Skills Testing as a Secret Weapon for Hiring & Retention | MOVE Like This with Ashley Kostos

What if your next great hire isn't the one with the most impressive resume — but the one who actually scores highest on the job? Ashley Kostos, Sales Manager at Accountests, joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to explore how data-driven skills assessments help accounting firms hire smarter, develop talent faster, and remove bias from promotion decisions.

Ashley shares how assessments built specifically for the accounting profession go beyond the interview to measure real-world technical skills, software fluency, and personality traits like ethics and resilience — and how firms are using that data not just to screen candidates, but to build meaningful career paths.

In this episode:

• Why resumes and interviews aren't enough to assess true readiness
• How skills testing reduces bias in hiring and promotion
• Using assessment results to build tailored onboarding and development plans
• The Pathway to Partnership report — benchmarking employees against leadership traits
• Why re-testing every few years leads to stronger, more resilient teams

If your firm is losing people and not sure why — or hiring on gut instinct and hoping for the best — this episode will change how you think about talent decisions.

MOVE Like This is the podcast for accounting firm leaders building more equitable, competitive, and people-first firms.

Learn more about the Accounting MOVE Project: https://accountingmoveproject.com

#AccountingLeadership #CPA #PublicAccounting #TalentStrategy #WomenInAccounting #AccountingMOVEProject #HiringBestPractices #AccountingFirms