How Boards Are Hiring Finance Leaders Now

Welcome to the Harper May newsletter, a fortnightly snapshot of the UK senior finance hiring market, written by the people who do the placements.

No fluff, no filler. Just what we're seeing, what it means, and roles worth knowing about.

Live medians from the Finance Pay Index, our crowdsourced UK salary benchmark. Add your own numbers at financepayindex.com.

From our latest salary survey of senior finance professionals, figures shown are the cohort average.

Reference calls used to be a formality at the end of a CFO process. Not any more. Boards that have been burned by a plausible but wrong hire are asking sharper, more specific questions, and asking them earlier.

Our latest piece sets out the exact reference questions now separating the strong CFO hires from the expensive mistakes, the ones a polished interview will not surface. Worth ten minutes before your next senior finance appointment.

Boards That Rehire From The Interim Seat Almost Always Get Burned
Why making your interim permanent without a proper search usually backfires.

When To Let An FD Run Finance For A Year Instead Of Hiring A CFO
The signals that tell a board a strong FD can hold the fort, and when to search properly.

The part of a finance leader's week that quietly leaks time is not analysis, it is writing up meetings: board sessions, one to ones, and the interviews when you are hiring. The notes either eat your evening or never get written.

Granola sits quietly on your calls and produces a tidy summary and action list you can actually use, so decisions and follow ups are captured while they are fresh. For interview panels it is especially useful, everyone gets the same clean record rather than four sets of half legible notes.

The habit worth building: let it capture the meeting, then spend two minutes editing the summary rather than twenty writing one. Mind what you record on anything sensitive, but for most internal meetings it is a straight time win.

We're working on 8 live vacancies across London, refreshed daily.

We're mapping shortlists now for CFO, FD, and FC mandates launching later this year. If you want a realistic view of the talent pool before you commit to a timeline, reply to this email or message Dan directly, no brief required, just a conversation.