Why You Should Hire Your Critical Leaders NOW
Today, I would like to discuss the reason not to delay hiring your Critical Leader roles.
With the recent environment, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the market and among companies. If you are one of the lucky companies that are weathering or even thriving during this time of uncertainty, you may still be operating conservatively until you see your regions open up to full commerce again.
Companies have put budgets on hold for new or replacement hires, including critical hires, and sometimes struggle with remote onboarding. The only good news out there is that you are not alone, most companies are struggling with the same. As well as the hold on hiring team members, companies are also delaying projects and project rollouts.
The projects are usually on hold due to budget, logistics, or personnel constraints the company is currently experiencing. While all of these delays and uncertainty are understandable, they may be the cause of additional issues further in the future when operations return to normal. This is why we are going to discuss why you SHOULD NOT delay hiring your new CFO, VP of Finance or Accounting, or Controller. Some of the reasons to hire now:
If you have projects that are currently on hold due to logistics or personnel bandwidth, a delay in hiring to work those projects only means the timeline will have to be adjusted to much later in the year or even pushed to next year. Sometimes those projects are critical to business transformations and integrations and delays can have a huge impact on the company. Impacts can be on the way you do business, the data you get from reporting to make sound business decisions, your ability to be competitive in the marketplace, and the morale of your teams in lost productivity and burdensome environments without the new tools or processes. Sometimes, if it is a transformation project where there are obvious issues that are trying to be resolved, the issues will continue and possibly get worse or teams will fall further and further behind if the project is delayed.
If you are one of the companies that want to pursue external investment rounds, delay of these projects could impact your ability to do so. Whether it is a system implementation to gain better visibility into your business or process changes, it could impact your ability to pass due diligence or quality of earnings inquiries. If you are delaying hiring a CFO, hiring becomes even more critical. Your CFO will likely be a major player in the external investment rounds and the CFO with the most familiarity with the company and how it operates makes all the difference in the world when trying to pass diligence or quality of earnings. It can make or break your bid for new money.
Critical hires are just that, critical. If you delay a critical hire, you risk a multitude of issues with current teams and business continuity. Current teams may have to cover for that missing headcount and may already be at max capacity, which is not sustainable for the long term. Let’s be real, most teams work lean and mean. Excess capacity is not something you see much of these days. A delay in hiring could also delay current work, currently ongoing projects, or planned projects for the near future. If current team members are covering other duties in the interim, they will likely not have time to work on projects and the day-to-day duties as well. When this occurs, it could cause morale and productivity issues in the short and long term. Or, you could simply not do the work that the critical hire is responsible for and get further and further behind until you actually do hire someone for the role. This would only set up an even greater challenge for the new hire because they have to work off the backlog, get up to speed in a new company, probably onboard remotely, and accomplish all the new tasks they were likely also hired for.
Time to onboard. Most hires for CFO, VP of Finance or Accounting, or Controller should have enough experience to quickly get up to speed on their job requirements. However, with remote onboarding and remote teams, they are at a disadvantage coming into a new company. Do you remember what your first day was like? Now imagine it in a remote environment. The earlier you can onboard a new hire, the more successful they will be.
Great candidates are available NOW. With the current economic environment, there are numerous candidates available now that were not even considering a move only months ago. If you delay your hiring until everything is full commerce again, guess what, that is exactly what other companies are doing. What does that mean? It means, great candidates may be available but there will be a flood of opportunities open to them. You will be competing for candidates on offers and it could conceivably cost you more to hire the same candidate you could hire now for less. That is even if you can be a competitive offer in the fray. I’m not an advocate for paying your teams less, but if you want a particular highly skilled team member, there is no time like the present.
If you are like most companies, your CFO, VP of Finance or Accounting, or Controller are crucial roles in your business decisions. Doing nothing can be setting yourself up for future additional challenges. So my question to you is: Can you really afford to not hire these critical roles now?
