Key Takeaways
- Accounting recruitment agencies give you access to talent you can’t reach alone. They maintain a pre-vetted pool of qualified professionals who can meet your firm’s immediate needs, giving you flexibility to grow.
- Choose between offshore and outsourced models based on control. The former connects you with remote talent you train and manage, while outsourced staffing hands entire accounting functions to the agency—they provide the team, processes, and technology while absorbing turnover risk.
- Your choice directly impacts hiring outcomes. Be sure to evaluate specialisation, vetting rigor, talent network size, and compliance expertise.
Every accounting firm’s business strategy assumes you’ll have the people to execute it. Your board may have approved a major acquisition, or you may have signed contracts that promise to double revenue over a set timeframe.
But what do market opportunities and secured financing matter if you can’t staff your accounting function? That gap is where growth goes to die.
In this blog, we discuss how accounting staffing agencies help firms hire qualified professionals they’d normally struggle to find through traditional hiring methods. From the types of talent available to the qualities to look for when choosing a staffing partner, we’ve covered it all below.
What is an Accounting Staffing Agency
An accounting staffing agency connects you with the right finance and accounting professionals for your firm. Unlike general staffing agencies that recruit across multiple industries, these agencies focus exclusively on accounting talent.
That means they know the difference between an accountant and a controller, which further means they can determine whether a candidate has the technical expertise you require.
The services they offer include:
- Candidate sourcing
- Screening and selection
- Onboarding and training
- HR management
- Support and troubleshooting
Staffing Models to Consider
One great thing about these agencies is that they offer staffing models that adapt to your firm’s overall goals, timeline, and budget. Below are the two common models to consider:
Offshore Staffing
When you offshore, you hire accounting talent from another country and make them part of your firm’s culture and processes. They can work during your off-hours and deliver completed tasks when your onshore team arrives. That way, you ensure round-the-clock productivity within your firm.
Staffing agencies help you find or build your offshore team by connecting you to global talent pools, especially in popular destinations like the Philippines, India, and countries in Latin America. But the responsibility for training and managing them, however, is yours as the employer.
Outsourced Staffing
In contrast, outsourcing means entrusting a third-party provider with an entire function where no internal departments exist. Bookkeeping, payroll, accounts receivable—any accounting function. The agency provides the team, the processes, and often the technology. They also absorb the management overhead, training costs, and turnover risk.
As the client firm, you only need to define your requirements and receive the deliverable. Essentially, you’re not directly hiring team members; you’re contracting with an agency.
Regardless of the model, accounting recruiters at staffing agencies can help you find talent who can work for your firm on a temporary, permanent, or even contract-to-hire basis. The choice depends entirely on your needs.
Benefits of Tailored Recruitment Solutions by Staffing Agencies
Access to Top Talent
Perhaps the primary incentive to partner with a staffing agency is access to qualified, even specialised, accounting and finance professionals in markets you don’t operate or recruit. This expanded reach is especially valuable given ongoing talent shortages that show little sign of abating.
In early 2025, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand ran a member survey that revealed shortages across eight accounting and finance roles at the national and state and territory levels. These include tax accountants and external auditors. Job and Skills Australia subsequently added both roles into its 2025 Occupation Shortage List.
Outdated perceptions of accounting also continue to affect enrolment rates. And because the talent pipeline is anaemic, firm vacancies are outpacing hires, leading to backlogs that stretch teams thin.
Time Savings
Because you’re not starting from zero in the hiring process—you’re not posting vacancies and reviewing resumes—you should have more time to focus on other deliverables. An accounting staffing agency will have already done the initial screening and assessment by the time you interview a candidate.
Flexibility
When you can fill positions quickly, you can respond to business changes without months of lead time. You can also scale your team on demand.
Say, if you anticipate an onslaught of tax season deliverables or if an employee is away on medical leave, staffing agencies can find the right people to provide immediate coverage temporarily. The opposite is also definitely true: they can help you fill full-time roles.
Reduced Hiring Risks
When looking to hire people, you generally have to make long-term commitments based on limited information. You interview someone a few times, check their references, and even assess non-technical competencies, but it’s a gamble whether they’ll truly fit in and deliver.
Specialised staffing agencies, on the other hand, understand the nuances of the field to know what to look for when hiring specific roles. Their expertise helps reduce the chance of wrong hires.
What to Look for in a Staffing Agency in the Finance Sector
Your choice of a staffing agency impacts the quality of accounting and finance professionals you receive, which impacts your hiring outcomes. So, make it a point to assess your choices on the following factors:
Specialisation
Does the agency focus on accounting recruitment, or do they also place other roles?
A specialised agency understands your needs better than a generic one. Whatever vacant accounting roles you have, they’ve likely placed them before. They know what success looks like and will find professionals who fit that bill.
Vetting Process
How does the agency verify qualified candidates’ credentials and references? Do they incorporate analytics technology into their hiring process? Do they test both interpersonal and technical skills?
Agencies put candidates through rigorous assessments so you spend less time interviewing unqualified candidates. If they ask about your firm’s culture and management style, it likely means they care whether a candidate will thrive in your environment.
They should also be able to show you dashboards that track key metrics, like where candidates are in recruitment process. With the right analytics tech, you can get insights into such data quickly and easily. Plus, you have more confidence that matching accuracy is a priority.
84% of organisations use analytics, but 87% of this group still rely on spreadsheets
Talent Network
How many accounting and finance professionals are in their database? Can they place niche roles like forensic accountants or sales and use tax specialists?
A robust network of accounting and finance talent gives you more options to fill faster.
Compliance Expertise
How does the agency handle employment compliance across different jurisdictions?
The challenge with hiring overseas talent is understanding the labour laws in the jurisdictions you’re sourcing from. Tax obligations and mandatory benefits, among others, vary by country and can change without so much as a warning.
A reliable staffing agency stays current with these laws and handles regulatory changes on your behalf.
5 Staffing Agencies for Finance and Accounting Roles
TOA Global
TOA Global specialises exclusively in accounting and finance staffing, connecting firms in North America, Australia, and New Zealand with top talent in the Philippines for over a decade.
While vetted to be job-ready, our offshore professionals are trained and continually upskilled through our award-winning registered training division, the Ab2 Institute of Accounting.
Beyond talent, we support our clients through live chat, knowledge base articles, and our custom people management platform. Our operations are backed by SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 compliance, ensuring strict cybersecurity and data protection standards.
Precision Tax, a tax compliance support and representation services firm, hired offshore team members through TOA Global. In 2025, one of their tax preparers averaged 200 results in a month where typically 60-70 returns are completed, thanks to the support of offshore colleagues.
Robert Half Finance & Accounting
Robert Half Finance and Accounting is a long-standing staffing specialist within industry giant Robert Half. Known for its reach across more than 325 locations, the firm uses AI-supported matching to connect employers with pre-screened accounting and finance professionals.
Based on their website, they place more than 70,000 accounting professionals every year. Popular roles they cover include controller, senior financial analyst, senior accountant, internal auditor, and bookkeeper.
ManpowerGroup
With 75 years of experience serving 10+ industries, Manpower Group is another big name in the staffing world. They’re trusted by 100,000 clients and have placed upskilled professionals through Manpower MyPath, their dedicated learning and development program.
Manpower Group fills any in-demand finance and accounting roles, but especially for staff accounting, business analysis, accounts payable, credit analysis, and payroll.
Near
Near is a full-service accounting recruitment agency that hires professionals across levels and specialisations from Latin America. Clients typically complete placements in under three weeks, drawing from a talent pool of 45,000+ professionals, including candidates with Big Four experience.
Near emphasises custom searches based on exact role requirements and cultural fit.
TeamUp
TeamUp connects accounting firms in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with offshore talent from the Philippines. From day one, hired professionals work as an extension of a firm’s in-house team, with TeamUp supporting the employment setup.
Their pricing model is straightforward: firms pay a one-time, flat fee based on the role, with no ongoing monthly charges, percentage-based commissions, or exit fees. This approach may appeal to firms that want complete control over hires without being locked into recurring staffing markups.
Our Final Thoughts
Partnering with a staffing agency won’t put a stop to the talent shortage in the accounting industry. That would be a miracle. But it does give you access to talent networks you can’t build on your own.
To make the most of that partnership, you have to practice due diligence. Be explicit about the roles you need and what you expect from each one. The right staffing agency will adapt to your shifting hiring needs, but it’s your responsibility to stay actively involved in the process.
Choose the Global Leader in Accounting Staffing
Whether you’ve partnered with global accounting teams before or you’re yet to start, our elite finance and accounting talent at TOA Global can handle your firm’s day-to-day work so you can focus on strategic planning and other business-critical tasks.
All 1,190+ firms we’ve partnered with over the last decade have overcome capacity constraints, thanks to their experienced and skilled outsourced team members in the Philippines.
If you’re aiming for a similar success for your firm, we’re here to support you. Book a chat with our growth experts today.
