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Accountemps interview?

I have been looking online at accounting jobs and I think that accountemps has some of the better ones in my area. I have spoken with some people about accountemps, and they said to prepare to take a 12-key test, Excel and Accounting Principles test. 1) What other tests should I expect to take? 2) What are the tests like (please provide *as much* specifics as possible) Thanx

Public Comments

1. I interviewed with Accountemps and OfficeTeam (both Robert Half recruiting agencies), they overlap a little depending on what type of position you are interested in, so you may want to register with both. Upon arrival, I filled out a long application. (Like most staffing agencies, they deal with applicants all day long, so usually there is one or two other people filling out apps and testing while you are there). Based on what programs and skills I said I knew on my application, they picked a bunch of tests for me to take. (Excel, Word, Access, 10 key, etc). Each test is timed, with about 30-40 questions to answer in 50 minutes or so for the Excel and Word; the other tests were shorter. (A long time to be taking tests, all the same!) The 12 key is just a basic 12 key. You enter numbers and add or subtract and total on a calculator. (I worked at a staffing agency once, and we tested people on payroll (Fed. taxes, etc) and other specifics. I didn't take that test with Accountemps, though, so I don't know if they do those types of non-software testing as well.) The Excel test was about basic Excel functions. Seated at a computer, it will show a small Excel window with a pre-existing spreadsheet and ask you to "select the cell at row 4 column h" or "delete row 6" or "set cell H9 to sum the numbers above it" or "open a new spreadsheet" or "open existing spreadsheet titled "Finances.xls"". Basic questions such as those. At that time I had only 8 months of (albeit daily) Excel use of doing very basic spreadsheets. I would have considered myself still a Novice, though latter stage Beginner. I scored 97% on the Excel. I thought I knew much more about Word (having used that more), but I did about 88% on that (a lot of those questions were geared towards Secretaries that do a lot of mail merging which I never did.) So if I did that well on Excel, it really is a very basic test. (No complicated formulas (except for SUM or that type). For both Word and Excel, on the questions I didn't know, I was usually able to figure it out by scanning through the toolbars at the top of the screen (File, Edit, Tools, etc). Questions were pretty much limited to knowing your way around those toolbars. So if you go through them and know what most do, you will do fine. After that I met with a recruiter. Doesn't feel like an interview, because they are just getting a feel for you and what you are looking for, they don't ask (many, if any) interviewer questions. They talk up Robert Half companies a little and if they have any positions that might fit, they will go over it with you. In my case they didn't have anything that immediately was what I was looking for, but they called me a day or two later with a GREAT job that I am still working at (a year later). Dress even more professional than you would for an interview. Uber-conservative, suit (men and women), low key hair and makeup. They do not want to feel like they will send you on an interview and you will not represent Robert Half (Accountemps) well, so definitely "dress the part". Get there 15 minutes early, too. They are a good company (in that they found me a great job), and have training materials online that are cool once you register with them.. The one BIG thing that left me unhappy with them was how they haggled my buy-out price with the company I am at. If my firm hadn't needed my exact skill set, they would never have bought my contract at the price Accountemps demanded, and I would have lost the best job because of them... I worked for the company I am at for 2 or 3 months, and when they asked Accountemps how much it was to "buy" me (for Accountemps to release me from my contract with them), Accountemps wanted half my annual salary for my buy out price. (Which means I cost my company 150% my salary for that year). The norm is 30% minus what the company had paid in salary for the trial period. In this case, they knew how much the company loved me, and played hardball. I had to email my recruiter and ask what was going on because my firm was ready to let me go because of their negotiations. I guess that is their skill, sucking the money out of a company when they know the company loves the hire. But as a result, now that I am HR Director of that same company, I do not use Accountemps because of how they negotiated my own buyout- it's too costly for permanent positions. I will use them for temp work, but I put ads on monster and careerbuilder for any permanent positions that come up. (I just hired a job cost accountant and went the in-house route ($1k in help wanted ads) versus the $22k (plus hourly fees before buyout) that Accountemps would have charged me.. However, in my area, a lot of the firms go through the staffing companies rather than do hiring in-house (either because it's easier or because they don't have HR departments). So to find a job, usually you have to register with the staffing services like Accountemps. All the same, I would register with a different agency each day. It's free and you will not be waiting for just one service to find you something. Another staff agency was calling me every day for lower paying positions, if I had needed immediate work, I would have been better off with them. So as long as you're doing the staff agency route, I would register with most of the local ones.. GOOD LUCK!