by William Bond

Created on: May 19, 2010

The Chief Accounting Officer  is a very important employee within your organization, because this individual must work with the key managers of the firms, also with customers, and even shareholders of the public company, and must understand the goals of the organization, and how to attain them.  A structured interview is crucial to find the right individual for this important position to  help the organization, grow, and show profits and growth within the organization, while monitoring costs at the same time. Here are the steps and the crucial questions to attain the best possible person to fill the duties of the chief accounting officer.

Ask the candidate to describe in detail her/his last job.

Listen carefully to the description of the  applicant's last duties, how much contact with the controller of the business, also dealing with the billing department, working with the credit department, personnel department, collection department, sales department, customer service department, and others. Does the applicant talk about interfacing with these department skillfully, and being able to deal with these departments in a helpful way, to get the needed work completed for the good of the organization. A successful chief  accounting officer must understand the role of each department fully, and be able to successfully with them.  Now discuss your company to the applicant.

Give an overview of your company to applicant.

Inform the applicant of a general overview of your organization, such as history of the business, when started, original founder, what products and services sold, the number of employees, the number of customers, whether you are an international company, or domestic company, the philosophy of the company, plans for the future, and what will be needed for the chief  accounting officer now and in the future.  If for example you would be expanding to Europe and the Far East within the next year, discuss this fully, with the applicant, and make certain the applicant will be willing to do the necessary traveling to setup, do the hiring, and establish accounting offices in the new locations.  Now be willing to discusss what is expected in this job to succeed.

Duties of the accounting position.

The job requires supervising 6-8 people in the accounting department, 8 monthly reports, including cash flow report,

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