Assistant Accountant SME Rotterdam • BDO

Our client portfolio has been growing, the specific knowledge within our A&B teams has increased and some colleagues have committed themselves to only serve this international and corporate market going forward. Serving clients like Tesla, PepsiCo, Twitter, AirBnB Burberry, Starbucks, Sony, Moncler,  and other well-known companies, BDO A&B has been adapting to this new ‘environment’. This market is a niche within our A&B department and differs from our regular practice in a way that;

• Our teams are required to possess more specific accounting knowledge (for both small and medium enterprises as we typically also serve medium sized entities);
• The international/corporate market is very dynamic, deadline driven;
• Communication between BDO and our clients is direct, volatile and straight to the point;
• Our services are, from an A&B perspective, very compliance driven;
• We are in frequent contact with our colleagues from ITS, Global Outsourcing, FAAS and other departments to be able to provide a full service package;
• We are in frequent contact with out colleagues from Member Firms around the world, mostly BDO UK and BDO USA;
• Nearly all communication is done in English, meaning our colleagues will have to speak the language on an above average level;
• Compliance fees are typically high(er) and the yield on our fees is large as well. Our clients are willing to pay a price for high level compliance work.

This also means that we have to adjust the way we look at the preferred profile of new and potential BDO employees. A specific profile is needed, looking at the afore mentioned items, where (for instance) native English speakers are a welcome addition to our teams. This might even mean that we will need an additional pillar in our new function profiles that are currently being enrolled. Our job offers will have to reflect this profile as well and will have be tailor made to meet our demands and needs.

Whilst we are still developing these tailor made job offers, we’re struggling with capacity to serve these niche clients with the current teams at hand. More than before are we using a lot of ‘hybrid colleagues’ who have no desire to fully focus on these international and corporate clients – meaning they generally don’t fit in the preferred profile and lack the specifics we are searching for. This makes us vulnerable and unable to take on all the new international work that is coming our way. It’s limiting our growth.