289. CFO 4.0 Revisited | Top Tips on Finding and Getting your Perfect FD/CFO Role with Andrew MacAskill

0:00Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly, moving from cost controller to strategic visionary. And with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition to win at work, drive your career forwards and lead with confidence. Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

0:48so hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0 my name is Hannah Munro your host for today and with me today is Andy Baskill and founder of the executive career jump so Andy tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up doing what you're doing all right well firstly thank you very much for having me so I guess very briefly you could break my background down into three sections. So I actually cut my teeth in the finance world. So it feels good to be back in the finance ecosystem with me today and dusting off my abacus. So I started off in the finance world because that's what my mum wanted me to do.

1:25So I went and acted as an accountant for a few years. I then had a period of time where I was working in executive search and running recruitment companies and things. And then the most recent part of my experience is I'm the founder of a business, as you said, called Executive Career Jump. So I'm a career a coach, a job search coach and run a digital platform that helps people work out what they want from their careers and how to get it. So that's what we've been up to. Fabulous. And you mentioned the abacus. So for those finance directors out there that have moved past the abacus and are looking to future-proof their careers, what advice can you give them, especially at the moment when things are a little bit crazy out there?

2:02Yeah, well, they really are crazy. So I think in terms of the future-proofing piece, We've got to get finance as forward-facing as possible rather than as backward-facing as possible. So I think what we're seeing from a demand point of view are boards that are looking for their finance directors to really help bring clarity to not only the current position, but what the short-to-medium-term roadmap could look like. So the future-proofing for me is going to be about being a conduit to taking businesses forward rather than reporting on what's already happened. and it's also i think finance has got a really uh key role to play and fds need to be thinking about well how can i build more agility into what i'm doing um so whereas the old kind of stewardship of companies was very much about certainty and process and you know building that kind of incremental change change is the new bau now right so we're into you know building financial elasticity we're building agility we're we're making sure that we can be opportunist you know we need opportunist fds that's where we need to go and people who on one side are really comfortable with tech and digitally focused and totally get the importance of a good stack but equally over index on an eq and can get into the hearts and minds of their people and their stakeholders so yeah we don't need much we should be fine and a financial genius plus incredible leadership is what we're after right yeah no not too much to ask at all i wouldn't have thought i mean if they listen to this podcast uh over the last few episodes they'll be well set won't they job done absolutely all you need to do is listen to a few episodes and you're sorted exactly so so obviously you're speaking to both sides aren't you you're dealing with both the the the individuals that are out there searching and those that are you know looking as well because i think this is a two-way street so what advice would you give to somebody that's looking for the right role for them what what sort of um pointers can you give them well the thing yeah so the thing that amazes me about senior people when they're on the job market is how passive they tend to go so people what people need to do is use their business skills on their search you can't it's so noisy out there it's pretty competitive you can't just sit back and hope um that head hunters or a job advert is going to solve it for you so my advice to your audience if they're going through transition is run it like a project like actually set your day up with a multi-channel approach have certain activities going on at different times and use your business skills on your own job search don't be passive that's that's the biggest tip i would have for people so so what you mean i think it's being more proactive rather than waiting somebody for somebody to reach out is actually go out there and find the right role yeah absolutely have to yeah you you really really have to um uh for example you know your chances of landing an interview from a job application to a job ad right now is less than one percent so it's it's totally feasible that you could send a hundred job applications over you know a month and not get a single interview so you've got to be doing more than that you've you've absolutely yeah personal branding activities, finding ways to add value to your network and pay into the ecosystem that way, getting comfortable being uncomfortable on things like LinkedIn and getting into the content world and appearing on podcasts and things like this to help elevate your personal brand.

5:33That's the game. That's what people need to be doing. Absolutely. And I know we've got potentially a podcast coming up on personal brands. So for all of you out there that don't don't know what personal brand is and perhaps how to talk about it that's definitely something we are going to cover because because it's coming more and more important so so how do they find that because it's not just about the rights you know a role is it it's about finding the right role for an individual so is there any advice that you could give those out there looking for how they find the right organization for them well I certainly think where people maybe get misunderstood on all of this is people tend to focus way too much on package and product and nowhere near enough on the actual culture and the leadership team in particular so we always say pick a leader not a job okay if you pick the right leader you can pretty much get around whatever business problems there are because you've got that chemistry trust and that good fit in place.

6:33But people tend to join businesses and then ultimately leave their boss. So my number one tip is to get a really clear idea of what type of MD or director gets the best out of you. And then to go to market with that profile in mind rather than getting too hepped up on brand or too hepped up on product or whatever it might be. Like go and find yourself somebody that's gonna work well with you and empower you. because that's the number one indicator of job fulfillment and success is that relationship between the FD and their direct boss. And I think there's not enough talked about that, is there, in terms of how do you build a great relationship there?

7:17And I guess a lot of it comes from starting with the right person in the first place. You know, do you guys get on? Yeah. Well, interviewing is a two-way process, isn't it? Well, it should be. how much how you know whether it is or not is is a different question but absolutely it definitely should be and is there any particular yeah particular questions or particular things that people should ask during that process well in order to assess whether or not it's the right person for them yeah so my preference and this works really well for cfo fd type world is to try and have some kind of working session okay so rather than this kind of we both sit opposite each other and i kind of over egg my experience and you kind of over egg the opportunity and maybe at the end of it we decide to work together and and and that kind of status quote that paradigm that high at senior high has happened at the moment way better would be to say do you know what i'll sign an nda right good now that's out now that's out of the way let's get on the whiteboard mr md mrs ceo whoever you're interviewing with and let's put your biggest challenge what's keeping you awake at night right now up on the board and let's work on that problem together for the next 30 minutes and you'll get so much more from that because you'll really get a feel for how each other interacts whether you get whether the chemistry is good whether you're able to actually add value to what they're trying to do and solve the problem and if you're thinking in similar ways and you'll be able to test some of the stuff that you know because people talk about you know particularly when they're hiring fds and cfos they talk about that they've got an appetite for transformation at interview but then when you get in there sometimes the appetite might not be the same as what they showed at interview right if you get into more right yeah i'm sure you see this all the time it is so true yeah yeah whereas if you get into more working sessions it's far more indicative of an insightful and particularly you can put other people in the room because you can also watch how your boss to be interacts with those others and also how those others interact with them and that will give you a real clue because even if they're putting on all the airs and graces for you um you'll be able to pick up some of that energy in the room and get a feel for the real culture rather than the values that are painted on the wall right yeah yeah because the two don't always mesh and you're really right that it's the it's the leader that re of that organization and your direct superior that's the one that actually defines it and you know you do hear stories of where those relationships brilliant both brilliant people brilliant cfo brilliant ceo they're just not well matched um and i have to say there is something in that isn't there you know and i think in our previous conversations we talked about marriage counseling for ceos yeah such a great concept yeah well i think yeah i think that'd be an amazing episode as i said to you before at some point if you could get a ceo and a cfo on here and you could do the marriage counseling bit and set up a safe environment and get them get them into a fully online but very safe environment apart from the fact hundreds of people are going to download it and listen to it in the gym tomorrow but yeah exactly yeah absolutely why not yeah so so yeah it is super important and it's you it's not about capability it it's about chemistry and there's no you know Everybody has the right counterweight.

10:40And actually, a little bit of tension, a little bit of diversity of thought is really important. We don't want to get into mini-me's. Part of the diversity problem we have in boardrooms is the fact that people hire people like them. So it's not about hiring people like you, but it's about hiring people that get the best out of each other to solve problems. That's where it needs to go. Absolutely. and I think that's a really key point is you know they're saying you know marriage opposite attracts or the same thing can happen in a CFO don't necessarily look for you need somebody you you can you can talk to and you can communicate well with but actually it doesn't necessarily have to be the same personality type either because sometimes the opposite is incredibly useful yeah as long as you cross on sorry as long as you cross over on values I was gonna say as long as you cross over on values and thought process, then you'll be okay.

11:36So we talked a lot about obviously the trends at the moment. So are you seeing any other trends in terms of types of FDs that are coming through or different types of roles that FDs are transitioning into? Yeah, well, certainly, you know, FP &A has been the big thing over the last 10 years, I would say, a much greater focus on insight led more commercial finance seems to be uh have been the order of the day but obviously there are there are elements of that which can be replaced by some tech and so i think what we that's where we've that's what we've seen but i think where we're going as i said earlier is into people who can you know operate at the convergence of people in technology like that's that's what it's going to be all right and that agility you know there's this word which i don't know if you've come across in your work enough that the entrepreneurs so they're kind of entrepreneurial but they work in an organization that's that's where we're going have you come across that word or is that i see what i i always talk about entrepreneurial thinkers and you know people that think in an entrepreneurial way but that's a really you know that haven't heard that phrase before that's a great way to describe it yeah yeah so entrepreneurial fds i think that's where it's going to go i mean what are you seeing with your clients what's your take on where the industries go do you know what i find really interesting is people are recognizing the value of finance i think a lot more and particularly we always see it when we hit you know recession recessions are very strong where but we hit financial challenging financial circumstances is that actually much more focus comes onto finance.

13:15And what we're seeing is a shift maybe in the types of role because even those smaller businesses are wanting more experienced input from finance directors. They don't necessarily want somebody full-time. They can't afford them, quite frankly. But what we're seeing is even when we're implementing transformation projects, we'll have, and it's great because you get loads of experience for one or two days a week. So we're seeing a shift in the types of roles and the types of FDs that we're speaking to. It's not just necessarily people in a role full-time. We are actually seeing a shift in, you know, part-time FDs and things like that as well.

13:52Yeah, great. And I think when we first spoke, I mentioned we've helped a couple of people set up on-demand FD type offerings that are proving really popular, particularly with SMEs who maybe don't need a full-time CFO, but want to access that strategic advice, that cash advice um i guess the other big shift as well has been the whole the tech element not just in using the tech but the way that's brought a cultural change to finance so um you know the thing about tech companies particularly in scale up is they're not about profit they're not about ebit and like and so that in terms of traditional finance which is very ebit orientated you know These tech companies, they're trying to spend the money as quickly as possible.

14:39It's all about you don't want to hold cash. You want to get the cash moving and you want to get the cash into revenue generating assets like products, territories, people. And so the EBIT number has gone from being the most important number that's reported every year to the new tech world where it's like, if you sat on cash, you're failing. so again we need this new kind of like braver fd mindset this entrepreneurial thing again of fds that help spend money rather than increase the bank balance like that's a total you know pivot isn't it in terms of the fundamentals yeah prudence was what the first thing i was taught when i was training right prudence that's what finance is wow yeah there's still some prudence in there for sure in terms of reporting but you've also got to go you've got to be quite you know risk averse it's not really going to fly you've got to go and uh play some bets and back yourself and leverage the data and and push it forward and i think that's really interesting because certainly i think there's a different kind of cfo that is in a startup versus one that's in a you know a well-established concern because they have to be um in terms of the skill sets and i I think, like you say, the mindset that's needed.

15:55I was having a really interesting discussion with somebody about, you know, is it the CFS job to say no to things? And I was like, not at all. Like at the point they're saying no, it's way too late. They should have been involved at the beginning of the conversation. And I think that's a massive shout out for those that are looking to go into new organizations is, well, it's not just about your CEO, it's about the rest of the leadership team. because if you're going to be their barrier and their gate, then that's always going to be quite a negative relationship. Whereas actually, if you've got a team that you can integrate with and have those conversations at an earlier stage, you then become that enabler rather than the barrier that they're always trying to get round or over, depending on what it is that you're trying to deliver.

16:40Amazing point. Yeah, it's a whole cultural shift away from the finance police. Yeah, that's it, isn't it? control yeah control without being controlling as it were so there's a blog in there somewhere which is oh yeah absolutely i think that's a whole nother podcast to be really honest so so what sort of trends are you seeing at the moment in the current job market with with the clients that you're speaking to it at least yeah well the trouble with the the senior job market is very quiet so what's happening is that the majority of cfos and board level people in general simply aren't moving they're not leaving the jobs they're in and i and i kind of totally get that to some extent because you know a lot of people want to help their team through this current crisis and also it probably feels quite risky to people to be moving jobs but the knock-on effect of that where that is providing a bit of a challenge is that when they're not getting the kind of normal merry-go-round of you know cfos leaving one business to go to another and then somebody going to fill that gap and then you know then bringing their own flavor to the department and the transformation that follows and engaging with new vendors hiring new people bringing in consultants you know the ecosystem is just a little bit crystallized in time at the moment so what we're therefore seeing as a result is more and more people turning to interim opportunities consulting opportunities or even setting up on their own like we mentioned the on-demand thing earlier but there's been a load of these kind of um situations whereby um you know people are just deciding well if I can't find the work that I want then I'll go and create it and they're doing their own thing yeah but that's exciting isn't it because one of the things I love about my job is I get to work with lots of different businesses and help them through the exciting part of the journey and then they get to go away and do their bit that they find really exciting which isn't normally the technology but that's that's my bag so um you know what kind of benefits are there to that that sort of role what doing your own thing yeah you know because i guess it's a balance isn't it between having the stability and you know consistency of working with one organization and just focusing all your attention on it versus perhaps something that's a a bit more challenging a bit more ad hoc yeah so the uh the pros and cons so the pros are definitely variation the pros is definitely um that you're answerable to yourself and um a lot of people get worn down by politics over the the period of their career right and the great thing about you know working for yourself and and being empowered in that way is that you you no longer have to be political you can go into organizations and be very objective some of the challenges are it can be a bit feast and famine so you can kind of go and win some stuff deliver it and then ah now i haven't got anything and i need to go and win some more stuff again and so you can get this kind of peak and trough thing going on and also i think one of the downsides and certainly how i feel i mean which there's just me and a couple of other people involved in executive career jump at the moment um and what i'm not and they're kind of company owners in their own right and freelance coaches and stuff but you don't get to take coach people through a cycle or manage people through a full cycle and you know develop talent through a three to five year kind of program and see somebody that used to be here you know go all the way through and end up being up here and and that kind of more ongoing shot to the arm that you get for taking something through a for a full transformation you get to play your part in it but that's potentially one of the downsides so there's pros and cons i think i don't know what do you think you're in that world yeah so i i find it's interesting i think it depends on the individual some people love the independence and they love the variety and i think that's one of the questions that you know cfos have to ask themselves is you know do i really want to immerse myself in an organization go on a journey with them for two to three years and if you're there for one day a week or one day a month you you're not you're not able to necessarily get in that deep into one organization and and I think that's maybe the question is do you want to go on a journey with a single organization or do you want to to work well you the sort that wants more smaller shorter sharper projects where you make a difference but you don't necessarily invest yourself to that level and you know what what what does that look like for you as an individual?

21:14I'm very much, I like to go in, I like to make an impact and then I like to move to my next one. But that's why I've done this for 10 years. I love it. I wouldn't do anything else. So I think that's perhaps one of the questions that people should ask themselves. There's a bit of self-awareness that comes in there as well. You've just displayed that self-awareness. And I think people need to be honest with themselves, don't they, around that stuff? Absolutely. And it's that balance between, you know, and a lot of it comes down to security as well. You know, can you cope if, you know, things, you know, you don't have a lot of work on for a few weeks, few months.

21:51Some people are lucky enough that they've, you know, they've had great, great careers and they have that kind of security. But, you know, there is something to be said for working with people in organizations. And that's one of the things. And the reason I built, you know, Isis up is I love working with the team. And that's the best thing now is that I actually get to work with a team of people. but on individual projects so I totally have the best of both worlds of what I do. Yeah sounds it. So in terms of you know what you do how does it work because you're a career coach tell me a bit about the journey that you take your you know the individuals that you work with on.

22:30Yeah so the process initially is what most people have to spend some time on is just getting some clarity so clarity on you know what kind of leaders going to get the best out of them in particular like we spoke about earlier what they're trying to achieve the kind of appetite they have for risk what's important to them right now you know pressing and pulling on some of these independent versus employee type arguments and trialing a few different things to just get a bit of clarity around what the goal is yeah then once you've got that goal in play you've then got to get some foundations in place.

23:03So you need an optimized LinkedIn profile, you need a couple of different CVs in this day and age, some that you use for job adverts, some that you use for networking, some that you use for temporary, some that you use for permanent. We have a whole suite of job search materials, would you believe now is what's required. So we get those foundations in play. And then the majority of the early work before we then start going to market is around helping people with their personal value proposition so getting people comfortable telling their story articulating the pain that they solve and the value that they add um and then we go on a multi-channel type approach right so we're doing content management and personal branding we're doing networking we're doing advocacy we're doing building better and stronger headhunter relationships into interview coaching presentation skills and nailing the offer so it's it's pretty comprehensive like the people who i work with in my kind of highest touch program it we're kind of we're working intensely together to solve this challenge to get them from a to b and that that i think people underestimate you know the amount of work that goes in and to to finding the not just a job but the right job for them to be very fair it's a complete minefield out there at the at the moment and uh i mean job searching has changed and the sad irony is is that you're actually you're most attractive to the competition when you're in post and so you know the people who are on the market start to realize ah all those people that were trying to poach me whilst i was down the road and now i'm available i can start tomorrow and you know i'm probably more flexible on package than i was previously and all this stuff but the attract you know competitors want to poach from other competitors because they damage them whilst benefiting themselves and we do a lot of kind of advocacy work to try and change that mindset because i'm not sure that's right but anyway that's that's kind of the viewpoint so you've kind of you've got a lot to battle through and a lot of self-development to do to be able to sell yourself and take advantage of creating opportunity it's nuanced it's really really nuanced it's it's really really nuanced lots of different techniques yeah absolutely and i think that's the piece isn't it it's so much harder when you haven't already got something to fall back on as in you're not in a current role then um you know then when you're you're actually looking in your your interest and you're eager so and i've seen that quite a bit it just seems like a crazy situation to be fair for for people to be in okay i very quickly i'll share the data with you on it so we went uh prior to being a full-time career coach and running the online part of it um i worked in executive search that said and we went through and looked at our short lists and what we did is we got everybody to rank the candidates one to five from the most keen at the top to the least keen at the bottom so at the top was usually somebody who is out of role or about to become out of role who desperately either wanted or needed the opportunity we would put and forward for at the bottom was somebody who we literally had to wrestle to get on the phone who wasn't really bothered whether they got the job or not um who we had to bully into going to the interview and the frustration when the data came back and actually proved our suspicions that you're only so everyone should have a 20 chance clearly if there's five of you of getting offered the role if keenness isn't a factor if eagerness isn't a factor right the most keen candidate for a senior role only got offered it five percent of the time wow the least keen so the person who didn't care whether they got the job offer or not got the job offer 40 of the time right so you're you're eight times more likely to get the job offer if you don't need it or want it and we're like how can this be and then you start sitting in interviews and watching these things play out and actually like it kind of makes sense because Because when you don't want the job, you interview so much more authentically, so much more honestly.

27:08You ask far more probing questions to challenge. You're just a lot more open. You'll say, oh, well, I left that job because I screwed up the strategy. People will literally talk because they have no emotional attachment to the result at all. Whereas the over-keen ones are over-talking, a bit pushy, overdoing the follow-up, all of that kind of stuff. and lost their gravitas in that moment so it's it's a cruel irony that that that dynamic exists in the senior role in the senior market and we try as much as possible to help reprogram and help people position themselves in a way that cuts through that and so what you're saying is it's not actually the the interviewee's perception of that individual because they're in a role it's actually the way that the the person being interviewed is actually acting that is creating that dynamic is it that's a it's an interesting point is it i think it's a combination of both but weighted more towards how we act when we desperately want something like i i'm not i'm not going to use the obvious dating analogy because it's different but i don't know we talked about marriage counseling yeah you know cfo dating is the next episode to be fair yeah maybe it is maybe but yeah you know over keenness easily equally on the flip side so um i back a business called uh create uh the it's a called career coaching consultancy it's a guy called neil 30 year old guy who helps people early career and interestingly early career it's the complete opposite so the people who are most keen are really attractive to the leaders because it's like yeah that this person's got some real energy that i can work with and i can mold and they you know they've got all this stuff i can't teach them and you know this is the kind of rhetoric that comes out you get into the senior world totally different last thing they want is you know anybody who's over Keene and over Ega because that worries them and they lose that yeah they lose their appeal and gravitas in that moment so as I say very nuanced wow do you know what that that's an amazing piece of insight and I think anyone that is looking for a role or considering shifting should definitely take that on board so if if there is um any of our listeners out there that are looking for some help perhaps finding the right role or getting you know getting in front of that right person how do they get hold of you what's the best way to get in contact yeah so I live on linkedin i think that's where we crossed over in the first two weeks as well i literally live on linkedin so it's andrew mccaskill m-a-c-a-s-k-i-double-l um but you can also find us at the website so www.execcareerjump.com fantastic and for those that are listening we will pop your linkedin profile in the thank you in the show notes so that everyone can get directly to you so any last sort of top tips or thoughts for those that are either thinking of looking at a new role or in the in the job market at the moment yeah so my final thought something that's working really well is um to try and reframe your time whilst you're on the job market to help with the mindset piece so my biggest concern at the moment is the mental health side of what people are dealing with whilst they're in transition um and there's a bunch of things you can do like some of the fds we've been working with have been offering their time up as a mentor to young people in finance and that's been superbly successful and as always with any kind of mentoring actually the mentor's got as much out of it as the mentee yeah because you do and it's kind of it feels good to be using your skills to be helping as i said earlier you've got to have a multi-channel strategy get some structure but do some nice stuff like just pay into the ecosystem i'm a true believer that the more you pay into the ecosystem the more it's going to pay out anyway like and so look to add value rather than extract and i think you'll be well set that's an amazing so give back and you know you'll find the right role for you yeah it's about attracting in the right opportunity rather than chasing it yeah oh that is a brilliant note to end the podcast on thank you so much andy that was fantastic and it's been wonderful having you on the podcast i really enjoyed it thanks for having me