Staffing, Recruiting and Retention for the COVID Age.With Richard RothsteinClick here for more by Richard RothsteinSteven Braunstein, managing partner of Snyder Cohn in North Bethesda, Md., talks about the impact of COVID on staff recruiting and retention -- including virtual "Lunch with Steve" sessions. Braunstein describes the culture at the 100-year-old, 80-person firm and how that makes a difference in recruiting. Snyder Cohn has also implemented some interesting ideas to promote retention during the pandemic that go beyond work life like “Lunch with Steve” and having more virtual time together through shared lunches.  Transcript Richard Rothstein 0:10Hi, there, this is Richard Rothstein and I am talking to Steven Steen of Snyder Cohn, in Bethesda, Maryland. And we're gonna be talking again a little bit about how his firm has handled recruiting this year and this crazy year, both before and after COVID. So, Steven, how you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Richard. So if you could start out by telling, how were you handling recruiting accounts pre COVID? Steven Braunstein 0:46Sure, pre COVID there were multiple different avenues where we would recruit accountants. We work with agencies, I mean, that's always been something that we always talk to them, sometimes they can get some candidates that we're not getting, we would talk with different referral sources that we work with lawyers, bankers, investment advisors, and always just ask them, we're always looking for good people if you know someone. So we did a little bit of that. We did some work on LinkedIn with our HR person. And we had a handful of college campuses where we recruited entry level accountants from so all of those things were done in the pre COVID world. Richard Rothstein 1:48Are there any referral sources in particular that you found to be helpful? Steven Braunstein 1:53Over time, I would say, No, but because I think it just kind of depends, you know, does somebody know someone who's looking? So we were doing that. The other thing we did, but we didn't have great results, is offering an incentive for employees if they knew someone, we we did some of that over the years, and but not as much as I would have liked. Richard Rothstein 2:26The next step to that is once you find the people is, how you how you make competitive offers. So, what what were you doing to make sure that Snyder Cohn was as a competitive opportunity for people to consider? Steven Braunstein 2:45So I think we're always looking at different salary surveys to make sure that we're aligned on salary trends. But we also like, we feel strongly about our culture. And we think we have a good culture we had, for years, we've had a flexible work environment where we allow some people to work remotely, work remotely part of the time work, remotely all of the time. So we have always had that, and we think that's important. We always had a number of people who were part time, because some people with small children may not have that the full time 40 hours a week available. So that was a cultural thing. I think that the family friendly environment that we had, is people felt that when they would interview with us, that coupled with what we felt was a a competitive starting salary with, the traditional benefits health insurance 401k match. We felt that we were able to stay competitive, although I think that over the last couple of years that they're there, and I think it continues on even today now is there's a little bit of a supply and demand issue where there's just not enough accountants, and especially not enough entry level accountants to to satisfy all the accounting firms. Richard Rothstein 4:07So once you bring people on board, how long have you found that they would be staying with you? Steven Braunstein 4:22One thing that I think is phenomenal about Snyder Cohn is that the number of our partners where Snyder Cohn has been the the only firm or almost the only firm where these partner