Archives for January 2012

January 19, 2012 By Samuel Dergel 3 Comments

How long should it take to hire a CFO?

According to an article in Wall Street Journal’s CFO Journal by Maxwell Murphy, it took Illumina 2.5 years to hire their Chief Financial Officer, Mark Stapely. (Illumina’s CFO hire was reported in our CFO Moves blog).

Now that, my friends, is a long search.

From my perspective as a CFO Search specialist, 2.5 years is a very long time. There were many reasons cited by the CEO as to the reason that it took that long, but in reality, they sound like excuses, not reasons.

Let’s put it this way. If a company is serious about hiring a CFO, then they will make hiring their CFO a priority. They will retain an experienced executive search firm, create appropriate assessment of the specifications needed for the role together with the search firm, and work to identify the potential candidates that could be appropriate for the role.

Why did it take so long?

Here are some (potential) reasons:

They weren’t serious about hiring. To hire a CFO, you need to be serious. CFOs are smart people. CFOs know when a company that is going through the motions of looking for a Chief Financial Officer, but don’t mean it.

They had a CFO. According to the article, the CFO spot was covered, even though the person covering it was happy to move on to an operational role now that he is relieved from his CFO duty.

There was no pain. Illumina was growing rapidly, cash was coming in, and they didn’t need to raise financing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So what made Illumina finally get serious and hire their CFO? Good chance that it was beginning to feel the pain of not having a top quality CFO at the helm and they had to make it a priority.

Lessons Learned?

For the CFO – just because a company says they are hiring a CFO, you should evaluate how serious they are about hiring the best person for the job.

For a company needing a CFO – before you tell the world you are looking for a CFO, make sure you are really ready to go through the process and make the decision. Otherwise, you may have a credibility problem when people know that it took you 2.5 years to hire your CFO.

How long should it take to hire a CFO?

If a company is truly serious about hiring their next CFO and is willing to make the search a priority, it shouldn’t take more than 3 months to complete the search.

How long did it take to hire your CFO?

January 11, 2012 By Samuel Dergel 15 Comments

The Passionate CFO

You are forgiven if you thought this blog was about Valentines Day. And no, Valentines Day is not this week, so you can breathe a little easier.

So what am I talking about?

My friend, Cindy Kraft, wrote a blog yesterday about Lessons in Branding from Tim Tebow. Her points are very valid. There is certainly a lot for a CFO to learn from branding from Tebow.

She did get me thinking though. From my perspective, the one thing that differentiates Tebow from other players is Passion.

I speak with a lot of Chief Financial Officers. When I tell people that I speak to CFOs for a living, I often get an eyeroll, a sigh, and a look on their face that says “Oh, that must be boring”.

While some CFOs are bland, the majority of them are not. In many cases, knowing how to speak to them and get them interested and excited, I am able to get them to break through their shell and be themselves for me.

The CFOs that stand out are the ones that love what they do, love the company they work for, love the people they work with and couldn’t think of any other job they could have in the world that could be better then what they are doing right now.

When the passion is gone from their employment, they look for (and find) another one.

These CFOs love their children, their spouse, and their job.

And it shows.

January 5, 2012 By Samuel Dergel Leave a Comment

Where do CFOs Move the Most?

When we started the CFO Moves Blog in September 2011, our goal was to track CFO Movements (Hires, ‘Unhires’ and Appointments) across the United States on a weekly basis. Our information comes to us from news releases and articles, as well as information provided to us by companies and CFOs.

The information reported weekly is not a report an all CFO Movement in the country, but is (in my opinion) an indicator of overall CFO Movement. The good news is that CFOs are continuing to get hired in this economy.

I will continue sharing insights we have learned from our CFO Moves Blog. Last month we shared some valuable insight on the relationship between CFO Movement and LinkedIn. (When hiring a CFO, is LinkedIn the place to look?) In the coming weeks, we plan to share some more details on what we learned in 2011. (If you don’t want to miss any of our insights on CFO Moves, click the Sign Me Up button on the right column of this page to receive our blog in your email)

Here are two indicators of where CFOs move.

1) Geography

Almost one-quarter of all CFO Movement reported was in California. The next 4 states with high CFO Movement were New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Florida. We also noticed that almost every state was represented in our CFO Moves Blog in 2011.

What we learned:

• CFOs are hired all across the United States. States with larger populations have a higher proportion of CFO Movement.

• California and Massachusetts have over twice the proportion of CFO Moves than they do of their percentage of the population of the United States. We believe this may be due to the higher proportion of growth companies (hi-tech and bio-tech/healthcare) in the market.

2) Publicly Listed

Considering that most of the information we received for our CFO Blogs came from press releases in 2011, we found it interesting that the majority of companies (51.7%) were not publicly listed.

What we learned:

• CFO Moves are not only reported by publicly listed companies, which are required to let their shareholders know about major executive moves, but are also reported by non-public companies.

• Non-public companies, which include venture-backed, not-for-profit entities and subsidiaries of publicly-owned companies, see PR value in letting the world know about their CFO Moves (The CFO: PR Rockstar?)

Do you have any insights or questions on these points that you would like to share? Please share your thoughts below.

January 3, 2012 By Samuel Dergel 19 Comments

Announcement: To serve you even better!

Collaboration, teamwork, flexibility, and communication are among the traits of successful business enterprises and they propel us to new heights – personally and in the corporate arena.

While my goal when founding Dergel CFO Search & Consulting was to focus on serving CFOs while remaining a sole practitioner, I have shifted to a team environment by joining one of the world’s leading retained executive search firms – Stanton Chase International. I have learned a lot during the last six months, and the key point in this move is that I’m convinced that I can maintain the one-on-one relationships with you – my clients – while taking advantage of the teamwork, entrepreneurial spirit, and global reach of Stanton Chase.

The international reach of this organization along with a collegial atmosphere will give me the opportunity to reach out worldwide for candidates while getting input from the leading search professionals in the world. With 75 offices in 42 countries, Stanton Chase will lead your organization to new levels of success. While I have and will specialize in the CFO sector, I can now deliver candidates in virtually every C-level sector.

Connecting with Stanton Chase came through a Linkedin overture from Paul Herrerias, the managing partner of the Stanton Chase/San Francisco office. After an initial “thanks but no thanks” response, Paul and I continued to stay in touch, built trust and rapport, resulting in my current position of Director with his office.

The decision to join Paul was firmed up when I contacted him for some assistance with a search. He was forthcoming, cooperative, and experienced. The result was a level of trust that has now blossomed into a partnership.

What started as an online social media relationship is now a “face to face” working relationship. Please be assured that my social media activity will continue to provide you with the cutting edge information that you have been receiving for more than six months.

Here are some highlights:

At last count, I have posted 70 Samuel’s CFO Blogs and started a weekly CFO Moves Blog, with a combined total of over 17,000 page views.
Over one hundred and forty subscribers have requested to receive my new blogs by email as they are published. (You can get them too – Click on the Sign Me Up button in the right column).
The Wall Street Journal’s CFO Journal and CFO World sought me out for my input on news stories about CFOs, and I was asked to write an op-ed piece for Canadian HR Reporter.
I started a LinkedIn Group called CFO Lounge that has been very effective in garnering the support and input of CFOs from diverse industries and geographies. I am having conversations with hundreds of CFOs, many of whom expressed appreciation and positive feedback of the content and advice posted.

I look forward to a continuing relationship with you, sharing the expanded resources now at my fingertips with Stanton Chase, and a successful 2012 for all!

Archives for January 2012

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