(Forbes) Having great talent on your team is one of the best ways to ensure your organization is delivering results and constantly developing to meet your business needs. Depending on the life cycle stage of your business, the skills and mindset needed on your team will be different.
This is especially true for early to mid-stage companies ($5 million to $100 million in revenue). At this stage, it’s more important for your team to have “A” players with flexible skills and a desire to learn rather than highly specialized knowledge about a singular task.
So, how do you attract, select and retain the best talent for your finance dream team?
Be authentic about your employer brand.
People spend roughly one-third of their lives at work. That’s a long time to be somewhere that you may not fit in. It comes as no surprise, then, that among employees who quit their jobs, 20.2% do so due to a bad fit.
If you're an early to mid-stage company, many candidates will likely be unfamiliar with your brand. Thus, it is crucial that you communicate a clear value proposition for potential employees. That’s right: Value propositions aren’t just for customers anymore.
As Jill Larsen, former VP of HR at Cisco, toldLinkedIn, “Talent brands are now held at the employee level–employees past and present create the talent brand. Social media transparency requires talent brands and employee value propositions to be more authentic and connected than ever before.”
Authenticity and transparency are key. Are flexibility and remote work the norm, or does the team spend 12 hour days in the office? Does the company pride itself on collaboration, or is work done largely independently?
Don’t make the mistake of hiding your company’s true culture to attract candidates. This will only increase employee distrust, unhappiness and turnover down the road.
Leverage your networks.
One of the best and most underutilized ways of finding talent is by leveraging your (and your team’s) network. Nobody knows your desired skills and company culture better than you and your team, so communicating that directly to those around you can help you get the best hires.
As a finance leader, you’re probably a member of a few professional organizations and Slack groups and generally connected with others in the field. Use these contacts as a resource, either for direct referrals or job queries that can be passed on.
Referrals save time and allow for a more targeted approach to recruitment. This results in 55% faster hiring, according to findings from HR Technologist. Furthermore, companies with employee referral programs have an average retention rate of 46% compared to 33% for those using only job sites, and 47% of employees hired via referrals are still at the company after three years, compared to 14% hired via job sites. Current employees who refer colleagues are also more likely to remain at the company.
Clearly state your desired skills.
The high growth associated with early to mid-stage companies means that roles are constantly evolving, which can make hiring especially challenging. Thus, it is critical that you understand not only what kind of skills you need today, but also what you will need in the next year.
Writing a clear and straightforward job description that highlights key milestones the new hire should hit in the next year will force the hiring manager to think through the role. And, of course, the document will help job seekers understand how they will fit into the larger finance team.
With constant change comes a lot of unknowns, so there may be some white space for the new hire to carve out depending on how things go down the line. You’ll want people with a well-rounded skill set who can — and want to — take on new projects and roles as the need arises.
Imagine you’re hiring an accounting manager to manage a small team of accountants. It may be pretty straightforward now, but you’re planning to transition from QuickBooks to a full-fledged ERP system in a few months. Thus, skills in accounting, people management and project management are all must-haves.
Your business likely doesn’t have processes in place like a Fortune 500 company would, so you need people with proactive ideas, flexible attitudes and the desire to design new practices. Exploring these qualities during the interview stage will help determine a potential candidate’s growth mentality.
Think outside the box.
People with nontraditional experience can bring fresh perspectives and tackle challenges in unexpected ways.
When hiring an accounts receivable accountant, for example, I look for someone who has strong phone communication skills, can find people’s emails and is comfortable negotiating with Fortune 500 companies to get paid — very similar to an SDR profile.
On a similar note, I once hired, as an FP&A Manager, a former investment banker who had taken two years off to open a coffee shop. He had the core finance expertise necessary for the job, and his path suggested that he had a strong entrepreneurial spirit and would be willing to take risks.
Leveraging innovative compensation models can be another point of differentiation. Inefficient operational processes can sometimes make it a herculean task to close the books quickly, so it might make sense to offer an immediate cash bonus (SPIFF) to team members if they get the job done within 10 days, for example. You can also add more variable compensation to your finance team with company and individual targets.
Communicating these models to prospective employees can help recruit driven individuals who might respond well to goal-based compensation.
You know what you have to do. Now go hire your finance dream team.
