How relevant is your location for Financial Recruitment?
Having worked in Financial Search for over 20 years, I have learned that each instruction from a client is unique in some way, but does tend to follow some familiar parameters. One clearly works with the client to understand the requirements concerning skills, qualifications and team fit, as well as the more practical requirements, such as salary expectations and location, or the ability to re-locate.
I have spoken to many clients during the current pandemic, who in the main, seem to have been pleasantly surprised and impressed by their workforce (in this case Finance departments) to adapt to the challenges of working from home. There have been discussions around, as to whether we now need the full office compliment in 5 days a week, could a smaller site suffice, where hot-desking would be the long-term norm.
These exchanges started me thinking about the implications surrounding the recruitment of Finance staff. In my experience each Search process, undeniably has some aspect of compromise. When working with a client we set out to determine an ideal candidate in terms of skills and personality and sometimes the perfect person is indeed successfully recruited. However, often, other constraints come into play, for instance, location, salary range, candidates desire to move, and therefore a compromise has to be made to recruit someone who “can do” the job, rather than the perfect fit.
I had a conversation with a particular client, who is still recruiting individuals during the current lock-down, by means of video conferencing, shipping computer equipment, and on-boarding remotely. In this instance the successful candidates will join the team in the London office once the situation permits, but nevertheless in the meantime their current geographic location is irrelevant to them joining the business and doing their job.
Does this create an opportunity? Does this mean that it is possible to increase the pool of candidates significantly when conducting a search for a given CFO or Finance team. If remote teams are working well, should one focus purely on the best skill-set fit for certain searches and draw from a pool of people around the country rather than a specific region or those with flexibility to re locate. Now, I would agree, there definitely needs to be some face to face contact from a teamwork perspective, but could this be limited to a certain number of days a month and still be effective? Do Finance leaders have the confidence to remote manage people, if they believe they are the “best fit” for a given role? What are your experiences of recruiting and managing Finance teams in the current climate? And do you have any plans to change your process after the current lock-down?