It’s hard to believe another year is coming to a close—2024 has flown by! This year brought significant changes, including a new government and budget, setting the stage for even more shifts in 2025. As we look ahead, we’re excited to embrace new opportunities and challenges together.

External changes and their impact

The Autumn budget has affected accountancy in several ways including:

• Capital Gains tax, with main rates increasing
•  Inheritance tax, with IHT nil rate band being fixed for 2 years
• Business property relief and agricultural property relief
• National Insurance Contribution increase
• Update on making tax digital 
• Tax advice standards, with the government exploring options to raise standards in the tax advice market

So how may that affect your recruitment plans going forward in the finance industry for 2025?

• Perhaps the most impactful outcome of the budget is the rise in National Insurance contributions
• In today’s economic climate, recruitment decisions carry greater financial weight, adding pressure to already tight budgets. This makes it more crucial than ever to get hiring right the first time. Partnering with a specialist recruitment agency ensures a tailored approach, helping you streamline the process, save time, and ultimately protect your bottom line.
• The bigger financial commitment admittedly doesn’t help any requirements for additional talent within your team, and won’t reduce the impact new members of staff can make

2024 Recruitment Review

•  The accountancy sector has seen an 8% increase in vacancies in 2024. Demand for talent is increasing and competitors are consistently looking to grow and expand their operations
•  Alongside this there has been an increase in skill shortages with 45% of firms severely or significantly impacted (NXTGEN recruitment)  This gives job seekers the upper hand and more leverage in the market.
•  In 2024 there has been an increasing emphasis on soft skills as opposed to experience, with 70% of finance employers considering hiring someone who doesn’t have the full suite of desirable skills, with the aim of upskilling them.

The conclusion to draw from these changes is that being prepared and organised with recruitment is more important now than ever to stay ahead of your competition. Being aware of standout talent is crucial.

Bennett & Game Recruitment Solutions

So, what is the answer? With recruitment proving more costly, but your firm may have increased demand, and extensive growth plans, ensuring efficient recruitment is essential. This is where Bennett & Game come in…

Bennett & Game are an agency which will work on a consultancy basis with you, working closely alongside your team to understand your recruitment requirements fully and future plans.

You may have had some positions this year which felt impossible to fill, this is where we have adapted our resources significantly in 2024.

This year we invested in:

•  Indeed candidate sourcing engine – Indeed has consistently been our best-performing job board, providing stand-out applications for several years. It felt only right to invest further in Indeed’s candidate job board, where we can approach some top candidates directly and pitch some great opportunities to them. This has already proved very successful this year, increasing our outreach, and candidate quality
• Our own CRM system – Our CRM system has candidates dating back as far as 2016, giving us a huge pool of potential candidates to reach out to and headhunt for some exciting roles. By streamlining and updating this, we now have a unique and effective system, to give us access to candidates that other agencies won’t have.
•  LinkedIn Recruiter – LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for candidate outreach and headhunting. A huge 70% of candidates are passive, meaning they are not actively looking, but would consider a role if it was exceptional. Passive candidates will not be actively looking on job boards or company websites, meaning they will not see your job post without being reached via LinkedIn or word of mouth.  By onboarding LinkedIn recruiter, we now have access to a huge pool of top-tier talent, allowing us to directly headhunt candidates based on your requirements. You can find out more about the difference between active and passive candidates on our blog. 

These new investments are all in addition to:

• A completely tailored approach to ensure we can provide the most affordable service. This includes a flexible fee, rebate and payment term scale. Contact the team to enquire further about our variety of service packages available to discuss which service suits your recruitment needs best.
•  Access to all of the major job platforms (Indeed, CV Library, Totaljobs, Reed) as well as LinkedIn and our website which has thousands of visitors per month.
•  Access to over 200,000 candidates via our database which is updated frequently to ensure maximum and accurate coverage for your position.
• Regular market insights are provided through our premium access to all job platforms as well as LinkedIn to ensure that we can give you live updates as to how the market is sitting for the vacancy you are hiring for.

Download our Service Packages information here.

If you’re looking for a recruitment agency that specialises in the finance industry, contact our friendly recruitment experts to discuss your requirements further. You can also see further recruitment advice on our Insights page.

Credits: Archie McGreal - Recruitment Consultant in Finance & Accounting at Bennett & Game Recruitment.