I like to recruit people who are better than me. But there is a shortage of accountants (and other STEM careers) at the moment.
Fortunately I also like to recruit non-accountants and to train them up. I particularly look for people with customer service experience who can look after our lovely clients while we use software to run things as efficiently as possible behind the scenes. This suits our tech savvy clients.
The downside of running a modern business is that we do things very differently to most traditional accountants so it is often easier to train somebody from scratch than to persuade them to unlearn bad habits acquired elsewhere.
I like to do careers talks or interview practice in local schools so that I get an early glimpse of the new talent about to hit the workplace. One of my trainees came to me for work experience as a 17 year old and is now a manager in another local accountancy firm. And I expect they’ll go further.
If you are looking for a general manager to free you up to develop your business you could try looking at retail managers. They have a broad range of skills and could soon learn about your particular business and sector.
When it comes to recruitment try thinking outside the box.