EP 017 - CFO Hiring + Comp Demystified with Dan Himple, Senior Finance Recruiter at HAYS

“The value of a great recruiter is all within their network. And then the knowledge and the insights that come with that network.”

“A great recruiter will always specialize in one specific field and not be a generalist.”

“The reason people come to these industries because they want more job enrichment, they want to take on additional roles that enables them to feel like they're having a real impact on the growth of the business and they want to work for a business model or a vision that they're passionate about.”

“The modern CFOs are the CEOs and COOs of the future.”

“Last year, 12-13% of our business came from seed-funded businesses who are starting to bring in their first finance leader.”

“Any startup that are looking to hire a financial leader, the real key is ensuring they're hiring people who know the nuances and the challenge of working in a fast growth startup.”

“The longer that people stay in banking for or even public accounting, the harder it is for them to then make that transition into other industries because they're almost seen as institutionalized or actually you actually get to a salary that it makes it even harder to leave.”

“Those would be the big things for me: fundraising, exit and scaling.” - What are companies looking for in CFOs?

“What a CFO or a finance leader seeking in roles? The key phrase that is always used is a seat at the table.”

“In the last two years, our average timeline from registering a role to filling a VP of Finance or CFO has increased from eight to 10 weeks.”

“When I looked at Q4 of 23 in comparison to Q4 of 22, we'd seen a 22% increase in demand for CFOs or on new job recruits for CFOs. So that demand is definitely starting to return to the market.”

“A great CFO is always an incredible return on investment.”

“If you hire a CFO but they're an individual contributor and 70% of that person's time is spent on general ledger, monthly close and some of the more grunt work, you are never going to get true value-add from that CFO.”

“I would always advise going as broad as you can at the very beginning of your career and start to go narrow as you get to the mid to later stage of your career.”

“The CFOs who enjoy their role the most are the ones that have the best relationship with the founders.”

“The only time to negotiate your salary is at offer stage. It's pretty common that you might not be able to talk about a pay increase for at least a year, usually two years. So you want to ensure that when you're signing that offer, you're getting the very best deal possible. And it's very, very rare that a company will come in at best and sign up at their first offer.” 

“Most resumes in any industry at any level will get glanced at for about 10 seconds.”

“Build out your network and go and work for world-class CFOs.”

“The best CFOs in this market have always worked for the best CFOs.”

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