How Executive Search Firms Make HR Look Like the Hero

It’s Friday afternoon and you’re sitting at your desk, planning for next week when you see it. The push notification in the lower right-hand corner of your screen that reveals only the subject of the email and the sender. Resignation. You open the email. The CFO is leaving. You look at your already packed schedule, and think, who knows? Maybe I can squeeze extra hours into my day to recruit. Maybe I can work weekends, or maybe, just maybe, I need help. Let’s discuss the latter and how you, the HR professional, can look like the hero.

Finding the Right Skill Set Takes Time

Look, hiring the right person is not easy! Sure, you can get lucky, post an ad, and hopefully, a good candidate will apply with most of the skill sets for the salary budget you have available, but finding the best person to take over the financial leadership of a company is not that easy. When it comes to accounting and finance, skill sets and industry experience are extremely important and hard to find. Executive search firms are trained in accounting and finance and know how to differentiate candidates based on skill level. Being able to drill down to specific accounting functions and extracting the methodology and processes used, knowing the right questions to ask, and being able to differentiate a good candidate and a great professional takes expertise and a lot of time. These are things the experts know how to do.

Using Specialized Tools for Recruiting Is Essential

Most often than not, the skillset that you are seeking is hiding in the one candidate that is not actively looking for a new position. Actively seeking out candidates is an art form and takes a lot of time. There is a sales pitch aspect that comes with recruiting that you may or may not have! The availability of recruiting tools and resources is costly and most Human Resources departments don’t have these tools available, such as specialized candidate software and advanced search software.

Partnering with Executive Search Firms

It takes a lot of time to seek out the right candidates, get the engagement or buy-in to hear about a new opportunity, and then to screen and interview the candidate. We are switching between multiple hats throughout the day like benefits, worker’s compensation, compliance changes, conflict resolution, and regulatory and compliance changes. How can we fit in recruiting? Executive search firms are very important to the human resources department. Firms handle the searching, screening, interviewing, call-backs, scheduling, reference checking, and on-boarding process for you, which in turn, frees you up to focus on other important functions of the Human Resources department.

Leveraging an Interim CFO or Controller

How is the job getting done in the interim? We know that hiring the right professional takes time. In crucial roles like a CFO position, you don’t want to hire the wrong person, thorough and methodical wins the race. However, in accounting and finance, time is not a luxury companies have. Deadlines like month-end, year-end, and audits can not wait. Interim solutions such as an Interim CFO or Controller can ensure that meeting deadlines, carrying out time-sensitive functions, and running the department are successful during the hiring process. An interim accounting and finance professional has extensive experience quickly acclimating to a new company. With years of experience and industry expertise, they ensure your company stays on target.

Spending Money Wisely

As a Human Resources professional, you have probably run into the budget battle. Most companies want to save money on recruiting and staffing by recruiting internally. That sounds great, but at what cost? Making the wrong hire costs money.

The U.S. Department of Labor claims that a bad hire can cost your company 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings.

That is only the hard costs. The soft costs of hiring the wrong person can be much more expensive for the organization as a whole. If you are a small HR department, it can be a struggle to spend the amount of time recruiting that is needed to find a mediocre candidate, let alone such an important hire for the organization. We do our best! However, if you do hire the wrong person who does not have the right experience, then the time and money spent can quickly add up. Not to mention that you must start all over again, which eats into your budget and most importantly, the accounting department’s time, resources, and morale. Executive search firms offer placement guarantees. So, if you do find yourself starting at square one, the search for a replacement is included in the contract, saving you money and time. Now that is a relief.

Streamlining the Process with an Executive Search Partner

As human resources professionals, we care about company culture, we celebrate high performing teams, and we want the best person in every position to achieve this goal. It’s okay to seek help to realize this outcome. Executive search firms work in the background; pivoting to changes, managing the candidates, leaving you in complete control of the search without having to do the search. It’s okay to take the W (in) and utilizing a search firm to do it.