Hiring situation
Cleaning up after a restatement, material weakness or bad audit
No postings. No stacks of resumes. No chasing. You interview a short list.
Financial Headhunters: Hire a specialist to fix technical accounting errors and rebuild your internal control environment.
This is what we do all day: recruit accounting, finance, banking and insurance professionals.
No upfront fee. You pay only if you hire.
Need someone now? Call 305-306-4829.
We offer a candidate replacement guarantee on standard search agreements. The applicable period and exact terms are set out in the signed client recruiting agreement.
- Controller
- CFO
- VP Finance
- FP&A Director
- Accounting Manager
- Director of Accounting
- Assistant Controller
- Tax Director
- Treasury Manager
- Internal Audit Director
- Senior Accountant
- Financial Analyst
- Head of Financial Reporting
- Commercial Lender
- Chief Credit Officer
- Business Systems Finance Lead
- No upfront fee
- Pay only if you hire
- Accounting, finance, banking and insurance
- We reach people who aren’t on job boards
- Replacement terms on standard searches
01
What does this hire really come down to?
Your problem is that your current financial data does not match your business reality. You need a lead accountant who treats the general ledger as a series of distinct, verifiable events. This hire moves into your office to identify where documentation broke, close gaps in your records, and establish a process where every entry points to an underlying document.
This specialist acts as a mechanic for your financial reporting. They look at past errors without making excuses for previous employees. Unlike a controller who focuses on quarterly budgets or team growth, this hire focuses only on the intersection of ERP data, physical receipts, and the specific regulations that currently flag your firm as non-compliant.
Candidates move into these roles because they want to build a reporting system that works. They are stuck in audit roles where they identify failures but cannot make the changes required to fix them. They leave those roles to find a firm that gives them the power to replace messy, manual spreadsheets with a workflow that stands up to an outside review.
02
What do we check before you see anyone?
- 01Ask if they have moved data from an unreconciled state to an audited close without needing a second restatement. Did they find the specific missing ledger entries?
- 02Ask them to show how they map a journal entry to a source document in SAP or Oracle. Can they identify who changed a permission setting to allow an unapproved entry?
- 03Ask them to walk through a reconciliation where they found the root cause of a discrepancy. Did the difference come from a timing error or a faulty system configuration?
- 04Ask them to explain a FASB or SOX adjustment to an auditor who currently views your firm as a risk. Which specific line items did they have to defend?
- 05Ask how they report errors to a department head who is not an accountant. They must correct the work without blaming the staff who created the mess.
- 06Ask for a sample of the documentation they write for a clean audit. Do they create a log that a future auditor can follow without asking questions?
03
Where do we find them?
We recruit these specialists from regional audit firms where they spend their week resolving specific technical gaps for troubled companies. These individuals spend their entire work week inside broken ledgers. They leave public accounting because they are tired of traveling to different clients and want to fix one company for an extended period.
We also find them in accounting departments at firms that just finished a voluntary restatement. These people understand how to talk to regulators after a failure occurs. They do not want to manage day-to-day books; they want to find the next broken process and rebuild it until the numbers are accurate.
04
Which hiring mistakes should you watch for?
- 01Hiring a generalist who has only ever worked in stable accounting departments; they will try to add headcount before they identify the underlying data errors.
- 02Hiring based on a famous company name rather than asking if they led a project to correct a specific audit deficiency.
- 03Assuming a person with a controller title can handle a restatement when they have never had to defend a correction to an outside auditor.
05
The search in three steps
- 01We compare your specific audit failure to the case studies of every candidate. We only talk to those who have fixed the exact technical discrepancy you face.
- 02We conduct a technical interview where the candidate describes exactly how they adjust old data. We watch to see if they create new errors when they fix the old ones.
- 03We ask how they present their work to a board of directors. We verify if they can stand behind their numbers when an auditor challenges the process.
06
Which related hiring decisions are worth comparing?
How your search runs
How does The Six-Step Search work?
One sequence, from a well-defined seat to a shortlist you can judge.
Search Calibration
We start with a call about the seat, the books, the owners and the people the hire will work with. We learn what the role must fix in the first year and what would make a candidate wrong even if the resume looks right.
You get: A written search brief: scope, must-haves, deal-breakers and the pay range, agreed with you.
Market Mapping
We map the companies and institutions where the right people already work: similar size, similar ownership, similar complexity, in your market and in others.
You get: The target list of companies and institutions we will search, reviewed with you before outreach.
Professional Contact Intelligence
We find direct ways to reach the people on the map. Most are employed and not reading job boards, so reaching them takes real research.
You get: Direct routes to people who are not on job boards, researched for your search.
Persistent Personalized Outreach
We call and write to people individually and follow up. Interest varies, so we discuss the actual opportunity rather than promising a particular response.
You get: One-to-one conversations about your actual role, followed up, never a mass email blast.
Live Candidate Qualification
We speak with every candidate before you do. We check scope, systems, reporting lines, compensation expectations, location and why they would move.
You get: Only candidates we have spoken with, checked on scope, systems, pay, location and motive.
Candidate Intelligence and Process Support
You receive a short written brief on each finalist covering what they have done, where they are thin and what they want. Then we help with interviews, references and the offer.
You get: A short written brief on each finalist, plus help with interviews, references, counteroffer risk and the offer.
Questions people ask
How long until you deliver a shortlist for this sensitive restatement work?
We give you a firm date after we identify the technical scope of your failure. We only send you people who are currently ready to move and have the specific experience to fix your ledger.
How do you verify if a candidate will remain professional during audit confrontations?
We ask for specific examples of when an auditor rejected their work. We listen to see if they explain the technical adjustment they made or if they express frustration with the auditor.
Are you able to source help for temporary or peak audit season needs?
Yes, you can hire for a permanent role or an interim project. We write a separate contract for each model so you know exactly what the cost is before you hire.
Is there a way to run this search without alerting the current team?
We keep the firm name hidden during the first round of interviews. We only share your identity once we confirm the candidate meets your technical requirements.
What are the payment terms associated with your search services?
You pay a fee only when you hire the candidate. We outline the total cost and payment schedule in a written document before we start the search.
What is the fee for a finance search?
No upfront fee. You pay only if you hire. The fee and terms are agreed in writing before we start.
What about counteroffers on a finance hire?
We ask every finance candidate early why they would move and what their employer might do to keep them. Counteroffer risk goes in the written brief before you make an offer.
What is your guarantee?
We offer a candidate replacement guarantee on standard search agreements. The applicable period and exact terms are set out in the signed client recruiting agreement.
What don't you do?
We do not post your finance job and forward whoever applies. We do not send stacks of unscreened resumes, and we do not recruit outside accounting, finance, banking and insurance.
Start a search
Tell us about the seat.
No upfront fee. You pay only if you hire.
We offer a candidate replacement guarantee on standard search agreements. The applicable period and exact terms are set out in the signed client recruiting agreement.
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