Having conducted thousands of searches for multinational corporations and high net worth individuals all over the world, I am a well-known expert on how tax professionals are hired for tax jobs. The intention of this post is to increase the opportunity for you to be discovered and hired by those who need your tax expertise. We see so many tax professionals unknowingly make mistakes in finding a new job or acquiring a new client that it is important to teach you how to succeed. Here are the ten top mistakes we encounter tax professionals make when searching for a new tax job or client acquisition.

Online Professional Profile – We encounter countless online professional profiles that are poorly written and this is a major obstacle to your success. We know many people need an online professional profile makeover.  There are professional profiles which have too much information, professional profiles with too little information, profiles with no photos, profiles missing important information on education and technical experiences, professional profiles that age you out(www.taxconnections.com enables you to input your profiles with no dates for employment or education to prevent ageism), etc.

Failure To Market Your Tax Expertise Online – Times have changed and you must adapt to these fast moving changes. You must market your tax expertise online; you can be in a corporate tax organization, public accounting, law firm, tax services firm or an independent tax services provider. It makes a difference so make the effort to market yourself or you will be eclipsed by the generations who understand and thrive on doing so.

Thinking People Will Find You On LinkedIn – It surprises that tax professionals do not understand that LinkedIn charges approximately nine thousand dollars for recruiters to have a license to look through the database of profiles. The recruiters who can afford these licenses to see your professional profiles are the corporate recruiters who do not know how to read a tax resume. Forget the corporate applicant tracking systems these corporations have as half of my searches the resume is sitting in the databank but no one has the expertise or knowledge to put it together. This is why you never hear back when yiou submit your resume to corporate resume portals.

Thinking People Will Find You On Your Personal Web Page – Google places webpages at the top who pay the most money to be there for key words. Your personal webpage is unlikely to get the traffic you need to so do not depend on it. There is a much easier and less expensive way to get free traffic when you are a TaxConnections Member.

Thinking People Will Find You On Your Company Webpage– Always remember your current firm focuses on building the firm brand, not your brand.  The Tax Partners pay out of their own pocket to build their brands because they do not want to walk into the office and ask for financial marketing support and be denied. Furthermore, people who want to hire you are not going to spend hours of research time to find you. Making it easy for people to find you is what TaxConnections does for your tax career.

Be Proactive, Not Inactive – You must be proactive for prospect employers and clients to find you. We developed technology that makes it easy for corporations and clients to find you online. The vast majority of tax professionals on our site were found because people would not want to pay LinkedIn to see your professional profile. It makes good business sense to ensure everyone can find you and see your full professional profile on TaxConnections.

Invest In Yourself – In order to be considered for significantly more opportunities you must position your tax reputation so people see you and interact with you freely. This is precisely why we build a site dedicated to tax professionals. When you invest less than one dollar a day on your tax reputation with a TaxConnections Membership you significantly increase your opportunities to be hired for full-time, part-time and remote tax jobs.