How to hire a CFO

Ask these after the screening pack, not instead of it. A candidate who has already scored on Financial Management, Financial Modeling in Excel, Risk Management, Critical Thinking has shown they can do the work, which frees the interview to do what a test cannot: find out how they think, how they explain themselves, and how they behave when something goes wrong.

• Ask every CFO candidate the same questions in the same order. Comparable answers are the whole point; a different conversation with each person tells you who you liked, not who was strongest.
• Look for a specific example with a result, not a description of how the candidate would approach it in principle. Follow up once with “what happened next?” and stop talking.
• Score each answer before moving to the next question, and write down what was said rather than the impression it left.
• At volume, record the first 4 of these instead of calling. Candidates answer on their own time, the answers are transcribed and scored, and you keep live interviews for the shortlist.

The pack takes a candidate about 42 minutes, so a CFO applicant arrives at this interview already measured on the parts you can measure without a meeting.