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In today’s cut-throat competitive marketplace, you can’t take a long time to find the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) your business needs. Whether you need a CFO to lead a tech transformation, guide you through an IPO, manage financial risks better, ensure compliance with local and global regulations (depending on what your business priorities are), or help you nurture and strengthen relationships across stakeholders, finding the right person fast has become crucial. And that’s where a premier CFO executive search firm in Norway can help.
Before you start looking for CFO executive search firms in Norway, it pays to get clarity about why you need a CFO. Since the position is a critical hire for your business, you need to know what traits and work experiences you are looking for and how you want the professional to support your company’s growth.
For instance, if your company is planning to invest in capital-intensive projects, a CFO will help mitigate the business’s financial risk with proper risk assessment and the right financial planning. As capital-intensive projects come with significant financial risks, the last thing you want is to overlook some factors that could have a negative impact on your business profitability. When you have an experienced CFO working for your company, you can proceed with your plans in a much more financially secure manner.
If you are still on the fence about whether hiring the best executive search firms for CFO recruitment in Norway is worth your money, here’s how the professionals on board such a company can help.
1. Finding a CFO to Drive Business Transformation and Sustainability
Once, the CFO’s role was primarily related to handling financial and relevant technical functions. But with time, the position has evolved into a multifaceted role that puts a CFO at the forefront of a company. By blending their deep-dive financial insights with leadership qualities, modern CFOs have become responsible for driving key corporate initiatives, such as business transformation and sustainability.
A global survey conducted by Workday of 1,150 senior business executives identified the top roadblocks that stop businesses from accomplishing their digital transformation goals, including business agility. These roadblocks are:
- Workforce skills (38%)
- Cultural barriers like transparency, trust, and engagement (35%)
Among CFOs, these figures jump to
- 46% (workforce skills as a barrier)
- 56% (cultural barrier)
The survey found CFOs possessing a strong awareness of organisational culture and ready to effect change. Technology was rated as the most vital element by 24% of finance leaders, who said technology that facilitates data integration between different systems and breaks down in-house data silos is required for quick planning, execution, and analysis. According to 21%, technology that unites people as well as financial and operational data is the most crucial element.
All these figures and insights indicate that in today’s fast-changing macroeconomic setting, CFOs should prioritise business transformation, agility, and reinvention. This will help them lead the company through challenges, outwit the competition, and emerge stronger on the other side.
Sustainability is an equally significant goal to achieve as climate change intensifies and companies are taking initiatives to contribute to the cause. From speeding up their transition to renewable energy, focusing on climate action in their investments, and bringing down their carbon footprints to developing zero-waste products, a lot is being planned as part of a company’s business strategy. But all these sustainability goals are meaningful only if they can be assessed.
That’s where the CFOs can play a critical and assessable role in implementing their company’s sustainability initiatives. Since these professionals are the custodians of corporate investments that run into trillions of dollars, they are uniquely placed to restyle the future of corporate finance as a catalyst for value creation, growth, and social impact.
If you are looking for agile CFOs who prioritize in line with the changing business and climate scenario and rethink what can be achieved in terms of technology and processes, joining hands with Norway’s top CFO executive search firms can help. By leveraging their extensive talent pool and professional network, these firms will help find and recruit CFOs who can drive your business transformation and sustainability plans.
2. Developing a Talent Management Strategy
Did you know one of the biggest challenges for CFOs is people? CFOs don’t work alone. They need people like finance directors, data analysts, and perhaps even freelancers, contractors, and gig workers to fill the gaps in the finance team and provide them with the necessary data and insights. Based on this information, CFOs can make the transition from being mere “gatekeepers” to becoming “facilitators.”
When you hire a leading CFO executive search firm in Norway, you not only improve your chances of hiring the top talent for the position of CFO but even other people who will support the CFO perform the designated role well.
Hiring C-level candidates in Norway like CFOs becomes much easier and faster when you have a headhunter with globally connected teams having access to the top talent. Additionally, experienced and competent headhunters combine their unmatched and extensive relationships with the most recent technologies, proprietary data tools, and consulting services to focus on areas like CFO succession and team acceleration.
With a proven ability to find, evaluate, develop, hire, and retain talent capable of leading from the very top, experienced headhunters can populate your talent pipeline so when a key player decides to leave (which could be the CFO or people who report to the person like the finance director, a data analyst, an independent contractor, etc.), you can quickly fill the position with a suitable professional.
When you work with one of the leading global executive recruiters with a solid presence in Norway like InHunt World, you also get to benefit from the support on offer to create a talent platform that keeps your talent pipeline full for quick hires if the need arises. You can even drive the talent density deeper into the company so it becomes capable of producing an increasing number of leaders who can take up new leadership roles, as the company needs them to step up.
This can be extremely important, especially if you have a fast-growing company. That’s because as your company scales, the existing leaders won’t just need better leadership capabilities but also the ability to create more leadership capacity. Not sure what that means?
It means your company will require more and more leaders to undertake bigger and bigger roles. And that’s where a strong headhunting partner in Norway can come to your aid.
3. Saving Time and Money with a Reduced Hiring Risk
Though CFOs are in high demand, hiring them is a time-consuming process. When looking for a CFO, your company – like many others, won’t necessarily be posting the vacancy on job boards’ CFO listings. Instead, it’s likely to turn toward top CFO executive search firms in Norway to help it identify prospective candidates.
Even your company stakeholders can suggest candidates for consideration. No matter where the candidates come from, you will still need to go through the same vetting process as to whether these people are the right finalists for the CFO’s role. By working with competent CFO executive recruiters, you can save precious time as the specialists will handle the entire recruitment process from start to finish.
From identifying the most suitable candidates, screening and short-listing them, and conducting initial interviews to negotiating salary and benefits on your behalf and vetting the credentials of the candidates, they can do a great deal. This will help save your company’s HR department a significant amount of time.
Since a CFO executive recruitment company also has competent negotiators on board, these experts can ensure you get the best deal possible, thus saving you precious money. Beyond the qualification and experience of prospective candidates, evaluating and scrutinizing them to determine if they would be a culture fit for your company is equally crucial.
A potential candidate’s work style, personality, and values should align with your company’s culture. Here again, a CFO executive search company can come to your aid by presenting you with candidates who not only have the right experience and qualifications but also fit in with your company’s culture.
Unlike 45 days, which many say is the typical time to hire a CFO, you are likely to be introduced to the right talent within a week to a fortnight when working with an executive search firm. Since each of these prospective candidates is evaluated and vetted on multiple parameters to ensure they are a good fit, it brings down the risk of them leaving or your company asking them to leave just because they fail to handle the role for which they were hired.
For your company, hiring a CFO is a significant investment. Hiring the wrong person could be costly and damaging to your business reputation. A competent CFO executive search firm can reduce the risk of making the wrong hiring decision.
4. Getting Access to a Wider Talent Pool
If your company plans to get access to a broader and more qualified talent pool, bringing onboard one of the best executive search firms for CFO recruitment will be a wise decision. Such firms have access to a wider pool of candidates, both local and global, thanks to their extensive network of contacts. As a result, they can spot potential candidates quickly, including those who may not be actively looking for a job change.
Top CFO executive search firms also know how to refine their search on job boards, social media, and other platforms to locate and attract the best-suited candidates.
With a wider talent pool, the chance of finding the right candidate for the post of CFO gets a boost. If you want to pick and choose the right candidate without being limited by geographical borders, joining hands with global headhunters with a presence in Norway is the ideal way to move forward. By fully leveraging their deep expertise across industries and functions, they will help accelerate your search and let you recruit the most suitable candidates to take your business to the next level.
5. Ensuring Complete Confidentiality
Whether your company plans to hire for a position that has been left vacant due to the resignation of the previous CFO or wants to find a replacement, confidentiality, and discretion are critical. To begin with, secrecy is essential to safeguard your business in the marketplace. That’s because if your competitors learn you are dissatisfied with your present CFO or are struggling to find one for the vacant post, they could try using the knowledge to their benefit and even probe further to find weaknesses they can exploit.
Not finding a suitable candidate for months could even make the rumour mills work overtime to suggest your business is mired in all sorts of troubles and controversies due to its inability to fill the vacant post. This can drive top-tier candidates away as they may no longer want to apply or join even when approached with the job offer.
Confidentiality is also necessary to ensure the present CFO doesn’t learn about your recruitment efforts and becomes disengaged. Knowing that he or she is about to get replaced could even encourage the CFO to try influencing the recruitment process to strengthen their personal legacy or make the going tough for their replacement by poisoning the environment.
Though keeping an executive search covert is an extremely tough task, you can rely on CFO executive recruiters to do it. The level of confidentiality is especially essential when you are recruiting from competitors or poaching other companies in the same industry to entice the top talent to switch sides and come join your company.
By working with a competent CFO search firm in Norway, you can also ensure other effective steps are taken. These may include using bulletproof NDAs, not using the company specifics during the early stages of the recruitment, and restricting the size of the search committee so not more than 3 to 4 people inside the company are aware of and involved in the CFO selection process.
Final Words
Now that you know how the best executive search firms for CFO recruitment can speed up the entire process while keeping it streamlined and confidential, it pays to let the experts do the job. The money you spend on CFO executive recruitment will bring a much higher return by helping you hire the best-suited person for the role.
When you need to hire a CFO the next time, don’t forget to engage a CFO search firm for the job. And if you have any questions regarding the process and want to know details of how specialists can help you find suitable candidates, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
This article was written by Sonali