is probably a little bit better than whatever it was previously which said.

Key responsibilities, what you'll do. It's just a little bit easier to read that as a way word.

Who we're looking for. So this is your, your credentials, what you'll gain. And you can see that it's bullet points there as well, which just makes it easier to, to take that in. And then how to apply, you can apply here, or if this is on LinkedIn specifically, then it can give you information on how to apply on LinkedIn and then it just needs some final information to actually fill that out. Where it, where it's left placeholders. But that's now optimized for LinkedIn. So you can take that initial advert and say can you optimize this for me? Linked it for LinkedIn and then give it the advert again and say can you now optimize it for. Indeed. Or for Glassdoor or wherever else it is that you're optimizing for. Now, a lot of them, they will have very similar, you know, you can pretty much copy and paste and put it into the different places and it will work pretty well. But just knowing that you can opt optimized for each platform if you want to just take it that little bit further. So some screening questions then we can ask ChatGPT based on the role I'm hiring for, can you suggest 10 potential screening questions? I can ask all applicants and I will shortlist this down to 5. So I tend to do this quite a lot. If I want 5 of something I ask for 10 and then take the best ones. Or sometimes I ask for 20 and then just take the ones that I like like the most because sometimes it gives me five and I don't really like them and I have to ask for more and then I'm using an additional prompt. So if you are using the free version of ChatGPT and you've got a limit on your prompts, I just ask for more than I need up front. So it suggested some screening questions for me, some technical ones. Tell us about your experience in managing end to end accounting processes. Which areas do you consider your strongest? What accounting systems and softwares have you used extensively? We've got some questions on leadership and ownership. Describe a time you took ownership of a finance process and improved its accuracy, speed or reliability. And what was the outcome? Problem solving. So tell us about a complex accounting issue you've encountered. How did you resolve it and what did you learn? Adaptability and mindset. How do you stay up to date with new accounting technology, automation tools and best practices and then the culture and role fixes. What appeals appeals to you about joining a modern value driven accounting organization that embraces innovation, community and continuous improvement. So these might be questions that you put in some sort of form that they have to complete before they even meet you, you know, equally you could take one or you could take a couple of those and put them on the form. But then some of these would also work well in an interview style.

So let's actually look at the interview questions next. Then whilst we're on that, I said any I need 10 interview questions for the accounts manager role. We will have the skill test separately at the End of the interview. So the other questions can be a bit more about getting to know them as a person, why they have applied, but also give them a chance to showcase their suitability for the role. So sometimes I think those screening questions that we just looked at, they were quite complex questions, but they are basically just asking, give me an example of when you did this thing, explain that scenario to me. But when they are phrased quite complexly, that can be quite overwhelming for somebody who's also already in a stressful situation having an interview. So maybe we start out our interview with a couple of lighter, easier questions to get them a bit more comfortable and adjusted and then start asking the more skill related and specific questions. So the first question you might ask is what attracted you to this role and our firm specifically? That helps you understand their motivation, but it's also something that's probably a little bit easier for them to talk about rather than trying to recall some specific example or something that they did.

Walk me through your career today. What are the key experiences that you have? Tell me about a time you improved an accounting process. So we've got some that are quite similar. How do you typically use AI or automation tools in your work? And can you share an example? So we've got a series of pretty good questions in here. I like this one at the end actually. If you joined us, what would success look like for you in your first six months? That shows them what their expectations, their priorities and whether they fit. And it also helps them understand what they are going to need to do in that role to perform well and to succeed. So also a skills test then we might encourage a skills test test. So here's the prompt I've done for this. I want to create a short 10 to 15 minute skill test for new applicants to the accounts manager role. This test will be looking at three things. Familiarity with AI such as ChatGPT, their accounting ability and skill set, though not limited to a specific piece of software and their presenting or public skills, public speaking skills. Can you suggest a short test format that would allow an example encourage them to best showcase their skills? So it's done a very concise1 that's 10 to 15 minutes because that's what I asked for in my prompt and that's maybe split into three sections which is going to test for each of those elements. For first, step one is my AI familiarity. Three to four minutes. Use AI to improve this financial process. Give them a short prompt. For example, you need to explain to a small business client why their cash flow is tightening despite stable revenue using ChatGPT or AI or any tool or any AI tool you prefer. Generate a clear client friendly explanation and a quick summary of next steps so they can then open ChatGPT, do that task, create an output that they could then send on to a client and that shows that they are comfortable in using AI.

And that they can create at least a decent enough level of a prompt for it to do that task for you. So just literally give them a quick example of something to do. Get them to open up their laptop and and do something using AI because you can see how well they use it and how comfortable they are.

You can then get them to do an accounting capability test. So again, give them a quick scenario and get them to speak through their analysis. So the scenario here, a company's gross profit margin has dropped from 62 to 53% despite increased sales, debtors have increased 40% and cash is tight. What are the likely issues and what actions would you take as an accounts manager? And just get them to suggest what they would do and walk through that scenario and talk through it. Now presenting in communication, it may be that you ask them to prepare something to speak on, but the suggestion it does here is you could combine the two. So the one that they've just done in interpret this little financial scenario now explain those findings to me as if I was your client and get them to deliver that feedback back to you so you can so they can demonstrate how they would talk. But you might also just get a lot from how they talk to you in the interview. You might get a lot from that. The final one there as well was that you can also create a video for your advert. So if I just paste my advert in here and then I've said I need a script for a short video explaining a new job role available in our accounting firm. The advert is attached below with details of the role. I need a short 60 second script to explain that role that ticks the following who you are, what the role is, what type of person fit fits and why your film is a great place. And then I've given it the advert. It's then created a bit of a script for me of what I can then kind of put that somewhere I can put the camera on and then I can kind of just read through that script at to camera and explain the role. So it's given me a little bit of a script there that I can then take that video and add that to my role to my places on LinkedIn and Indeed. And all of these great places as well. So hopefully that's shown you a lot of different ways that you can use ChatGPT to.

Streamline, kind of just optimize that process of that hiring process so that it simplifies it a lot for you. But you're also making sure that you are giving that candidate the best potential opportunity to showcase their ability and to showcase their, their skill set and that you are attracting the right kind of person in the first instance anyway as well.

A couple of questions. Somebody asks, can we get your training slides? So I don't think I used any slides today. I just showed you this stuff on, on ChatGPT. So this video will be saved to YouTube. You can go back and watch it again if you want. You can screenshot if you want. But there was no slides with with today's session. What is the name of the prompt in the AI Prompts library? Linda, that's a good question. I think it will just be something like job advert or creating a job advert. If you type in job advert or job description, that should bring it up and, and hopefully you'll see it in there.

And somebody asks where is this in the prompt library. So if you're in, in the AI academy, then you will have access to the prompt library or if you're in the vpa, you've also get that as well.

And like I just said to Linda, there's a search bar in the prompt. Like you've got the prompt library, there's a search bar and you can just type in job advert or job description and it should bring up that, that prompt that you can then use. If you are struggling and you can't find it and you're in the AI Academy community, put a post and tag me in the post and say I can't find it and I will make, I'll go and find where it is and I will get back to you and tag you in it. Okay, I don't think there's any more questions. So thank you everybody for today and for those of you who are in the U.S. happy Thanksgiving. I know that's later this week, so I hope you enjoy your time with your family or enjoy the holiday time off, whatever it is you're doing with that time. And I will be back again. Not until the New year now I think perhaps. So if I don't see you again in the Academy or the Value Pricing Academy, then Happy Christmas and Happy New Year as well and I'll see you all hopefully soon. Thanks everyone. Bye for now.