Job Placement · Accounting & CPA
Accounting hiring got harder because the entry cohort shrank: AICPA counts 40,817 accounting bachelor's degrees in 2023-24, down 3.3%, and BLS projects roughly 115,300 openings a year for the occupation. BEG places permanent accountants from associate to CFO in 23 to 35 days on milestone billing, not a percentage of salary.
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What Actually Changed In This Market
How The Search Runs
Accounting titles are unusually elastic. A discovery call establishes whether you are describing a senior accountant or an accounting manager, whether the licence is genuinely needed, and where the seat sits against the tax and audit calendar.
Accountants who close a month reliably are employed and are contacted regularly. We approach them directly with a specific description of the seat, which is the only message that gets a reply from somebody who is not on the market.
Not a resume stack. Candidates are screened against close ownership, review experience and the technical judgement the seat actually requires, so the first interview is a conversation rather than a filter.
Where the honest answer is that the seat should be an internal promotion, or that contract capacity would serve you better than a permanent hire, we say so on the call. The seat-by-seat detail sits on the role pages below, starting with controller and senior accountant.
Milestone Billing Against Contingency
Contingency recruiters charge a percentage of first-year salary, so the invoice rises with every improvement you make to the offer. Benchmarked to the $83,680 BLS median for accountants and auditors, a 20% to 25% fee is $16,736 to $20,920. BEG prices by the tier of the seat, from $4,680 at Tier I to $40,128 at Tier VI, agreed before the first approach and unchanged by the salary you settle on.
What The Calendar Does To A Search
BLS notes that longer hours are typical for accountants at quarterly audits and during tax season, and candidates behave accordingly. Spring filing and autumn extensions each close a window, and year-end fieldwork closes another for auditors. A search opened in the trough rather than the peak completes materially faster, which is the cheapest scheduling decision available to you.
No commitment. We will tell you what we can do for the seat and what it costs before you decide anything.
If You Were Searching For An Accounting Staffing Agency
| Model | Who employs the accountant | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract or temporary accounting firm | The agency | Hourly bill rate for as long as the assignment runs | Filing season volume, a leave cover, or a backlog with a defined end date. |
| Contingency recruiter | You | Percentage of first-year salary, $16,736 to $20,920 at the BLS accountant median | You want nothing payable until a start date and accept a fee that scales with the offer. |
| BEG permanent placement | You | Milestone fee by tier, $4,680 to $40,128, fixed before sourcing | The seat is permanent and you want the fee known before the first approach. |
BEG does not employ accountants and does not bill hourly, so contract capacity is not something we sell and we will point you to it where it fits. Corporate finance seats, analysis, planning, treasury and the transactional team, are recruited through finance placement rather than here.
FAQ
Public practice seats including tax and audit associates, tax managers and audit managers, and the technical accounting seats inside a company: senior accountant, accounting manager, director of accounting, controller and CFO. Corporate finance roles such as financial analyst, FP&A manager and treasury manager are recruited through our finance practice instead.
No. Contract accounting firms employ the accountant and bill you an hourly rate for the weeks you need them, which is a sensible answer to a filing season spike. BEG places permanent accountants your firm or company employs directly, on milestone billing. If seasonal capacity is what you actually need, we will say so rather than open a search.
The entry cohort shrank. AICPA Trends data records 40,817 accounting bachelor’s degrees in 2023-24 and 55,152 across bachelor’s and master’s combined, down 6.6% year on year. That decline is now working its way up through senior and manager seats, and BLS projects roughly 115,300 openings a year for accountants and auditors over the decade to 2035.
No, and requiring one narrows the pool without always improving the hire. The licence is decisive where somebody has to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which BLS states requires a licensed CPA. In a private company close, demonstrable reconciliation and technical accounting depth frequently predicts performance better than the letters do.
It has been joined rather than replaced. In May 2025 the AICPA and NASBA approved model legislation adding a pathway of a bachelor’s degree with an accounting concentration plus two years of experience plus the CPA Exam, alongside the traditional 150-hour route and the graduate degree route. Adoption is state by state, so candidates in different states are on different clocks.
The fee is set by the tier of the seat and agreed before sourcing begins, then billed against defined stages of the search rather than as a percentage of the salary at the end. A Tier II associate search is $9,381 to $11,257 and a Tier IV controller search is $19,080 to $22,896. The number does not move when the offer does.
An average of 23 to 35 days from discovery call to signed offer, based on isolved placement data, with an 86% fill rate on active searches. The tax and audit calendar is the main variable: searches opened during filing season or year-end fieldwork take materially longer because candidates will not interview.
If a placed accountant does not work out within 45 days of their start date for a performance-related reason, we run a replacement search at no additional charge, and a repeat search for the same seat is offered at 50% off. Forty-five days covers roughly one and a half month-end closes, which is the honest limit of what it can test.
Both, and they are different searches run differently. A firm seat is sold on client mix, the path to manager or partner, and how study time is protected during busy season. A corporate seat is sold on predictable hours, a visible pay step and ownership of one ledger rather than many. Using the same approach message for both is why so many firm searches return corporate candidates.
We will say so. Accounting is the function where internal promotion is most often correct, because a large part of what makes a close work is knowledge of your specific ledger, your systems and which department is always late. Where we think the seat should go to the senior accountant already in the building, telling you that is worth more than the fee we would have billed.
By establishing which pathway and which state board they are working under during screening rather than after the offer. It changes two things you care about: how much study time the offer has to contain to be competitive, and whether their qualifying experience will be signed off by somebody at your organisation or their previous one.
Three things, and the discovery call gets them in fifteen minutes. The close calendar with the number of business days, the organisation chart beneath the seat so candidates know what they are inheriting, and the salary band with the name of whoever can approve an exception to it. Searches that stall almost always stall on the third one.
Explore Accounting & CPA Placement
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