When you need a Head of Finance
In our experience, a Head of Finance owns the whole function: control, reporting, budget and cash, and often payroll and systems. They usually report to the CEO or MD, sometimes to a group CFO, and lead a small team that is often all of finance. It is the right hire when there is no Finance Director and one person needs to run finance end to end.
If you already own the forecast and the board pack yourself, a Financial Controller may be the better fit. If the role must represent the business to investors, lenders and the board, look at a Finance Director.
Be clear about the shape of the role
Is there a team to lead, or will they do the work themselves? Full time from day one, or a smaller number of hours to start? A hands-on role and a leadership role attract different people, and both are easy to find once the brief says which. The free finance team structure guide shows which seat each stage of a business needs, and what each stage costs.
How we run the search
Every search is run by a director, retained or contingent as agreed with you. We take the brief properly and check the package against the live Finance Pay Index, headhunt directly, present a shortlist of usually six to eight with our written view on each, handle the offer and the counter-offer risk, and check in through the first 90 days. Across 149 of our placements, the median time from the first CV we sent to an offer was 19 days. More on how a Harper May search works.