Should accountants recruit staff on social media? Yes, alongside a job board, not instead of one

The short answer

Yes, it is worth trying, especially for trainee and junior roles and for people who live near the office. It works best when candidates already follow firms or local business pages in your area. It complements a job board or a recruiter. It does not replace them.

The reason is simple. A job board reaches people who are actively looking. A social media post reaches people who already know your firm, follow a member of staff, or follow the local pages where your post gets shared. Those are often different people, and some of the best hires come from the second group: someone who was not looking until they saw a job at a firm they liked.

Three things decide whether it works: how clearly you describe the role, whether anyone actually sees the post, and how well you handle the people who reply. This guide covers all three. If the firm has no social media presence at all yet, start with our guide on whether accountants need social media, because candidates check a firm's pages before they apply, whatever channel the vacancy went out on.

What actually gets applications

A clear role, a named location, the working pattern, an honest line about the day, who they will work with, and one way to apply. A post that has all six gets applications. A post that says "we're hiring, DM us" gets likes.

• The role, in plain words."Trainee accountant", "bookkeeper, part time", "payroll administrator". Say whether it is an apprenticeship, a study-support role or a qualified post.
• Where the job is. The town, and whether it is in the office, at home or a mix. People decide on this before anything else, so do not hide it.
• The working pattern. Full time or part time, the hours, and anything unusual such as a busy January. Candidates with children or a second job need this to know whether to apply.
• What the day really involves. The clients they will work on, the software they will use, and the parts of the job that are repetitive as well as the parts that are interesting. Honesty here saves you interviewing people who will leave in six months.
• Who they will work with. The size of the team and who they will report to. For a trainee, say who will supervise their work and their study.
• One way to apply.An email address or an application link, plus a closing date. Not "message us", and not three different options.

Pay helps too. If you can state a salary or a range, do. If the firm prefers not to, say what you will share at first contact, so the post does not read as evasive. Keep the wording of any pay or benefit claim accurate, and check it if you are unsure.

Vacancy posts that work

Four formats do most of the work: a plain vacancy post with a closing date, a short day in the life, a trainee's story in their own words, and a simple description of the team. Use the first one every time. Add the others when you have them.

1. The vacancy post

That example is ours, written to show the shape. Everything in brackets is yours to fill in. It names the role, the place, the work, the team, the pattern, the pay and one way to apply, with a closing date. It is short enough to read in a feed and complete enough that nobody has to message you to ask the basics.

2. A day in the life

Three or four lines on what a trainee or a bookkeeper at your firm did yesterday, or a short video of the same. It answers the question every candidate has and few adverts cover: what would I actually be doing? Keep it true. A day that is all client meetings and no data entry will not match the job, and the new hire will notice.

3. A trainee's story, in their own words

Also ours, and only worth posting if a real member of staff says something like it and is happy to be named. A story like this carries more weight with a school leaver than anything a partner writes, because it comes from someone who was in their position recently. Ask first, and let them write it or approve the wording. The consent section below covers this.

4. The team, plainly described

Who works at the firm, what each team does, and what kind of clients you look after. A candidate wants to picture the room they would sit in. A photo of the actual office and the actual people, taken this year, does more than a stock image of a handshake.

What does not work

Most failed attempts fail for one of five reasons, and none of them is the channel.

• Posting only on a firm page nobody follows.A company page with forty followers, most of them staff and other accountants, will not fill a vacancy on its own. Ask partners and staff to share the post from their own profiles, where the local business owners and the candidates' friends actually are. Our guide on whether to post from a personal profile or a company page explains which account does which job.
• Overselling the culture."Work hard, play hard", "we are a family" and a photo of one summer barbecue tell a candidate nothing and set up a disappointment. Describe the real working week instead.
• Hiding the role or the location."Exciting opportunity" with no job title, or no town, gets scrolled past. People filter on those two things first.
• Leaving the post up after the role is filled. A vacancy from last spring still on the page makes the firm look careless, and it keeps generating applications you have to turn away. Edit the post to say it is filled, or delete it, on the day you hire.
• Asking for CVs in public comments or messages.It puts people's details where they do not belong, it is hard to track, and it looks disorganised. Give one email address or link.

Which channel for which role

LinkedIn for qualified and senior roles. Instagram and TikTok for trainees and school leavers. Facebook for local roles and part-time posts. Post the vacancy wherever the firm already has an audience, and ask staff to share it from their own accounts.

• LinkedIn. Qualified accountants, managers and anyone mid-career keep a LinkedIn profile and see what their connections share. A partner sharing the vacancy from their own profile usually travels further than the firm page alone. Our guide to LinkedIn for accountants covers how the firm page and partner profiles work together.
• Instagram and TikTok. School leavers and graduates may look a firm up on these before they apply, so a few honest posts about the team and a normal day help even if the vacancy itself goes out elsewhere. See our guides on whether accountants should use Instagram and whether accountants should use TikTok before setting up an account only for hiring.
• Facebook. Local roles, part-time roles and returners are often found through local community and business groups, where a shared vacancy post reaches people who live within a few miles of the office. Our guide on whether accountants should use Facebook covers the local angle.

Do not open a new channel just to fill one vacancy. An empty account set up last week looks worse to a candidate than no account at all. Use the channels you already keep up, and use the job board for the rest.

Handling applications properly

Reply promptly, move every applicant to email or an application link, never ask for personal details in a public reply, and tell everyone who applied what happened. How you treat applicants is the most visible thing the firm does during a recruitment campaign, and the unsuccessful ones talk.

• Reply within a working day. A comment or message that sits unanswered for a week tells the candidate how the firm would treat them as an employee.
• Move the conversation off the platform at once."Thanks for your interest. Please send your CV to [email] and we will be in touch." One line, every time. The same route for everyone keeps it fair and keeps the applications in one place.
• Never ask for personal details in public. No CVs, phone numbers, addresses or dates of birth in comments. If someone posts theirs anyway, reply with the email address, then delete the comment to protect them.
• Close the loop.Everyone who applied gets a reply, including a short no. People who heard nothing tell their friends, who may be the next year's candidates or the firm's next clients.
• Keep applications somewhere sensible.A shared mailbox or folder the interviewing partner can see, not one person's LinkedIn inbox. Delete what you no longer need once the role is filled, in line with your firm's data retention practice.

Staff consent, photos and leavers

Ask before you feature a named member of staff, keep photos and stories current, and remove anyone who has left from the posts still running. Recruitment posts are about people, so the people in them get a say.

• Ask first, every time.A trainee story, a team photo or a "meet the team" post should go out only once the person has seen it and said yes. Some staff will be glad to. Some will not want their face on a public page, and that is their call.
• Let them check the wording. If a post quotes someone, they approve the quote. A line a partner put in their mouth will be noticed by the people who know them.
• Keep it current. A team photo from three years ago with two people who have since left, or a trainee story from someone now qualified and gone, misleads the candidate. Refresh these each time you recruit.
• Remove leavers from recruitment posts. When someone leaves, take down or edit the posts that feature them, and add that step to your leavers checklist alongside logins and email.

What staff photos and stories are fair to share, and where the line sits, is covered in our guide on whether accountants should post personal content. Who may post about the firm, and who approves a post before it goes out, belongs in your social media policy. ICAEW's helpsheet says a social media policy should cover matters including recruitment, so a short recruitment section there is a sensible home for these rules.

How to tell if it is working

Count the applications worth interviewing and the hires, not the likes. A vacancy post with two hundred likes and no suitable applicant has failed. A post with twelve likes that brought in the trainee you hired has worked.

• Ask every applicant where they saw the job. One question on the application email or form. After a couple of vacancies you will know which channel brings which kind of candidate.
• Track quality, not volume. How many applications were worth an interview, how many interviews led to an offer, and whether the person was still with you a year later. Note these by source.
• Compare the cost. A social media post costs staff time. A job board or a recruiter costs money. Judge each by cost per hire who stayed, not by how many people saw the advert.

The same thinking applies to the firm's wider marketing, and our guide on how accountants measure marketing covers how to set it up without a spreadsheet nobody updates.

When to use a recruiter or job board instead

Use a specialist recruiter for an urgent or senior hire, a job board for any role where you need people who are actively looking now, and social media alongside both. If a fair trial on social media has produced no suitable applicants, stop and pay for reach.

• A specialist or senior role. A tax manager, an audit senior or a partner-track hire is usually in a job already and not reading vacancy posts. A recruiter who knows the local market will reach them directly.
• An urgent hire. If a bookkeeper has handed in notice and January is coming, a job board and a recruiter run in parallel from day one. Social media can run too, but it should not be the plan.
• No suitable applicants after a fair trial. If the vacancy post, shared by partners and staff, has run for two or three weeks and brought nothing worth an interview, the audience is not there. Move the budget to a board or a recruiter rather than reposting the same thing.

Whichever route fills the role, the firm's pages still get checked by the candidate before they accept, so the posts about the team and the work are worth keeping up between vacancies. Pillrdrafts a month of LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram posts from your firm's website, in your firm's voice, and nothing is scheduled until a partner approves it. A vacancy post needs the role details from you, so add the job, location, working pattern and how to apply to the draft before the partner signs it off. Pillr does not post to TikTok, X, YouTube or Threads, and it does not advertise on job boards. To see what a month of posts drafted from your own website looks like, paste your firm's address on the home page.

Questions accountants ask about recruiting on social media