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Accountants boosts business by hiring USC graduates
Employing University of the Sunshine Coast graduates has paid dividends for a Mooloolaba Accounting firm in its efforts to retain qualified staff.
Mulraney Accountants director Erik Hipwood said his firm’s approach to hiring staff had helped it avoid the common scenario of young Coast accountants heading off to larger firms in Brisbane and other capital cities.
Mr Hipwood said his company’s low staff turnover was due in no small part to the fact that nine of its 15 accountants were USC graduates or current students who were “connected” to the Coast.
He said another factor was Mulraney Accountants’ performance-based promotion system which had seen two USC graduates become senior managers and a further two become junior managers.
“If you’ve got that many people and you haven’t lost any of them, there’s obviously something going right here,” he said.
Mulraney Accountants, which opened in 1992, expanded rapidly from having two accountants in 2000 to 15 accountants in 2007. It recently opened an office at Caloundra and has plans for another branch at Peregian Beach.
Mr Hipwood said his firm used several specific criteria in selecting staff.
“The most important thing that we want is for people to stay with us. If we’re going to be investing capital in people, we’d like to see them stay,” he said.
“We’ve found that if people have grown up on the Coast, they’re more likely to stay, especially if they are heavily involved in something around here, like surf lifesaving.
“We also have a young team, so they need to be able to fit in with the team.
“Thirdly, we ask ‘are they quality?’. The people who are still studying, we give them every opportunity. We give them time off for study and for their exams.”
Mr Hipwood said Mulraney Accountants had taken an unusual approach to employing staff over the past five years.
“We actually overstaff, rather than understaff,” he said. “It’s worked for us to date and we’re going to keep doing it.”
“We look at business as being supply driven – if you haven’t got people who can do the work, how can you get business? We tend to look at the long-term view.
“It’s the opposite of every other business in the world and that could be the key to our growth as well.”
Mr Hipwood said Mulraney Accountants had begun recruiting staff from final-year business students at the University of the Sunshine Coast, a practice that has become popular among other Coast firms as well.
“We’ve also sent a couple of our staff – two of our book-keepers – out to the University and they’re both senior managers in our business now,” he said.
“We’re very keen to continue the relationship we have with the University and we’d like to strengthen it.”