The search is on! Time to hire someone to fill a senior finance position. This position has specific technical skills that I am willing to pay for a senior position because it would take years to train this employee the basic skills it takes to do this job. I put out a job post and what do I get? A bunch of resumes from people that have none of the basic skills I am looking for…surprised? Not really. Most of the people who applied for this job have some sort of bookkeeping background or management experience. I am not discrediting this experience but if you know anything about financial positions it require a great understanding and how to manipulate it (Years of time to train). At this point I had three resumes that had data experience so I decided to bring them in for an interview.

The first guy I schedule for an interview shows up to the interview 30 minutes late (strike one). I bring him in and he tries to tell me everything that I want to hear but nothing in detail and a bunch of basic statements (strike two). Then I hit him with it, “Tell me the hardest thing you have ever done in excel.” The response I get just blows me away. “I have added conditional formatting to a spreadsheet I use everyday in excel.” WOW (strike three, you are out)! Not knowing excel and applying for a senior finance position will never get you hired. What a waste of my time…I didn’t hire him to say the least.

My next interview had a very qualified employee on paper, so I thought this one should go a lot better. It didn’t…It was like pulling teeth to get information out of this candidate. I stated by asking him to tell me about yourself. He starts going into detail about his personal life. If you are ever at a job interview and a potential employer ask you to tell them about yourself they are not asking about your personal life. The potential employer wants to know about you professionally. The only professional thing this candidate told me was that he had an MBA. I get it you have an MBA I can see that on your resume, and I don’t really care other than it help get him in the door. I am looking for specific skills to do a job so I don’t have to baby sit all day long. Okay great this guys wants nothing but to talk about how great he is. This is not the type of employee I want to hire because from my experience this type of employee won’t work well as a team everything he does will be to jockey himself up the ladder. After about 20 minutes of me asking all the questions and getting very general answers back I had to end the interview. It was not a fluid conversation and I had a hard time communicating with this candidate in the interview, probably not going to get easier if I hired him. When I interview for a position I judge on skill but also on personality. By personality I mean someone that I can work with 40 hours a week and they won’t get on my nerves.

After two interviews I was almost fed up but I still had one more to go after lunch. The third candidate had the technical background but not the accounting skills that will take me years to train. I haven’t had much luck so far so I went in with an open mind. This candidate started off by telling me exactly what he was looking for. A chance to learn financial data skills so that he could move up into management after a few years. A good start (Motivated). I had a great conversation with this candidate and it was a fluid back and forth conversation. I could see myself working with him and being able to have a detailed conversation that were not one sided. With a senior level position it is more about having a partner than an employee since they will be doing a lot of task by themselves.

I ended up hiring the third candidate and he is doing great so far. I have to bite the bullet a little and spend more time training him on the data but his technical expertise in the field has done wonders when it comes to explaining the numbers.

My two cents on hiring people is look for motivation people that are willing to learn and that you can communicate with.