3: Example - Accounting Consultant
Criteria: Accounting Consultant example
This example covers a role where career trajectory and background quality matter as much as the title itself. Accounting Consultant searches often rely heavily on company type, experience levels, and industry to separate strong profiles from weak ones.
Relevant work experience and seniority
For this role, years of experience is a key signal. Set it under Relevant Work Experience as a must have with a specific range — for example, 3–6 years for a mid-level consultant, or 6–10 years for a senior one.
Think about what stage you want them to be at. A candidate with 2 years of experience at a Big 4 firm may be more relevant than someone with 5 years at a small local practice. Years alone don't tell the full story, so combine experience range with company type to get the right level.
Career trajectory: company type and named companies
For accounting roles, where someone has worked is often more important than what their title says. Use company type and company name criteria to capture the right background.
Company type — Big 4 and large professional services firms is a strong signal for consulting-level work. Set this as a must have with the timing set to ever, since Big 4 experience earlier in a career still carries weight even if the candidate has since moved on.
If you want to cast a slightly wider net, set it to nice to have instead, and use it to push Big 4 profiles to the top without excluding everyone else.
Named companies lets you list specific firms you consider high-quality signals — for example, EY, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, or strong regional equivalents. This is useful when company type alone is too broad and you want to prioritise specific pedigrees.
Use timing carefully here. If you set "currently at Big 4" as a must have, you'll miss the large pool of candidates who trained there and moved into industry or boutique firms, which is a very common trajectory for good accounting consultants.
Industry
Accounting consultants often specialise. Decide early whether you need industry-specific experience or a generalist.
If the role requires deep knowledge of a sector — financial services, real estate, manufacturing — set industry as a must have with now or within the last 2 years so you get candidates who are currently embedded in that space.
If the role is more general, leave industry as a nice to have or skip it entirely. Restricting industry on a consulting role often cuts the pool too aggressively.
Putting it together: an example build
For a mid-level Accounting Consultant with a Big 4 background targeting financial services clients, a solid starting build might look like this:
Must have: Accounting Consultant or similar title, 3–6 years relevant experience, Big 4 company type (ever)
Nice to have: Financial services industry, CPA or equivalent qualification, currently at a consulting or advisory firm
Exclude: Roles that are purely bookkeeping or accounts payable — these titles can appear in candidate histories and dilute the results
Run this, check where results land across full, close, and potential, then adjust. If full match is too small, move Big 4 to nice to have. If results are too broad, tighten the experience range or add industry as a must have.