Login
iscover
As the accounting shortage continues to worsen, one firm in Sydney’s Northern Beaches has taken an unconventional approach to recruiting: handing out free coffees to commuters.
Less commute, more coffee: inside an accounting firm’s caffeinated recruitment drive
21 May 2025
•
9 minute read
Kelly+Partners is a top-20 Australian accounting firm with offices around the world. However, senior partner Danny Chiha said cultivating brand visibility in the Northern Beaches is still no easy feat.
“Trying to find accountants is really difficult in the marketplace, full stop,” Chiha told Accountants Daily.
You’re out of free articles for this month
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
“We're on the Northern Beaches, and if you're not living here, not many people travel to the beaches for work. It's a pretty small subset. However, there are a lot of people that live here that travel out of the Northern Beaches for work.”
After trying other methods to get its name out there locally, such as putting posters up at local bus stops, Kelly+Partners decided to try a different approach: handing out free coffees. So, one cold winter morning, it set up shop next to winding Northern Beaches bus queues, in hopes of winning over commuting accountants.
“We were brainstorming in the office about different ways we can get in front of local people working in the accounting space, who aren't typically looking in the Northern Beaches for work,” Chiha recalled.
“It’s just about us trying to create that exposure so people realise what's on their doorstep.”
Chiha recalled chatting to local accountants as he handed out coffees, many of whom had never heard of Kelly+Partners despite their efforts to market themselves locally. Each cup was labelled with a simple slogan: ‘This could be your last commute’.
While execution was a challenge – from lugging in a generator to power the coffee machine to keeping up with the overwhelmingly high demand – Chiha said the response to the initiative had exceeded their initial expectations.
“The online content and flow-through from that has been extremely strong, the amount of messages we've gotten from clients, asking for contact details to be able to do something similar in their locations.”
“We had double-figure candidate leads come through. So that was really successful, a lot more successful than putting up a SEEK ad.
“The traditional methods of attracting talent have gotten so hard to cut through. So yes, it was a lot more successful than basically anything else we've done in any one effort.”
Like many other accounting firms, talent shortages have squeezed Kelly+Partners’ ability to recruit, meaning their team often had to make do with less.
“We’re feeling this pressure of having to do more work with less talent coming through. There's a bit of a gap. We are leveraging technology more,” Chiha said.
“We look at [AI] in a very welcome way; if we can find some tools that allow our team to do things better, faster, etc, it's a great result, and we'll always find ways to leverage it to help deliver more value to the client.”
He added that perceptions of the accounting industry had impacted the talent pipeline, even when those perceptions didn’t quite match up with reality.
“The perception of accountants in the market, like, it hurts [recruitment], so we need to do a job of making accounting a great career choice. People don't realise how much fun we have and how good it is until they're in it,” Chiha said.
“We’re involved in a lot more than lodging a tax return, and my team and I find it exciting here, because it's helping people kind of achieve their dreams and goals every day.”
Chiha likened Kelly+Partners to a stereotypical tech office - ping pong tables, team dinners and a close-knit company culture. A far cry from the boring, grey accounting offices typically envisioned in pop culture.
“The team culture here is close. Everyone's close, we have heaps of events, like dinners and whatnot,” he said.
“We do fitness challenges like step challenges and walks, and take the whole team along. We'll do local sessions with gyms and things like that at our different locations.”
While the coffee cart initiative aimed to entice local accountants to the firm, Chiha also recognised the importance of getting younger generations on board with accounting and changing industry perceptions over the long run.
“On the day, we had some high school girls come up to get coffees. And someone was like, ‘Oh, they're not even working. Are you gonna let them take a coffee?’ I was like, of course, we're gonna let them have a coffee. It’s just a five-year play, where we need people to realise that accounting is great, we can't expect them to flip overnight.”
You need to be a member to post comments. Become a member for free today!
