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Seaport Financial Partners

About Seaport

Seaport Financial Partners is a boutique tax firm that offers personalized tax planning and compliance for high net worth families and clients with complex tax situations.

Recruitment challenges

The accounting profession, in general, has faced a crisis in the way of a shortage of accountants. Significantly fewer students have selected accounting as a major. To exacerbate the problem, we are a niche firm dealing with complex individual tax returns and need more specialized staff. We are always looking to fill Senior Associate and Manager positions within our firm. These individuals generally have 3-7+ years of individual tax return experience, which includes exposure to more complicated areas of individual tax (stock options, K1s, charitable options/foundations, trusts, estates, etc.). In addition, because of our focus on planning, there is more client interaction at these levels than may be typical at other firms. For this reason, we also look for individuals who are personable and able to connect with clients to build a relationship.

Recruiting with Distinct

We were fortunate enough to be introduced to two of Distinct’s team members (Rebecca Sherman and Ellie Butler) early in our search. We quickly noticed that they were doing something different from the recruitment side. We were not only getting more resumes to look at, but the candidates were much more qualified and applicable to our business – compared to other recruiters who would send over accounting generalists, some with no tax experience. We were getting introductions from multiple team members from Distinct too. It felt like we had their entire operation working on our behalf and all of the recruiters understood our goals and needs for these hires.

In addition, Rebecca Sherman and Ellie Butler came to our office to get to know the team and understand our business. I’ve never seen or heard of a recruiting company doing this. And you know what? It was one of the best things that happened. After that, they completely understood who we were looking for and connected us with two of our best employees.

Success with Distinct

We have been fortunate to hire two individuals through the help of Distinct. Both of these individuals fit our company from a talent and culture perspective extremely well. It’s allowed us to continue providing excellent client service, which has in turn led to additional referrals and required us to look at additional hires.

Benefits of working with Distinct

• Higher quality and quantity of candidates presented
• Countless hours saved in the recruitment process. Specifically, the Distinct team has a complete understanding of who we’re looking for, ensuring we’re not wasting time interviewing candidates who aren’t the right fit and takes care of marketing our role
• Open and transparent communication throughout the recruitment process
• Proper team coordination. Once we’d told our story once, all of their recruiters knew it, regardless if we spoke directly to them or not.

Recommending Distinct

We’d recommend Distinct – unless you are looking for high quality accountants with individual return experience and take our candidates. All kidding aside, we’ve had experiences with multiple recruiters and Distinct is just so far ahead of everyone else. Hire them and you’ll wish you had done it sooner. – Jeff Krueger, Partner at Seaport Financial Partners LLC

If you’re looking to find the perfect CPA candidate for your firm, our team will be happy to help you. Contact us to get started.