Wading through a sea of CVs can be a pain. Especially when you’re hiring for a senior role such as Finance Director. CVs can get quite wordy and the process may feel daunting. Dealing with candidates with a lot of experience can be time-consuming.
Thankfully, you can streamline this part of the recruitment process by knowing exactly what to look for in your Finance Director CV search.
We’ve listed some of the key features of a high-quality Finance Director CV. If you spot these features in a CV for a Finance Director, you may have just found your perfect candidate.
Concise & Detailed
This is one of the most important features of a Finance Director CV. Some candidates could have 15-20 years experience, so keeping it concise is vital.
Your candidate CVs should be as short and concise as possible, containing all the relevant information you need to know. Candidates need to highlight their most relevant employment.
Nobody wants to read pages and pages of a CV to conclude whether they might be right for the role or not. You should be able to read through the CV in minutes and determine how suitable the candidate is. Candidates can make this easier by including figures and statistics.
But be wary of candidates who throw down too many numbers with too little explanation. These CVs can often be the hardest to decipher, and it could mean they’re listing stats with little knowledge of what they mean.
Candidates who keep their CVs short and informative show strong communication skills, as well as respect for your time. They know how to deliver information in the most effective way, which is a great skill for senior candidates to possess. Candidate CVs should be no more than a couple of pages.
Easy to Read with Good Design & Formatting
Along with being concise, top candidate CVs are easy to read.
Senior CVs that are well designed and well-formatted streamline the reader experience. Top candidates’ CVs are easy to skim through quickly. They highlight key information so that the most important features of the CV stand out immediately.
CVs that are well-formatted show strong attention to detail in candidates. They show that the candidate has taken the time to create a reader-friendly CV, or has invested in a professional service for this purpose.
Technical Skills
You should, of course, look for Finance Director CVs that clearly display the candidate’s various skills that would make them ideal for your role. All relevant skills should be listed, and they should be all-encompassing.
First, look at the candidate’s technical skills. These are skills specific to the FD role. They’re the skills that are required to excel specifically in senior finance. They’re found in almost every Finance Director job description. Technical skills ensure the candidate doesn’t just excel in senior roles, they excel specifically in senior finance leadership positions.
Look for proof of skills like;
- Strong Accountancy Skills
- Technological Skills
- Specific Finance Software Skills
- Analytical & Planning Skills
- Knowledge of Senior Finance
- Tax Filing
- Investment Management
- Valuations
- Risk Analysis
Of course, there are so many skills that an ideal Finance Director should possess, these are just a few.
Soft/Executive Skills
In addition to technical skills, successful Finance Director candidates need to have strong executive skills.
Executive skills, often known as business acumen, are general senior skill sets that allow candidates to excel in a variety of senior roles. They’re skills that are necessary for a wealth of executive and Director level-roles, and aren’t just limited to finance. In addition, these skills are highly transferable.
This means that if you find a candidate CV that demonstrates very strong business acumen, but the candidate doesn’t have experience in your industry, it might not be an issue. The transferability of these skill sets means that candidates who possess them can often thrive cross-sector, with the ability to pick up specific market/product knowledge easily.
This can be supplemented in their CVs through experience working within finance in different sectors. If you find this on a candidate’s CV, it could indicate great adaptability and business acumen.
The skills listed in a CV for a Finance Director should be backed up with quantifiable achievements.
You should identify transferable executive skills such as;
• Excellent Communication Skills
• Strong Leadership & Management Expertise
• Industry/Market Knowledge
• General Business Acumen
• Relationship Building Skills
Quantifiable Achievements Are Key
Achievements are the backbone of candidate experience. Solid relevant experience is only useful if it’s supplemented with impressive, quantifiable achievements.
Your candidate’s CV should list key achievements along with any evidence and quantitative figures. For example, look out for numbers that indicate measurable success such as profits,
In particular, you should look for achievements that demonstrate the candidate’s contribution towards the financial success of their business. You should also look for contributions towards business growth and team development.
The best Finance Directors have proven experience in helping their businesses reach new heights, leading them to financial success as a direct result of their strategies and plans. They’ve developed and nurtured their finance teams, allowing them to grow their skill-sets and gain valuable experiences, as well as to work better as a team to achieve financial targets.
Qualifications
It’s important to identify your candidate’s qualifications on their CV. This is because their qualifications determine their limitations in the role. Qualifications include any education that the candidate has received, as well as any courses taken.
You should look for candidates who list qualifications such as Finance and Business degrees (BA or Masters level) as well as CIMA certification.
Experience/Career History
Candidate experience and career history are the first things many people look for when searching for senior CVs.
Strong experience in senior finance is important in ensuring that your candidate has proof of performing in similar roles and achieving success.
When weighing up experience, you’ll want to look at two things; how many roles/businesses the candidate has worked in, and how long they worked in each.
Candidates that have experience in more than one senior role or business show diversity and adaptability, which can be a strong sign of their ability to adapt to your opportunity. However, pay close attention to duration in each role.
Candidate CVs that show frequent job-hopping can be a red flag when looking to invest in a long-term Finance Director. On the other hand, candidates whose experience is limited to one business or role with no variation risk institutionalisation. This means they may struggle to adapt to new roles or businesses.
Of course, recent experience is more significant and relevant than older roles. Look at the current role listed on the CV. How similar is this to yours? In what ways is your role a step up, and how great is the step up? Will the candidate be able to successfully make the transition, using their skills and experience in their current role?
Also, consider the businesses in which the candidate has experience. Are they similar to yours in structure or environment? Will the candidate likely find it difficult to transition to your business culture?
Also look for evidence of the candidate’s experience in their time between gaining qualifications and going into a Director of Finance role. This will give you an idea of the type of skills they’ve acquired on their journey.
Ideally, you should look for CVs that state at least a few years’ experience as a Director of Finance, or similar senior finance role. The candidate should also have ideally worked in finance for more than one business.
Current Responsibilities
When you’re looking through the candidate’s experience and job history, find their current responsibilities listed on their CV. This will give you an indication of what tasks the candidate is used to performing, and how they handle the responsibilities of their current role.
Look for CVs that list similar responsibilities to those of your role. Look specifically for evidence of senior responsibilities such as;
• Financial account management
• Presenting financial progress reports
• Forming and implementing long-term plans and strategies
• Managing and overseeing finance division – nurturing team members
• Analysing and researching the market and economy trends
Of course, these are just a few of the main responsibilities you should be identifying in your candidate’s CV.
If the candidate’s current responsibilities don’t exactly align with those of your offered Finance Director opportunity, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t a good fit. If they have strong executive skills, and experience carrying out senior responsibilities, they may still be able to adapt to the new responsibilities of your opportunity.
One of the key features of quality senior recruitment is thinking outside the box, and not immediately writing candidates off if they don’t have all the experience of your exact industry or role.
Training
The level of training your Finance Director candidates have received can be an important factor in their ability to perform in your role. Check candidate CVs for statements of any training that they’ve received, whether it’s finance related or general senior executive training.
This should include any courses that the candidate has attended, and any additional training that the average Finance Director hasn’t received.
Look for evidence of any training that the candidate themselves has provided. For example, if the candidate has trained their finance team or other senior executives in a certain area.
Personality & Drive
Often CVs can be seemingly devoid of personality. However, personality can be one of the most important factors in the suitability of a candidate for a role. Between the candidate’s CV and their cover letter you should try to identify what type of personality they have.
This can be very important when it comes to culture fit.
You need to make sure that the candidate you take on is a good fit personality-wise for your organisation culture and the structure of your business.
Look at how the candidate’s CV is written. Pay attention to what information is prioritised, and what their achievements are. This can give you an impression of the candidate’s personality, and what drives them. Drive and motivation are important traits to determine in candidates, as you want to make sure it matches with the culture and goals of your business.
Personal sections of CVs can also give you some insight into candidate personality, though they’re less directly relevant to suitability for the role than the other sections of the CV.
Tone & Language Use
The use of language in a CV is often overlooked, as is the overall tone that the candidate conveys. But in fact, paying attention to the way your candidate phrases and presents the content of their CV can tell you a lot about them.
As both strong written and verbal communication skills are essential, your ideal candidates’ CVs should be well written. Great CVs are written using a professional tone whilst not being flooded with jargon and unnecessarily complex language. They’re easy to understand for almost any reader and use language to prioritise key information.
If you’ve received a lot of applications and want to automate some of the process, you may be using CV searching technology. In this case, the keywords that candidates include in their CVs are important, as they’re what’s going to get the candidate’s CV shortlisted. Keyword stuffing is generally bad practice though, so candidate’s that overuse keywords for this purpose produce CVs that read less naturally.
Be careful using this technology, however. It isn’t perfect, and for important senior roles like Finance Director, may filter out some great candidates.
Conduct a Successful Finance Director CV Search
A CV for a Finance Director can often be densely packed with information. But they’re important. A candidate’s CV is often your first impression of them, so make sure to look out for quality CVs.
By taking the features listed here into consideration, you can streamline your candidate search process, and identify the truly great CVs. You may be able to identify your ideal Finance Manager. 