Having the best Finance Director a business can find represents real value add for any business.  A good FD will help guide a business so its strategy is most likely to succeed.

With an FD, you get to take advantage of their skills and experience to get your business back on track or smash your growth goals. The role of FD or CFO is as much about strategy and planning as it is about monitoring the company’s cash flow.  For any company to implement a new strategy, you need to have someone on your team with the specialist skills and knowledge to access your current systems and implement alternatives.  Bringing an FD on board is a major decision that you want to get right.

Experience brings with it contacts and knowledge that can be invaluable to any business.  Examples include:-

• Turnaround situations – if your FD has worked in businesses that have gone through periods of tough or distressed trading they will be prepared to implement cost reduction programs to ensure the preservation of the business.
• E-Commerce having knowledge of the digital economy is vital these days as more and more companies are moving online, so having experience of online success is a real Unique Selling Point or USP.
• Bi-lingual skills many of our FD’s are fluent in a second language.

Our FD’s can help you in so many ways, here are a few examples:-

Identify which parts of your business make the most profit, including drilling into customer and product so the management team better understand where profits are being made and if necessary to take action to improve under performing areas.

• Establish the businesses cash management systems and improve internal controls to provide working capital needed to expand and grow, the banks are keen to receive accurate models the reflect the generation of a business.Develop management information systems to understand commercial and financial drivers of your business.
• Implement new, improve or replace accounting systems.
• Risk assessment on new ventures, contracts and tenders including due diligence on aquisitions.
• Raising finance to fund growth organically or through acquisition, flotation or MBO or to refinance existing debt at lower rates and or over a longer term.
• Establish or improve credibility with external parties such as banks or PE houses.• Implement new accounting policies, IFRS & overseas accounting procedures.
• Indentify potential aquisition targets.
• Deputise for the MD or CEO.

You want to make sure you’re keeping candidates in the loop throughout the process.Your interviewers will make or break the recruitment process as they’re the first introduction your candidate gets to the company. If the interviewer fails to inspire them, your candidate might decide the position is not worth their time.Lack of information on employment benefits, working hours, and a job description can cause a candidate to become disinterested and look elsewhere for another opportunity.

We offer the full range, including specialists such as bilingual FD’s and E-Commerce experts.  We also have experts in startup funding and private equity fund raising.

Pretty much all of them!

Engineering, Local Government, Information Technology, Health and healthcare, construction, transport and logistics, Oil and Gas, Professional services to name just a few.

Soft skills are increasingly important, being able to persuade sceptical managers and to lead a team to deliver results against a demanding timescale are well respected.

23% of Finance Director candidates drop out during the recruitment process because they find themselves waiting too long to hear back f rom the company. You want to counteract this by streamlining the CV reviewing process and avoiding leaving gaps between the interview process. Some companies are guilty of complicating their recruitment process and adding too many steps, which unnecessarily prolongs the process.Create a faster recruitment process by putting one individual in charge of shortlisting candidates and reference the interview days in their diary.

You want to keep one person at the forefront of the recruitment process to see it through from start to finish. The recruitment process for an Finance Director should be no longer than six weeks, with 2-3 interview stages.The opposite can sometimes be true, and candidates may find that the process is too quick. 7% of candidates drop out because the recruitment process is too fast.

We’ve all heard of candidates who were offered a job at their first interview. While you might think this is efficient, it prevents the candidate from having the opportunity to assess how they feel about the organization in its entirety. If you choose to offer a candidate the position early on, ask them what information they need to be able to make this decision.

Money makes the world go round. Providing a low offer with the position can cause candidates to become disinterested and drop out of the process. Most Finance Director job descriptions don’t show the fixed rate, but instead, promise the lucky candidate a competitive rate. “Competitive” means different things to every person. You want to avoid changing the payment package during the recruitment process and allows the industry to set the perfect price point. If you choose to use a salary banding, you need to be prepared to look at all of it as different candidates will apply for every position.

FD Capital has a free guide to FD and CFO Recruitment, sign up for it at the bottom of our guides page. We also blogged about our newly updated version in June 2021, which you can read about at the following post – Free guide to FD and CFO Recruitment.

Here are FD Capital we are experts in all aspects of FD recruitment, Part-time, Interim and full time roles.   Most of our team are ICAEW members.  If you are recruting a new FD make sure to reach out to our team on 020 3287 9501

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