So what, EXACTLY am I looking for?

I wish I could say, but I can't!

I don't mean to be flippant, but I really cannot tell you exactly what the job has to be to the exclusion of all others.

In general terms, I am looking for a senior level financial position in an organization that needs the finance function to be a strategic business partner to the rest of the organization. Of course I have the academic and practical experience to count beans with the best of them, but I can add value in many other ways.

Over the course of my career I have worked in companies focused on consumer products, retail, industrial manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications, and high-tech manufacturing. I have worked for huge Fortune 50 corporations with revenues in excess of $50 billion and small, privately held businesses with revenues of $10 million. I have worked in highly profitable businesses and, conversely, have also been in four turnaround situations (I know how to squeeze the nickel twice). I have worked in companies where there where highly defined policies and procedures in place for just about anything you can imagine, and I have been in companies where you made the rules up as you went along. (The benefit of my experience in that example was that I knew what the structure should look like. It became a matter of prioritizing those issues against others faced by the company.)

At the end of the day, I have learned a lot of interesting things in my time and I want to leverage it in a situation where I can contribute but also learn more.

What is important to me?

At this level of the game, team chemistry is a key factor. In the four turnarounds in which I was involved, it was interesting to be in situations where the chemistry was good versus those where it was bad. Guess which team was more successful in a very stressful situation?

Is the specific industry important? Not as much as you might expect. In the finance realm, about 80% of the tasks you are responsible for are going to be similar across businesses and 20% will be specific to the company or industry. For example, when I worked for International Radiology Group, a healthcare company, I had functional responsibility for accounts payable and accounts receivable. Was this significantly different that the A/P and A/R functions in the manufacturing companies I worked for? Not really. The objectives were the same - maximize cash usage by pushing out payables and accelerate receivables cycles as much as possible. In healthcare, there was the medicare/medicaid issues to deal with, but you didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what had to be done.

The same can be said about other sub-functions within finance, whether it be revenue recognition in accounting, tax strategy with international units, standard cost accounting for a manufacturer, or strategic planning, there are common elements which hold across industries. Those issues that are not common can be learned or may already be resident in other members of your organization.

An important part of my role as business partner to the other functions in an organization is to identify the key business drivers, develop metrics to track and report on them, and to evaluate alternatives from both an economic and strategic standpoint.

I view the financial role as being the #2 person in the company, the "right hand" to the President/CEO. Before the marketing and sales professionals stop reading and go off in a huff, let me explain. While I have a great deal of respect for the other functional responsibilities and contributions, I feel it is my job to know about everything that is going on in the company. It does not matter if it is sales initiatives, compensation plans, manufacturing variances, capacity planning, or marketing spends, I need to be able to fully understand and communicate both within and outside of the organization the impact that your piece of the pie has on the rest of the organization.

Let me give you a specific example where this was painfully evident. I was hired by a company to create the planning and analysis function. In the course of receiving inputs for the annual operating plan, there were huge discrepancies across functions about what was going to happen in the coming year. For example, the sales team anticipated selling 100,000 units a month whereas part of the operations team was gearing up to support only half that amount and another part of the operations group was putting plans in place to support double that amount. In addition, marketing plans were not in place to fuel that kind of growth. Nobody was talking!

Needless to say, round 1 went into the shredder and we started with a clean sheet of paper. My role was to ensure that the annual operating plan was in keeping with the strategic objectives of the company. To achieve this goal, Step 1 was to agree upon realistic sales targets; Step 2 was to identify the marketing, operational, and headcount initiatives to support the sales objective; and Step 3 was to add it all up and see whether we could make a buck. If we could not, then we start tweaking until we all had a plan we would COMMIT to (not just a budget dreamed up by yours truly, but one in which everyone had a stake).

Another MAJOR FACTOR is the ability to grow professionally. I have to have the opportunity to learn and grow.

Is job title relevant?

It depends.

If your business is $50 million to $500 million in revenue, I would expect to be the #1 or #2 person in the finance function and part of the senior executive leadership team.

If your business is $5 billion in revenue, I would probably have a title ranging anywhere from Director to Vice President. It is going to vary from business to business. I am not particularly concerned with what is on my business card. I just want to be challenged and have the opportunity to grow in my career. Growth can be either functionally, or cross-functionally.

What about compensation?

Again, it depends.

I have lived in the Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest. There are places where the dollar goes much farther than others. I was offered a job in a major west coast city which was going to pay me 2 times what I make in Dallas. I had to turn it down as the "affordable housing" was the size of a 2 car garage.

Am I open to relocation?

Yes, including international relocation (however, Iraq is currently off-limits).

What are the things that sometimes knock me out of contention?

At a glance ...

1. No Big "4", Big "6" or Big"8" audit experience - It is true .... 22 years ago I did not pursue a 2 year stint in public accounting to get my CPA. However, I do have a Masters degree in Accounting and have closed more sets of books and written more journal entries than I care to remember. In one company I had to close 14 months of books in my first 6 weeks on the job (gee, I wonder why the previous guy got fired!). In addition, I have redesigned control processes, been on audit committees, and reconciled significant inter-company transfer pricing issues.


2. SOX - It seems as though everyone in the public arena is looking for a SOX expert. Two years ago nobody even knew what SOX was. Alarmingly, there is some evidence from my recent interviews with CFOs of public companies that would suggest that even the Big "4" still are not exactly sure what this is all about. Refer to number 1 above. I have a friend who is a "SOX consultant" and is now considered an "expert" managing projects after 6 months on the job. It is kind of scary considering she has no background in audit or public accounting.


3. SEC Reporting - Have I ever had the job title of SEC reporting manager? No. But I have done financial reporting and written MD&A sections for 3 different public companies. Putting together numbers is not that difficult ... but, you really need to make sure you have good legal counsel if you want all your bases covered.


4. Cost Accounting - Again, have I ever had the job title of Cost Accounting Manager? No. But I have had cost accounting responsibilty in several different manufacturing environments, have led the standard costing process, and have drilled down variance analysis to the 1/10th of a penny. I can develop allocation methodologies with the best of them.


5. Hmm, looks like you're a job hopper - I have had the fortune and mis-fortune of working in 4 turnaround companies in a row. I learned more in those situations than most people learn in their career. I have had to prepare 6 month forecasts with weekly detail and stick to them within $100. I certainly did not intend to join a company that was heading south. In fact, in two of the four companies I was the one who identified that there were major problems looming after only a couple of months on the job. In a third, I met with the Chairman of the Board of a publicly listed company and his senior staff to confirm the strategic direction of the unit I was being recruited to join. Everyone seemed to be on the same page. Two weeks after I started, my boss left in a dispute over the direction of the unit. Just over one year later the unit was closed after the parent company was acquired. Had my crystal ball not been in the moving boxes, I may have forseen this ... but I would have been the first to know!

Any other questions?

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