---
title: How to Win the post-COVID Battle for Chicago’s Top Accounting & Finance Talent
description: Thanks to vaccination rollouts, Chicago businesses are reopening and ramping back up. Top talent is moving fast. Here's how to secure your candidate.
image: https://blog.skywatersearch.com/hubfs/Chicago%20Executive%20Recruting%20Firm.png
---

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# SkyWater Blog

# How to Win the post-COVID Battle for Chicago’s Top Accounting & Finance Talent

Posted by [Josh Schneider](https://blog.skywatersearch.com/author/josh-schneider) on 5/11/21 9:22 AM

![Josh Schneider](https://blog.skywatersearch.com/hubfs/Screen%20Shot%202021-07-01%20at%2011.32.32%20AM.png)

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Thanks to recent, remarkable successes in vaccination rollouts, a growing number of Chicago businesses are reopening their doors and ramping back up. This surge in activity is, of course, a reflection of optimism that the U.S. economy is in recovery mode. As organizations prepare for strategic growth, we are seeing a spike in demand for accounting and finance professionals.  

That’s not surprising.

 What *is* surprising to some is the *speed* with which the hiring landscape is rebounding from COVID-driven stagnation to a growing talent shortage. Today, active accounting (controllership, SEC reporting, and technical accounting) and FP&A job seekers are not only interviewing with numerous employers; they’re frequently choosing from multiple offers. It’s a good news/bad news scenario for CFO’s and other hiring managers needing to strengthen their accounting and finance teams.

The good news: finding great candidates isn’t the problem (yet). The bad news: those great candidates will not wait around for interview, decision, or offer delays. (They don’t need to.) Today’s hiring managers cannot afford to stay in wait-and-see mode.

Unfortunately, we’re already seeing wonderful, reputable employers lose top candidates (yes, *candidates*, plural) simply because they’re working under obsolete market assumptions. Every step in the process must move briskly and decisively. I’ll break it down this way:

- **Initial screening:** Do you have a process in place for immediately acknowledging receipt of resumes or applications? You need to.
- **Interviewing:** Are you willing to schedule the earliest possible interview, and coordinate same-day interviews when multiple executives are involved in the process? Can you commit to no rescheduling, last-minute changes, late starts, or other miscommunications or inconveniences to the candidate? Too often, stellar employer brand messages are undermined by simple bureaucratic mishaps. I empathize: if you’re like most hiring managers you’re probably juggling too many high-priority responsibilities (that’s why you’re hiring). But hiccups in the process that may *feel* completely reasonable to you run the risk of creating an impression that you are disinterested, disorganized, or worse, disrespectful.
- **Offers:** This is a test of your decisiveness. Would you be surprised if I told you that the candidates I’m currently presenting to Chicago employers are receiving excellent offers within one day – and sometimes a few hours – of their final interviews?  They are. That is the practice against which you’re now competing – and the standard against which candidates are now evaluating you.

If you’d like to know more about SkyWater Search Partners and how our Accounting & Finance team can help you attract and hire today’s top candidates, please reach out.

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---

 

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