Episode 24 - The Tax Recruiter Robot

Welcome to episode #24 of Agents of AI, Capto’s podcast for leaders who want to understand how humans + AI agents are reshaping the future.
The "Tax Recruiter Robot" joins us to share:

• Our guest is a Managing Director of a boutique recruitment firm, based in the UK, but working globally, that specializes in accountancy, tax, treasury, and legal recruitment. They head up the team of tax recruiters, and each recruiter on the team specializes in a particular tax domain. They have personally spent the last 11 years focused solely on tax technology and transformation recruitment.

• What led them to recruitment was a desire to be at the center of working with many different people, with an interest in sales and the brokerage aspect of a role. They enjoy the dynamics of working with people more than with a product or asset.

• An underappreciated aspect of working with a recruiter is the cost of things "going wrong" if you try to manage the process yourself. A lot of the negative reputation recruiters have comes from those who "don't play the long game" and are only "in it for the quick win," leading to "shoddy bats". A number one piece of advice to a new recruiter is to strive to be "omniscient" and to be an "oracle of knowledge", knowing as much as possible about their market and speaking to everyone. This creates huge value for clients and candidates.

• The guest feels that AI's impact on the tax profession "will be the biggest [shift] since ERP driven shared service centers" in how it will change tax functions. The increase in AI hype has been observed across all industries, including tax, for the past two years.

• In-house tax teams now have enough confidence to hire computer science and computer engineering profiles to create AI models (Gen AI or authentic AI) to solve problems. For example, the Big Four are revamping how they hire due to AI and are turning the traditional hiring model "on its head". Entry-level roles are shifting from recruiting economics, finance, or business graduates to focusing on computer science or engineering graduates and then teaching them tax.

• Previously, the tax technology profile usually meant taking a tech-savvy tax professional and teaching them the IT part. Now, the shift is starting to happen toward finding an IT-focused person and teaching them the tax part. The guest suggests that tax is moving "far closer to product management compared to advisory".

• A potential positive for the future is that in-house tax teams will gain significantly more confidence to address issues themselves in a bespoke way. This is important because many tax teams struggle with building a business case for technology investment because no "one-size-fits-all product" exists, and custom solutions from large providers can take a very long time. The guest thinks that tech-savvy people coming into tax will give in-house teams the confidence to ask for a custom outcome to their problem.

• Advice for tax professionals is to be willing to change and evolve and avoid the "I've always done it this way" attitude, there is a space for them because the tax profession is only becoming more complex and is "only widening at the moment". The key advice is to focus on expanding your skill set and staying curious about your profession. 

...and finally their identity is revealed as Alex Mann, Managing Director of Harvey John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmann1/ 
Agents of AI features CFOs, other practitioners, technology leaders, and AI visionaries to share real wins, failures, and strategies, so teams everywhere can learn, adapt, and lead. You can also learn any time from the entire knowledge base of our guests via our "AI Twin". https://hey.speak-to.ai/agents-of-ai 
 If you know a superhero and "Agent of AI" that should join our program, or you are one yourself! Comment, tag them, or reach out to Alexis Chevallot or Peter Steube on LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearecapto