Industry Insights

Hiring managers often struggle to get specific, practical insights from personality profiles—like whether a candidate will work independently, embrace technology, or adapt to change. Accountests has developed a quick-reference table that connects common business concerns with the relevant Big Five personality traits measured in their Accountants Personality Profile Questionnaire (APPQ). The table highlights which traits to examine for issues such as business development, leadership, adaptability, and AI-readiness, along with the risks of scoring too low or too high on each. This tool helps employers interpret personality reports more effectively, tailor interview questions, and plan onboarding strategies.

AI tools that claim high accuracy in detecting “cheating” during video interviews often exaggerate their capabilities. A so-called 90% accuracy rate still means a 10% error margin—potentially labeling one in ten innocent candidates as dishonest. False positives erode trust, damage employer brands, and filter out the very talent businesses need most. The real benchmark for any hiring tech: accuracy, fairness, and freedom from bias.If a tool can’t prove those, it doesn’t belong in your hiring process.

Many accounting firms fear that testing might drive candidates away. In reality, firms using testing effectively find the opposite — it attracts stronger candidates, improves engagement, and speeds up hiring. By clearly explaining the purpose and benefits of testing, firms create a more focused, fair, and positive recruitment experience. Testing allows candidates to demonstrate their abilities in new ways, helps employers tailor onboarding and training, and leads to faster, higher-quality hires. When done right, testing becomes a secret hiring weapon that boosts both candidate experience and long-term retention.

Proctoring — the act of supervising exams to prevent cheating — has evolved from in-person monitoring to sophisticated online methods. With remote work and online hiring assessments now common, ensuring test integrity has become critical. Employers must confirm that candidates complete tests honestly and without outside help, as misuse of tools like Google or AI can distort results. Accountests notes that cheating attempts are rare but detectable through test data patterns.

The blog highlights Bloom’s Taxonomy as a framework for crafting objectives across six cognitive levels—remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating—to ensure a range of skills and behaviors are developed. It also distinguishes between objectives, which outline expected achievements during instruction, and learning outcomes, which reflect what learners actually demonstrate afterward. By aligning clear objectives with measurable outcomes, and using tools like Bloom’s Taxonomy, organizations can design purposeful, results-driven learning experiences that enhance learner growth and track progress effectively.

Allowing candidates to retake recruitment assessments can increase fairness but also carries risks to test integrity.

Hiring offshore talent can bring huge benefits to accounting firms — but only if you know what to look for in interviews. Offshore candidates often come from different cultural and professional contexts, which means certain “red flags” may actually be normal. Check out the six signs to pay attention to, and how to interpret them

Hiring globally brings valuable diversity but adds complexity, especially when assessing cognitive ability in candidates who speak English as a second language (ESL). Accountests has developed a Bookkeeper and Admin Ability (Cognitive Test) Suite that is accessible and insightful across language backgrounds.

When reviewing resumes (CVs), hiring managers may overlook the growing influence of AI. Job seekers are increasingly using AI tools to tailor their resumes to specific job ads—often by uploading both the job description and their own CV to platforms like ChatGPT for optimization suggestions. This raises concerns about authenticity, especially when 70% of candidates already admit to lying on resumes.

The blog concludes that employers should focus less on credentials and more on testing actual skills and job readiness, using assessments to make fairer, data-driven hiring decisions. In today’s job market, capability outweighs academic qualifications.

The blog critiques the widespread admiration of grit—commonly portrayed on LinkedIn and in self-help circles as the ultimate key to personal and professional success. While grit is often desired by employers and managers, especially during hiring and development discussions, the post urges a more balanced view by uncovering its hidden downsides.

In public accounting, hiring the wrong person doesn't just lead to financial loss—it causes partner stress and harms team morale. Drawing on 25 years of experience, the blog introduces a Bad Hire Calculator, which helps firms quantify the true cost of hiring mistakes based on specific internal practices (e.g., use of recruiters, firing timeline).