It’s a scramble every year. Tax season is looming, and you need to build a solid team of tax preparers. However, the right people just don’t seem to be out there. Prospects lack knowledge and skills, or they’re unreliable. If you hire them, your business suffers.
Here’s a solution: Recruit, train, and hire your own people. Essentially, you’re building a pipeline of skilled tax preparers, equipped to deliver excellence in customer service. You brought them on board for their desirable workplace qualities such as diligence and good communications skills. After training, you have confidence because you worked from the ground up to teach them the skills they need to know.
Why recruit and train your own tax preparers? Consider these five reasons.
Five reasons to recruit and train your own tax preparers
Training your own tax preparers is a best practice in quality control, starting a ripple effect in benefits.
Observe candidates before hiring them
A single job interview, especially via video, can’t give you the full picture of a person and their capabilities. Through inhouse training, you develop a rapport with prospective employees. It’s like a preview of their existing skills and potential. Training reveals personality, work ethic, reliability, and the candidate’s true understanding of tax preparation. When it’s time to hire, you know who’s at the top of the list — and who isn’t.
Teach interview techniques
Every tax preparer will tell you that listening is the foundational skill needed. That first client interview sets the stage for everything that follows.
However, it takes time and practice to build that key skill. The tax preparer needs to become comfortable with the process, learn to ask the right questions, and listen closely to what the client is and isn’t saying.
In-house training offers the opportunity to schedule practice sessions and role-playing, covering the full range of scenarios that might pop up. It’s also a chance for trainees to internalize their new tax skills and hit the ground running when they’re hired.
Hire for people skills
Every smart employer knows that you hire great people and train them in the skills needed. A prospective employee with great people skills is an asset from the beginning. Your clients want a relationship with their tax preparer. After all, this is someone they confide in, so they need to feel comfortable.
If that prospect comes along who has great people skills but doesn’t know taxes, train them! After all, innate people skills can’t be taught. The strong communicator who can be trusted is sure to become a tax preparer who will attract and keep clients.
Train for tax preparation
Tax preparation is a mix of science and art. Software can help with tax computations, but it can’t teach tax theory and knowledge. That software is only as good as the person using it, and it can’t delve any deeper into an issue than it’s been coded to compute.
Training your people your way assures a team that’s competent and knowledgeable in tax theory, law, and the IRS code. Your tax preparers have to know how to work with people and ask the right questions in order to yield favorable results for the clients.
When you train and hire your own tax preparers, the power to build your business and enhance your reputation is in your hands.
Surgent provides the training tools you need
You can train your own employees online or face-to-face with the Surgent Income Tax School curriculum. Surgent Income Tax School starts with the basics, so you can instill your trainees with the fundamentals. Surgent support, plus materials available 24/7, lets you set the pace.
Don’t have time to train your own people? No worries! Surgent Income Tax School can train for you, with a group discount available for two or more students, so even a small group gets affordable pricing.
If you’re ready to turn your employees into skilled tax preparers, find out how Surgent Income Tax School can help provide the training your business needs.