How do you know if a successful senior finance professional will succeed in your organisation?
22nd June 2011
By Jennifer Price, Executive Search – Finance.
In the highly competitive finance sector, attracting the best and brightest individuals to your organisation can be a challenge. During a recession, when many people are more risk-averse than usual, it can be particularly difficult.
Even when you have identified an individual with a proven track record, things are not always straightforward. Many organisations will have experienced at least one recruitment disaster, where a candidate has been successful in a previous role or organisation, but for whatever reason does not perform in a new role.
The most common cause of this is poor screening – where the recruitment process fails to ensure business goals and strategy are aligned with an individual’s skills, or culture fit is not assessed. It is absolutely essential before interviewing candidates that you have clearly defined what this person needs to achieve for the business and therefore what skills and qualifications the successful candidate will need to offer.
Another cause may be an ineffective on-boarding process once a new person joins an organisation. On-boarding is essential in improving long-term retention, and helps to ensure new employees fully understand the culture of an organisation, and the ways in which their performance will be measured.
Devising appropriate performance-related incentives for new recruits, particularly high-flying recruits, is also important – and increases both engagement and performance.
Hiring the wrong person can have a massive negative impact on a business, not just financially, but also in terms of morale and wider performance. The impact can be felt by the whole team a new candidate was brought in to lead, and will affect the view the rest of the business has of the finance function.
Working with a specialist partner during recruitment can help because a good search firm will ensure they are briefed effectively and understand thoroughly the skills required in a role before screening potential applicants. It’s important that the search firm understands your business goals, both in the short and long term, so that a new candidate not only fits the role today, but will be able to grow with the business and still add value three or five years down the line.
A rocky start? Top Tips for ensuring candidate will be successful
- If things aren’t working out, don’t immediately assume you hired the wrong person. Are there constructive changes and compromises you can make to increase the odds of a good fit?
- Does the person feel under-valued? Could offering a financial or other incentive help?
- Would additional training help the person to deliver success?
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That is all good, but if this happens more than once the employer also needs to consider whether the line manager responsible for the people who haven’t worked out is part of the problem. There may be a problem with bullying behaviour or poor leadership skills which means that good people brought in hate working for them.