For companies looking for senior finance candidates, they need to understand what they’re like and how they differ from other candidates. In my experience, senior finance people are quite career-orientated. Every decision that they make is something that they’ve thought about. I think finance people by their very nature are quite analytical and very detail-orientated.
For me as a recruitment consultant, that’s really good because when I’m dealing with someone like that, I’m not really left in any doubt in terms of what they want, what they’re good at, where they will fit and, in a way, that can be easier. However, the search itself can be more difficult because most really good senior finance people are not actively looking on the market or applying to job ads.
They’re probably relatively happy in the job that they’re doing but they might be looking passively. So, it’s about being able to identify those candidates and that’s where it changes a little bit because of your tone of voice, the messaging, the communication is a lot different. You need to be credible, you need to know your stuff, you need to be all over the detail and you need to listen. If you can’t listen to what someone is looking for and where they want to go, then you’re just wasting your time. It’s not just all about the money and it’s not just all about the job.
As a recruiter, if you are given a senior role to work on and you’re relying on putting up an ad on job boards or LinkedIn, you’ve sort of lost already because most of these people are passive and not actively looking. So, it’s about really understanding what the brief is, what the career opportunities are, what the ‘sell’ is. A big part of our job as recruitment professionals is representing our client to the market in the best possible way. You need to know who they are, where they’ve been, where they’re going, ongoing projects and other such details. Once you have that, then you can go and identify candidates.
LinkedIn is a fantastic resource but not everybody is on LinkedIn. We’ve got our own database as well, which is great, but not every finance person is on it. For me personally, I get a lot of candidates through referrals, through the network of people that I know just asking questions. Referrals are often the best candidates to get because people don’t normally recommend someone unless they know they’re pretty good.
It can be a huge amount of work and it can be very time consuming, but that’s a proper search but it doesn’t happen overnight. You really have to nail the messaging when you’re approaching these people because if you don’t get that right at the beginning, you might miss out on someone who, if the messaging was different, they might be perfect for the role.
So, let’s say, I get a role in at the start of January. I would hope to get a shortlist of profiles across to the client within two weeks. Then we’re into the third week in January, so then there would be some first-round interviews. Then ideally, you would do second-round interviews the following week, which is the last week in January.
At that stage, you would hope to have two or three candidates identified for the final stage, which you’d hope to do in the first or second week in February. Already, we’re six weeks down, and hopefully we’ve got an offer, but even at that stage, there could be negotiations and counter offers, so you have to give that another week and we’re nearing the end of February. Then they could potentially be on a three-month notice period. So, best case scenario, the successful candidate hands in their notice at the start of March, and with three months’ notice, it’s June by the time that person is in the job.
A lot of companies don’t think about this and they need to with recruitment, especially senior recruitment because having that person not in the business for that period of time could have a fundamental impact on the business. Understanding what you need, understanding how long it’s going to take, and setting aside the time to make sure it happens is absolutely key and I think so many companies get that wrong.
I think you always have to work backwards. So, what time is the absolute latest time you can get this person into the business without struggling, and work back from that. It’s very easily done, there’s a formula there. But if someone’s on three months’ notice but the person who’s on six months’ notice is better, it’s best to wait for the better person.
In terms of interviewing these candidates, we always offer our services to any client to do their interviews with them. It works really well because it standardises the process and we can help with putting structures in place in terms of competency-based questions, technical questions or psychometric testing if needs be.
A lot of clients like to keep it internal once it gets to the interview stage, but it’s something to consider if a company is using a recruitment agency because it is essentially a free service and we are the experts in this, we interview people every single day. I’ve been doing the role now for 20 years and I was trying to work out how many people I have interviewed and it was well passed 9,000 people.
Looking to hire for a senior role in finance or accounting? Check out our accounting and finance hiring solutions, benchmark all salaries at your company using our 2022 Salary Guides or talk to me by email at garrett.ogorman@recruiters.ie or on the phone at 353 1 632 5028.
Garrett O’Gorman is the principal consultant for accounting and finance recruitment at RECRUITERS.
Coins photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
