Writing a job description for a Fractional CFO starts with understanding your needs, helping ensure an effective engagement.
Writing a job description for a Fractional CFO starts with understanding your needs, helping ensure an effective engagement.
When hiring a fractional CFO, you want to make sure that you are investing your money in the best candidate available. Now, a big part of this starts with writing the perfect job description and attracting the right talent. But, another part is about setting up your fractional hire for success. After all, the best candidate in the world will flop if they have the deck stacked against them.
The good news is that if you find the right candidate and get them off on the right foot, you can potentially create an ally with whom you can build a healthy and flourishing working relationship. What’s more, you will have a strategic partner who can help you navigate the critical life stages of your company, including selling it.
Yet before getting ahead of ourselves, let’s start with finding you the perfect fractional CFO for your business today.
As a CEO/ business owner, you will probably bring in a fractional CFO for one of two reasons:
Your ability to write a clear, concise job description will hinge on why you are hiring a fractional executive. Furthermore, the details that you put in the job description will help inform the cost of the fractional CFO. So, let’s explore each case.
As Gary Brooks, a CFO with almost 40 years of experience under his belt, puts it: “A lot of times, a CEO will bring him in because someone told them about a problem, and the CEO will have a hard time putting words to it. So, they need someone to do that for them.
For instance, one CEO was having problems getting an audit finished, but they couldn’t exactly figure out why. Were the finance people at the company failing to do their job? Was the problem with the auditors? The CEO needed answers, and only a seasoned expert could get the job done.”
Now, the first thing Gary recommends is that the CEO should be careful when creating a job description. The reasoning is that in many scenarios, if they try to define the problem, they will most likely get it wrong. CEOs who lack a financial background will not know all the right questions to ask.
Instead, the financial veteran recommends trusting your fractional CFO to define the problem for you. For example, when Gary walks into a company, he gives the CEO a list of documents that he wants to see early on so as to assess the financial situation of the company for himself.
Here is the list Gary asks for:
These documents help Gary perform a deep dive into the company as if he were buying it and needed to perform his own due diligence.
Based on his assessment, Gary will establish the top 4 or 5 priorities that he believes the company should focus on. In some cases, he might place at the very top of that list the original problem for which he was brought in. But there are other cases where Gary finds more pressing issues that need to be addressed first, some of which may be causing the issue that got Gary through the door in the first place.
So, what are some of the most common problems Gary has found time and again?
Seeing as you aren’t aware of what the problem is, you need to find a fractional CFO you trust. This can either be through your existing network or through a partnership of CFOs with a solid reputation.
You will also need to treat the CFO as a strategic partner as they will be guiding you through some murky waters. So, you should find someone with whom you can work and who shares your values and work ethic.
On the other hand, if you are aware of why you need a fractional executive, then writing a job description is a much more straightforward job.
For starters, you need to answer these questions based on your particular needs:
Once you’ve answered the above three questions, you should be in a much better position to craft the ideal job description.
Here are the main components that your description should contain:
To make things more concrete, let’s imagine a hypothetical example together and see the ideal job description for that scenario.
Let’s say that you have noticed that your finance team has been struggling to balance the books over the past few quarters. And while every member of that team is a hard, dedicated worker, they could use some help and coaching.
So, you decide to bring in a fractional CFO to do the coaching for you.
With the stage set, let’s try to answer the three above questions:
Industry experience isn’t as necessary as affability and the ability to build rapport with others. You also want someone with a solid accounting background so that they can help your team where they might be weakest.
Since you need them to train your team, it would be ideal if they could come into the office once or twice a week. So, having them work remotely isn’t ideal in this scenario.
Using the 10 Pillars of Finance framework, here are the main pillars you might need along with some of the required tasks in each:
It is worth pointing out that while your fractional CFO won’t be doing any actual accounting or forecasting themselves, they still need to be good at those tasks if they are to coach your team at them.
Having answered the above questions, we can now create a draft job description:
The only thing left to add to the above description would be the expected compensation range. Other than that, you are good to go.
Doug Hooper, a financial expert and a veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, explains that the job description doesn’t need to be too detailed so long as it does two things:
As Doug puts it, CEOs should make their expectations clear from the get-go. In return, the CFO should regularly communicate their progress.
While having clear expectations and laying them out in a job description is critical, that is only half the battle. You need to be prepared to receive the fractional CFO once you hire them.
So there are a few things you can do to ensure that your fractional hire gets the job done.
For the fractional CFO to succeed, Doug explains that the company needs to designate a primary person for them to deal with. Most of the time, it is the owner or the company president. The CFO always needs an avenue back to the decision-maker at some level.
When the fractional CFO walks into your company, they won’t know with whom they should be talking. So, to get them started off the right foot, you need to introduce them to all the major players they will be interacting with.
For instance, introducing your fractional CFO to the rest of the members of your C-suite is critical, especially if you are bringing in the CFO to be a strategic partner. Without this introduction, your fractional CFO will not have a clear understanding of the company’s vision and mission and will only see things from your perspective, making them less effective as a strategic partner.
Additionally, the fractional CFO should meet the people they will lead, particularly if the CFO will be helping them place financial systems and procedures. Gary Brooks puts it best when he says:
“Processes work better if they come from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It's very difficult for people at the top to think about how every single piece works at the bottom.”
Even though you might want your fractional hire to produce results from day one, the problem is that they will be going through some of their own ordeals as they integrate with your company.
For instance, if the fractional CFO is expected to lead your finance team, they might need some time to win the team over and get them to see the value of having a part-time executive on board. And while there might be some champions who are convinced of this hire, there will also be those who are doubtful and who refuse to follow this new authority figure.
Consequently, when a fractional CFO walks into a new situation, they need to earn that authority. They will need to show the skeptics exactly why they were brought in, which hinges on the fractional CFO being an expert in their field.
Additionally, your fractional CFO might at some point start questioning your company’s way of doing things and being critical of the status quo. This is healthy as you want someone who is willing to shake things up as opposed to just following “the way things have always been.”
When asked about the biggest challenge he faces as a seasoned fractional CFO, Doug Hooper answered “resistance to change.”
A lot of times, a fractional CFO will walk into a situation, and after assessing the company’s financials, they will make a recommendation that certain processes and procedures need to be updated or changed altogether.
The issue is that either the people at the company will refuse to change and will choose to hold on to the familiar and the comfortable, or they will take this initiative as the fractional CFO blaming them for using faulty processes.
Instead, it needs to be clear that the fractional CFO isn’t blaming anyone when they are suggesting an improvement. They are only trying to serve the company to the best of their ability and to be the ideal strategic partner.
Even if you hired the fractional CFO to help with an operational problem, you should still treat them as a strategic partner.
For starters, they will have a unique perspective, one that is grounded in the realities of cash flow and future forecasts. This helps you appreciate the feasibility of different courses of action as well as the inherent risks in different scenarios.
Another important reason is that almost every small business owner reaches a point where they turn to their CFO, fractional or otherwise, and ask them the all fateful question: “How do I sell this thing?”
If you work with your CFO long enough, you are bound to ask them about the possibility of selling your business. This conversation usually comes after you’ve built years of trust with your financial partner.
There are several reasons a business owner might consider selling. For instance, here are a couple:
Regardless of the reason, you will need someone to ferry you through the sometimes thorny M&A process, from planning to execution.
Therefore, it’s not enough to select someone you work well with, but you also need to work at building a trusting relationship with them. This will ensure that when it’s time for you to make a gargantuan leap, you will have the right strategic partner at your side.
Writing the perfect fractional CFO job description starts with knowing what you need. In many cases, business owners might not be aware of what financial problem their business is going through, So, they need to bring in an expert they trust to help them diagnose the problem and tell them how to solve it.
Alternatively, you might be 100% certain of why you need a fractional CFO. In that case, you are in a much better position to write a job description. You will be able to detail the responsibilities, the required skills, and the ideal experience for the job. This will enable you to cast a wider net than if you were uncertain about what you need done.
Bearing this in mind, once you have found the ideal candidate, you want to set them up for success. Part of that comes from wanting to ensure that your money is well-invested. But the other part comes from wanting to create a strategic partner, one that you can rely on in the big moments. You should make sure that everything you have agreed on with your fractional CFO is spelled out in the agreement between you two.
So, if you want to find the perfect partner for your business, please do not hesitate to reach out and contact us for a free consultation. We would be happy to help you find the perfect fractional CFO for your business, one that can solve the problems of today and be the perfect partner for the adventures of tomorrow.
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