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Brian, can you provide a brief overview of your career prior to Barden?
Before Barden, I completed my training contract with Deloitte’s FS audit department. After 3 years with Deloitte, I moved to Melbourne for 2 years on a working holiday visa. During that time, I worked as a Financial Accountant across the telecoms, logistics, and construction industries. I gained exposure to typical financial reporting responsibilities, systems implementations, and more in large multinational and SME environments.
How has your background in finance helped you in your role at Barden?
I feel it helps me relate to the people I’m working with, especially the newly qualified accountants. I’ve been in their shoes before, the challenges of making the first career move after qualifying, being unsure of what to do next and knowing how confusing the whole process can be. From a client perspective, it gives me a better understanding of what roles entail from a technical perspective, what experience and personality types our clients really need. These conversations are a lot easier to conduct when I have worked in this space.
Due to the working holiday visa requirements, my time in Australia was a great crash course in dealing with recruiters, interviews, interview processes, and working in the industry, all from the perspective of a recently qualified accountant. This has really helped me empathise with what the people I work with are going through.
What does it mean for the Barden business to have a Partner focused solely on Recently Qualified Finance & Accounting appointments?
Traditionally, this has been one of the busiest areas within Barden, and it is where the business really grew in its early days. Having a Partner who is directly responsible for the success of this space makes sense, as it is a key juncture for newly qualified accountants and lays the foundation from which they can launch their careers.
We have long-standing partnerships with both Chartered Accountants Ireland and the Chartered Accountants Student Society of Ireland (CASSI) which I’m looking forward to continuing into the future. Working closely with CASSI allows us to foster relationships with early-career accountants at a pivotal stage and offer bespoke talent advisory and guidance to them.
What are you hoping to achieve in your new role? What excites you the most?
At Barden, we are always trying to reinvent the recruitment profession, find new ways to help people and to better address the talent needs of our clients. I’m really excited to continue this process with a specific focus on building longer-term connections and embedded partnerships with the businesses and talent we work with.
We would like to reshape how recruitment is perceived, double down on the longer-term relationships, and the advisory and transparent nature of our approach.
I have been with Barden for over 6 years now, and we have such a strong team in place within the Recently Qualified space and across the business. I’m looking forward to seeing how we continue to grow and evolve both as individuals and together as a business.
Connect with Brian on LinkedIn>>> or at brian.oconnor@barden.ie