Searching for a new tax job? Why you should look to build a relationship with a trusted Tax recruiter

We recently conducted our annual tax career satisfaction survey, which was completed by over 135 tax professionals across the North of England and as always offered a unique insight into some interesting questions.

This year we included a question that asked, ‘If you were thinking about making a making a career move, how would you typically go about learning about new job opportunities?’. We found the results quite surprising in that just over half said that they would look to build a relationship with a trusted recruiter if they were looking for a new tax job, with the remainder opting to search on google, tax job boards on respond to unsolicited messages on LinkedIn.

Why is this surprising? It says to us that there is a fairly large portion of tax professionals who don’t necessarily appreciate what a good tax recruiter can bring to the table when thinking about making a career move. This may be because they have had a bad experience with a recruiter in the past but also we feel that it is all too easy as a tax professional, where your skills are highly sought after and in high demand, to simply expect the opportunities to come to you, rather than to be proactive and search out the right role that is going to propel your career in the direction you want.

So, what’s the problem? If your approach is to simply wait for a recruiter to message you (or a direct approach from a client) on Linkedin about a role, how do you know that particular role is the very best and most suitable in the market for you? If you trawl the job boards and apply for roles, often many will be out of date or already filled and you will find yourself inundated with calls from lots of recruiters and before you know it your CV sent out to lots of firms often by more than one recruiter (which is never a good look)! Also, how do you know that all the opportunities in the market are being advertised online? In fact, the best ones often aren’t.

For many tax professionals, making a career move is up there with the most important decisions they will make in their life, along with say for example buying a new house. When buying a house you would take the time to assess all properties on the market, view lots of them and do your research to make an informed decision. You wouldn’t simply just jump at the first property that came your way because someone told you that you were the perfect person for that house! Also, a good estate agent will often present houses to you before they even make it to market – something a good tax recruiter will do as well.

Why invest the time in building a relationship with a tax recruiter?

A bad recruiter won’t have much experience of the tax market, won’t be well connected and most importantly won’t really be interested in you. To put it bluntly most only care about filling their open jobs and earning their commission asap irrespective of whether the job is right for you.

In contrast a good tax recruiter will take the time to discuss with you in detail what type of role and organisation are going to be the best fit to meet your career goals and aspirations.

They will present suitable opportunities to you across the whole of the market and also make sure you hear about new roles before anybody else does. They will be proactive and often present new opportunities to you that aren’t advertised online by using their contacts and expertise in the local market to open the right doors for you.

Aside from assisting with your job search, they should also act as a sounding board during your whole career and be able to offer independent and genuine career guidance and advice based on their market knowledge and expertise. In summary, and with acknowledgement to the excellent slogan coined by the Dogs Trust – a good tax recruiter is for life not just for Christmas!

The proof of the pudding

Here are just a few recent examples of people we have placed in tax jobs across the North that were never advertised on job boards or LinkedIn and purely from the result of our proactive approach to finding you the right tax job.

Assistant Tax Manager  – Top 10 firm, Manchester

VAT Director – Large independent firm, Leeds

Technical Director – R&D Boutique, Liverpool

Private Client Senior Manager – Big 4 firm, Manchester

Transfer Pricing Associate – Top 10 firm, Manchester

Private Client Senior Manager – Independent firm, Leeds

Contact us if you would like a confidential discussion about your career and the tax market across the North of England, and one of our friendly and highly experienced tax recruitment consultants will be pleased to help!