Tips to Interview Offshore Staff for Your Accounting Firm

The expansion, profitability, and team productivity of an organization can all be positively impacted by staffing decisions. Therefore, each firm that intends to use offshore staff must collaborate with a skilled supplier who uses a careful hiring procedure to take into account their unique business requirements. In the end, doing so produces the best possible results and puts you and your firm on the path to success. Here, we will detail some tips to know when you start to interview offshore staff for you accounting firm.

Benefits of Offshore Staff for Your Accounting Firm – Overview

Especially during tax season, many accounting businesses of today view remote workers as a solution to lessen the burdensome workload. Reaching out to more international applicants is made possible by hiring remote employees. It helps to significantly reduce hiring costs, operating overhead, infrastructure costs, and HR headaches in addition to opening up a large pool of competent and experienced foreign workers. But before hiring someone, it’s crucial to get to know them well. It is usually advised to have a rigorous hiring procedure when adding new employees because a good hire in offshore is equivalent to a wise investment that will ultimately add value to your company.

A crucial stage in the employment process is conducting interviews as there are points to consider when hiring remote staff. Interviewers should be prepared to appropriately assess prospects and market their employer brand, just as candidates take the time to investigate the organization. A thorough preparation process takes time, but it is worthwhile because it will help you evaluate candidates’ talents more accurately and produce a favorable candidate experience. 

Here are a few simple ways you can prepare to take the perfect interview.

Get your interview questions sorted on priority.

The first thing to consider when you start to interview offshore staff is to make sure you properly sort and organize your interview questions. Interviewers that don’t plan their questions in advance miss the opportunity to evaluate candidates well. Before deciding what questions to ask, if you’re not the hiring manager, ask the recruitment specialist at your offshore company or your account manager for assistance in determining which talents are most crucial and should be evaluated during the interview. Afterward, center your queries on those abilities.

Remember that generic, overused inquiries like “what’s your greatest strength or weakness” won’t likely aid in your ability to assess applicants. Because of the common nature of those questions, it’s extremely easy to obtain perfect answers online. Go with reason behavioral or situational questions as they are more successful in motivating applicants to improvise and share their experiences.

Make a time and agenda plan.

If at all feasible, leave at least 10-15 minutes between each interview and the next. It’s preferable to avoid keeping prospects waiting while you conclude a meeting or forcing them to leave quickly if a meeting is immediately after the interview. This is definitely something you should do when you interview offshore staff, and anyone really.

You are more likely to gain their respect if you give them your time and undivided attention. Check your laptop, camera, and microphone a few minutes before the interview if you’re conducting a video interview so you have time to fix any potential problems.

Additionally, make a general interview timetable. Completely unstructured interviews where the interviewer improvises are usually unsuccessful. By setting an agenda, you can better control the discourse and make sure you don’t miss any important points.

Decide how you’ll introduce a topic and how you’ll wrap it up. Many interviewees start out with small conversation, but this might unintentionally introduce prejudice and influence how you evaluate candidates’ responses. Standardizing the initial “small chat” inquiries could be helpful if you want to improve the effectiveness of your hiring.

Make sure you are in sync with your fellow interviewers.

Another tip to consider when you interview offshore staff is to make sure you coordinate and plan with others interviewing the candidates. Plan who will ask each question and in what order if you’re using a panel for your interviews. Furthermore, it’s beneficial to know who will respond to inquiries on which subjects. 

The same skills should be evaluated by each interviewer. This entails that you will be able to take relevant comments into account from several angles, resulting in a judgment that is more unbiased and trustworthy.

When assessing each competence, interviewers shouldn’t use the same questions repeatedly. This ensures that you don’t exhaust prospects or give them the impression that the interviewing team is disorganized. Determine whether you intend to inquire about details the candidate has already provided? Or Is there anything peculiar or intriguing about their prior experience that you should delve into during the interview? Inquire whether they have any work samples that could be utilized to motivate the conversation about their abilities?

You might want to set up a mock interview with an internal employee pretending to be the candidate to iron out any kinks.

Be prepared to respond to queries.

Keep in mind that during interviews, candidates and interviewers are both assessing one another. When you interview offshore staff, do not be surprised if they ask you and the rest of the interviewing panel questions.

Candidates will attempt to ascertain whether the position can satisfy their aspirations and whether the firm and its environment is a good place for them to work. This is especially pertinent when hiring for the tax season, when demand and stress is high and supply is low.  Therefore, you should be equipped to respond to any questions they may ask. You can improve the candidate experience and promote your business in a way that helps potential offshore staff decide if they’re good. 

End the interview well.

It’s best for the company to sincerely thank the candidates for their time during the interview. Make certain to inquire if they have any queries. In order to make sure the applicant is a good fit for the job, this is also a wonderful opportunity for you to address any other issues that you were unable to discuss during the interview.

Now all that is left is to evaluate your notes and select the best candidate for the job. The perfect offshore partner would already have processes in place to hire only skilled and sincere individuals for the company. Follow the above tips and you will find the perfect candidate amongst them in no time. 

Tips to Interview Offshore Staff – Summary

Offshoring is fast becoming the go to solution for accounting firms that want to scale up without increasing operating expenses. And there is no shortage of accounting offshoring suppliers to choose from; however, it’s imperative to go with a partner like Entigrity that understands your firm’s requirements.