Cost Accountant: What is the cost of hiring?

Why hire a Cost Accountant?

An efficient Cost Accountant helps in streamlining the cost structure of an organization. They work on different data sets to perform functional and process-wise cost analysis and prepare a detailed organizational and departmental budget.

• Collect, analyze and maintain detailed cost information and expense record
• Prepare monthly, quarterly and annual budget and cost forecast for overall organization and different departments
• Identify cost discrepancy and recommend solutions to alleviate them

Skills to look for in a great Cost Accountant

Cost Accountants manage historical and present cost information and forecast the cost pattern for the future. Their distinctive ability lies in scrutinizing the cost data, finding a discrepancy and come up with cost-effective solutions by combining and interpreting the data sets. Let’s see which qualifications and skill set are essential to hire these skilled personnel.

• Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and Finance, Masters preferred.
• Advanced knowledge of accounting and data interpretation software and MS Office
• Possess over 6+ years of work experience as Cost Accountant or Cost Analyst
• Thorough understanding of GAAP and other accounting processes
• Excellent problem-solving skills with strong attention to details
• Proven time management skill to deliver a report within scheduled timeline

Writing a Cost Accountant job description

A well-written job description helps to churn out the great candidates out of all applicants. A Cost Accountant job description should have specific job duties with brief role summary and expected skill set for the profile.

Consider including keywords that job seekers are using to search for Cost Accountant jobs, such as:

• Cost Accountant
• Senior Cost Accountant
• Cost Analyst

Interviewing Cost Accountant candidates

To hire a capable candidate for a Cost Accountant position, the interview process should be framed with analytical and knowledge-based questions to gauge the problem-solving skill of the applicants.

• Ensuring profitability by adopting different cost reduction techniques
• Cost analysis using MS-Excel and other financial software
• How they’ve converted different cost data sets into meaningful reports

See our list of interview questions for more examples.