Putting Your Accounting Applicants to the Test - Literally

Years ago, I worked for a construction company. At the time, business was booming and we were very busy. So busy, in fact, that my boss decided to hire a staff accountant to ease the load in the accounting department. When he told me, I suggested that he give each applicant a short accounting test to be taken at the interview. Being the great boss that he was, he told me to go ahead and draw one up. The test ended up being ten questions long. It was a mix of multiple choice, fill in the blank, and short-answer questions. Each question covered a different aspect of the job duties of the position: bank reconciliation, general ledger to detail reconciliation, inventory, writing up a journal entry to dispose of a fixed asset, etc. I derived all of the questions from content in my first-year accounting textbook from college. When I handed my boss the test, he read it and looked straight at me and said, “This is too easy!” I told him to just give the applicants the test and we’ll see how it goes.

Before anyone was interviewed, my boss showed me the resumes of the people he was planning on interviewing. Based on the resume information alone, each candidate appeared qualified. They all had degrees in accounting, at least two years’ experience (some had considerably more), and had construction experience. They all looked golden.

Then it was time for the test. The first candidate got two questions correct out of ten. The second candidate got four questions correct. One candidate stopped answering questions halfway through the test! When my boss asked him why he stopped, he explained that he didn’t do those types of things in his prior position. He was an assistant controller! Neither one of us could figure out how he could be in a position like that and not know how to do accounting tasks that are common to all companies. The best score we saw was five correct. Afterwards, I said to my boss, “Do you think it’s too easy now?”

For grins, we gave an existing staff accountant the test. She had no formal education in accounting, but worked for the company for many years. She got seven correct. She scored better than our degreed candidates who held assistant controller and controller positions!

Resumes and interviewing skills aren’t everything. In the above story, every candidate looked great on paper. They undoubtedly interviewed well too. But when it came down to determining if they had the ability to perform the day-to-day work with minimal guidance, they fell short. It made me question what these people actually DID at their prior positions.

If you are in the market for hiring someone for your accounting department, I highly recommend testing them. A short 10-question quiz will do. Make sure the questions are relevant to the job position and at the appropriate skill level. Don’t ask an auditing question if the candidate won’t spend one minute on auditing. Don’t ask a high-level question on hedging instruments for an entry-level position.

The score will be an indicator of how much or how little training or guidance the individual will require should he or she be hired. If the applicant scores low, he or she is probably not the “hit the ground running” “self-starter” that most organizations strive to find.