How to hire a Finance Manager
What the role does, the job description, the interview questions, and the 40-minute screening pack that tells you who can do the job before you book a single interview.
The role
What a Finance Manager does
A Finance Manager is a finance leader who oversees budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and a small finance team to keep the business financially healthy and well informed.
- Own the budgeting, forecasting, and reporting process
- Lead and develop the finance team
- Advise leadership on financial performance, cash, and risk
Screen before you interview
The Finance Manager screening pack
Management accounting, modelling and numerical judgement, with integrity as table stakes. Every applicant gets one link. You get one ranked report.
- 1
Walk us through your month-end close and where it usually slips.
- 2
How do you build a budget with department heads who all want more?
- 3
Describe a variance you investigated and what you found.
- 4
How do you present numbers to leaders who are not finance people?
- 5
Which controls would you put in place first here?
Job description
Finance Manager job description
We need a Finance Manager to lead our financial planning and reporting and to manage the day-to-day finance function. You will own the budgeting cycle, guide a small team, and give leadership a clear read on performance, cash, and risk. This is a role for someone who can both run a tight process and step back to advise the business on where the money should go.
Responsibilities
- Own the annual budget and rolling forecast across all departments
- Lead the monthly close review and present results to the leadership team
- Manage, coach, and develop accountants and analysts on the finance team
- Oversee cash flow, working capital, and treasury planning
- Review and improve financial controls, policies, and approval workflows
- Partner with department heads to manage spend against budget
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in finance or accounting; CPA, ACCA, CMA, or MBA is strongly preferred
- 5 or more years of finance experience, including budgeting, reporting, and team leadership
- Proven experience managing a close cycle and a small finance team
- Strong knowledge of GAAP or IFRS, financial controls, and cash management
- A track record of advising leadership and improving finance processes
Interview questions
Finance Manager interview questions
For the candidates who pass the pack. Each comes with a sample answer on the full page.
Ask these after the screening pack, not instead of it. A candidate who has already scored on Financial Management, Accounting (Intermediate), Financial Modeling in Excel, Numerical Reasoning 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 Finance Manager 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 40 minutes, so a Finance Manager applicant arrives at this interview already measured on the parts you can measure without a meeting.
- 01
What made you move from individual finance work into finance management?
- 02
Tell me about your experience leading a finance function or team.
- 03
How do you keep yourself current as both a finance leader and a people leader?
- 04
Why this finance manager role and why our company?
- 05
How do you run the annual budgeting process?
- 06
How do you approach cash flow management and liquidity?
- 07
How do you ensure strong financial controls without slowing the business down?
- 08
How do you build and develop a high performing finance team?
Frequently asked questions
Send every applicant one link that carries 4 skills tests (Financial Management, Accounting (Intermediate), Financial Modeling in Excel, Numerical Reasoning), 2 personality inventories and 5 one-way video questions. springhire scores everything automatically and ranks the candidates, so you interview the top few. The free plan covers 10 candidates a month.
About 40 minutes for the tests, plus 10 to 15 minutes for the video questions. Candidates complete it on their own time, on any device.
A short brief, three to five key responsibilities, a fuller list of duties, must-have and nice-to-have skills, and the requirements. The template on this page has all of it, ready to copy.
Questions that ask for a specific past example and a walkthrough of how the candidate thinks. This page lists 8 with sample answers, and the full bank has more.
Yes. The free plan includes every screening tool with 10 candidate credits a month and no card. Paid plans start at $39 a month.
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