Hire the accountant who fits.

Prime People · Est. 2008 · North Sydney

Prime People places accounting and finance professionals with employers across Sydney and regional New South Wales, through executive search, qualified interim and permanent placement. We started in 2008 as the recruitment arm of the Prime Partners group, which means the first clients we ever had to satisfy were accounting firms hiring for themselves. That is a demanding audience, and it shaped how we work.

Why a recruiter inside an accounting group works differently

Most agencies recruit accountants without ever having done the job or managed someone who does. We sit inside a group of firms that hire accountants continuously, so we watch the hiring decision from the other side of the desk every week. When a partner rejects a shortlisted candidate, we hear the actual reason, not the polite version.

That feedback loop is why our briefs get sharper over time.

It also changes what we can tell you. We know what a senior accountant in North Sydney is currently accepting, because we are in those negotiations. We know which technical exposure is genuinely scarce, SMSF depth, complex tax, consolidations, and which is easier to find than employers assume. We publish what we can in the 2026 salary guide, and the rest we will tell you on a call.

Direct mandates, and no ghost jobs

Every role on our board is briefed to us directly by the hiring firm, and roles from the group firms are aggregated live from each firm's own vacancy feed at the moment you load the page. Nothing is reposted from elsewhere, nothing sits there after it is filled, and we don't advertise fictional roles to harvest CVs.

That discipline matters to employers for a practical reason: candidates notice. A market where the good people have learned to distrust job ads is a market where the good people stop applying to them. Because our board only carries real, current mandates, the applications that come through it are from people who trust what they are looking at.

Three service lines

Executive search

C-suite and senior leadership mandates handled with absolute discretion and rigorous methodology. This is the right approach when the appointment is consequential, when the strongest candidates are not looking, or when the reason for the search is sensitive and cannot be advertised.

Qualified interim

Rapid deployment of CA and CPA qualified contractors for project-critical needs and transformation. Interim is the sharper instrument when the need has a defined shape: a systems implementation, cover for a sudden departure, or getting the numbers ready for diligence. Our guide to hiring an interim CFO in Sydney covers when interim beats permanent, how engagements are structured, and what a good interim does in week one.

Permanent placement

Intermediate to manager-level appointments across public practice, advisory and corporate services. This is the volume of what we do, and where getting the brief right does most of the work. If you are weighing up whether to hire at all, hiring an accountant in Sydney walks through hire versus outsource, what good people cost, how our search runs and how long it takes.

Six practice areas

We recruit exclusively in accounting, finance and professional services. Within that, the work concentrates in six areas:

• Business services and tax. Senior Accountant, Business Advisory, Tax Manager, Intermediate Accountant, Financial Accountant.
• SMSF and superannuation. SMSF Specialist, Fund Administration, Superannuation Compliance, BGL and Class environments.
• CFO and finance leadership. Virtual CFO, Finance Director, Management Accountant, Finance Business Partner, outsourced finance functions.
• Governance and compliance. Professional Director, Company Secretary, ASIC Compliance, Risk and Corporations Act specialists.
• Corporate and client services. Corporate Services Manager, Client Services Manager, Practice Administration and operations.
• Specialist sectors. Creative industries and screen production, cross-border and foreign-owned entities, regional NSW practices.

A specialist recruiter reads a CV differently to a generalist. The difference between someone who has run an SMSF portfolio and someone who has touched a few funds is not visible in the job titles, and it is the difference between a hire that works and one that does not.

Where we recruit

North Sydney is our base and the bulk of our placements. We also recruit into Orange in regional New South Wales and on the Gold Coast. Regional briefs are their own discipline: the candidate pool is smaller, the pitch has to be genuine about what the location offers, and relocation candidates need a real reason to move. We would rather tell you a regional brief will take longer than pretend otherwise and disappoint you at week six.

Briefing us on a role

Start with the situation rather than the job title. The most useful first conversation covers what the work actually is day to day, who the person reports to, what is genuinely non-negotiable versus merely preferred, and what happens if the seat stays empty. A brief built that way lets us screen hard, which is the only way a short shortlist is worth having.

We'll also tell you when we think you are asking for the wrong thing: a permanent hire where interim is the better answer, a salary band that will not clear the market, or a specification so narrow that the search will stall. That is more useful to you than agreement.

What it costs

We charge a fixed fee, agreed before the search starts. Not a percentage of the salary.

That distinction does more work than it looks like it does. On a percentage model the fee climbs with the package, which means the agency earns most from the decision you are least certain about. It's a small conflict and most of the time nobody remarks on it, but it sits there in every conversation about the top of the band. We'd rather it wasn't in the room.

Candidates are never charged anything, at any stage.