In the middle of the Florida Everglades, just off “Alligator Alley,” is a roadside rest area featuring (at last count) eight gas pumps, a small convenience store, a hot dog stand, two good-sized rest rooms, and four picnic tables. At this mid-way point between Florida’s East and West Coasts, with no other sign of civilization within sixty miles in either direction, I conducted my most memorable job interview.

Natalie Smith was living and working in Delray Beach, just north of Ft. Lauderdale, in 2000 when she responded to my Monster posting for a Financial Associate for my company. She was seeking an opportunity to move back to her native New England, and I, in the face of a very tight candidate market, was looking well beyond Rt. 128 for good prospects.

Finishing up a client assignment on Florida’s West Coast on Saturday and looking forward to attending my first-ever Red Sox spring training game in Ft. Myers the following afternoon, I arranged to meet Natalie half-way: anyone who’s driven Alligator Alley even once knows the sole “pit stop.” At 9:30 on Sunday morning, we each pulled into the rest area from opposite directions, discovered each other at the coffee machine, and commandeered a picnic table for the next hour of conversation.

After ten minutes of adapting to our bizarre environment – we were surrounded by low green scrub growing just above the almost still waters of the Everglades, our conversation occasionally interrupted by the roar of a propeller-driven swamp buggy – we connected on the subject critical to both of us: how to generate numbers that lead to good decisions in a small business.

I remembered this interview last weekend, not only because I was again commuting along the “improved” Alligator Alley (I-75) after a day with a client in Hialeah, FL, but also because two other clients and I are this week interviewing candidates for the senior accounting positions in their firms. In each case, my clients are wondering what to ask. In the words of one, “I am trying to compile a list of reasonable questions that even I can understand the answers to.”

So what are some “reasonable questions?”

Q1. In what way has your work in accounting contributed to management’s decision-making?

Q2. What were the key accounting metrics in each of your positions?

Q3. What critical elements controlled the timeliness of your financial reports, particularly your monthly statements?

Q4. What are the most important factors in effective cash control?

Q5. How often do you reconcile the balance sheet?

Q6. What stood between you and total mastery of the accounting software that your company used?

Q7. In reviewing your work at year-end, what adjustments did the auditors usually make?

Q8. Have there been any circumstances in which your work did not comply with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles)?

And what are reasonable answers for a non-accountant to hear?

A1. Decision-making: A series of reports which I produce regularly, including the monthly financial statements, provide management with a full understanding of the financial implications of their decisions. [Ask to see copies of the reports, altered as necessary to assure confidentiality. Also ask for evidence of their work in Excel – see side bar.]

A2. Metrics: The book-to-bill ratio; monthly revenue per employee; the gross margin percentage; days sales outstanding for receivables; overtime as a percentage of total direct labor hours; budget-to-actual variances; inventory trending; and various measurements specific to the company or industry. [Follow-up questions can ask about the significance of each metric, what constituted a good result, what action followed a bad result, etc.]

A3. Timeliness: I made sure that everyone knew the importance of timely reporting, particularly for shipments, outgoing invoices, incoming expenses, and work in process, and I followed up with them aggressively. Beyond that, I stayed on top of things so that I could make accurate monthly accruals when I lacked hard data. [A proactive accountant doesn’t just wait for others to “get around to” feeding him/her critical accounting information.]

A4. Cash control: Making daily bank deposits; keeping the checkbook and blank checks locked up; reconciling cash as often as the frequency of bank statements allows; segregating the bill-paying function from cash reconciliation; limiting check signers; requiring dual check signatures over a certain dollar amount. [All that, plus giving the Owner first access to the bank statement.]

A5. Balance Sheet Reconciliation: Every time I produce financial statements – at least monthly. [This means that the total for each balance sheet account agrees with the total shown on the detailed journal for that account.]

A6. Software mastery: After one year I had educated myself to a solid intermediate level and by the end of two years I had mastered everything in the accounting package that related to what we do. [An ongoing quest for knowledge is at least as important in accounting as it is in any other functional specialty.]

A7. Auditors’ adjustments: The first time around, they made adjustments for prepaid expenses, for depreciation of newly-acquired assets, for accumulated vacation, and for a few accrued expenses that came in after I had closed the books. In the second year and after, I was making all of those adjustments each month – they picked me up on just their year-end tax work. [A good accountant should take pride in turning over to the CPA within 30-45 days a set of books that has been closed, reconciled, and fully supported by detailed documentation.]

A8. GAAP: I know that GAAP requires me to practice accrual-based accounting, to match revenues and expenses in their correct periods, to accrue payroll and benefits each period, to be consistent in accounting for revenues and expenses, to accrue for taxes and other expenses when they are incurred, and so on. I have always done this, except… [Conforming to GAAP every month is time-consuming. Few small business staff accountants can achieve this goal without a good, dedicated staff. So cutting some slack here is appropriate, unless the response turns toward ethical compromises, in which case further probing is critical.]

Well, despite the distraction of swamp buggies and the prospect of stray alligators, Natalie passed the interview with flying colors. She was very well-grounded in accounting, and she did a great job with Financial Managers for two years before moving on to a permanent full-time position with one of our clients. In reality the Q-and-A part of the interview was almost academic – Natalie virtually clinched the job by showing up on a Sunday morning in the middle of the Everglades, at a site which shall forever be known (by me at least) as The First Howe’s Bayou.

Alligator Bites

According to noted recruiting industry expert Lou Adler , “The Best Interview Question of All Time” is the following:

“Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now could you tell me all about it?”

Adler says, “To see why this simple question is so powerful, try it out on yourself… What accomplishment would you select? Then imagine over the course of the next 5-20 minutes that I obtained the following information from you about this accomplishment:

• A complete description of the accomplishment

• The actual results achieved: numbers, facts, changes made, details, amounts…

• The importance of this accomplishment to the company…

• A few examples of your leadership…”

Adler’s list has 24 other bullet points to support his argument that this single question unlocks the door to “just about everything you need to know about a person’s competency.”

You have to work at it: “Few candidates will give you all of this information on their own, so it’s the digging in that matters. It’s the interviewer’s responsibility to get this valuable information from the candidate, not the candidate’s responsibility to give it to the interviewer…”

Finally, “when you can get all members of the interviewing team to conduct their interviews this way, you’ll remove another key source of hiring errors – the tendency of most interviewers to talk too much, listen too little and ask a bunch of irrelevant questions. One question is all it takes.”

Draining the Swamp

Facility with a spreadsheet program (typically Excel) is almost as important for an accountant as knowledge of GAAP. Ask your final two or three candidates to forward examples of their spreadsheet reports, disguised for confidentiality, and lookfor…

• Complex formulas

• Use of macros

• Boolean logic (e.g., IF statements)

• Links across multiple tabs

• Links across multiple files

• Presentation graphics

• Helpful charts and graphs

• Data analysis with pivot tables

• Formulas with cell references rather than hard-coded values

• Logical information flow

• Effective labeling

• Use of cellular comments for clarification and foot-noting

• Clear summary sheets

Above all, ask yourself if the report would add readily to the reader’s understanding of the issue being reported on.