The Essential Controller: An Introduction to What Every Financial Manager Must Know, Second Edition

CHAPTER 10

Recruiting, Training, and Supervision

Importance of This Chapter

The new controller must rely to a great extent on the knowledge base of other accounting staff who have been with the company for some time. In order to maintain a reasonably functional department, she must ensure that key staff stay in the department and new staff of sufficient quality are hired. Consequently, this chapter is extremely important as a source of tips for recruiting, promoting, and retaining accounting staff.

If the accounting staff is carefully selected, properly trained, and motivated, the controller will enjoy a huge productivity advantage over a controller who does not pay attention to these factors. The inevitable results of not doing so are slipshod work, high employee turnover, and massive inefficiency due to the time needed to constantly recruit and train new employees. Consequently, the recruiting, training, and supervision functions are crucial to the success of a controller.

It is unfortunate, but business schools rarely give any formal training in this most important area, so controllers must pick up the requisite knowledge through either hands-on experience, a mentor, or additional training. This chapter is also a valuable source of information on the topic, but should be used as an overview. More detailed information can be obtained from books that deal entirely with business management.

RECRUITING SOURCES

This section describes a number of sources a controller should consider ...