The latest global CFO turnover index from Russell Reynolds Associates highlights the recruitment challenge facing corporates.
While the percentage of listed companies that appointed a new CFO in the first three months of this year (4.9%) was down from the record level recorded in the same period last year (5.2%), the 89 appointments made between January and March meant it remained above the seven-year Q1 average.
In addition, organisations continue to prioritise proven public company experience. The percentage of newly appointed CFOs in Q126 with prior public company experience was at its highest level since Russell Reynolds began tracking CFO turnover data in 2019.
According to Aylin Coskun Vardar, a 15-year finance veteran at a multinational pharmaceutical corporation, companies across the UAE say they are struggling to find the right CFO – yet the market is full of experienced finance leaders actively open to new roles.
“A pattern is emerging in how many of these searches are defined,” she says. “The brief often starts with a seemingly reasonable requirement for sector experience. But it rarely stops there. It narrows further: not just sector experience, but experience in a very specific segment of that sector, ideally gained in a similar market and often within a comparable business model.”
Dubai-based Coskun Vardar describes this as a familiar hiring question dressed differently: do you hire for technical experience, or for capability and mindset?
“For more junior level roles, most hiring managers prioritise capability,” she says. “Technical skills can be learned whereas judgement, leadership and the way someone approaches problems are far harder to teach. Yet at CFO and finance director level, that logic is often reversed in that a strict sector filter does exactly what we would usually avoid: it selects first for technical, sector-specific experience and only then considers leadership and mindset among whoever remains.”
Obviously, experience is essential for specific sectors. In financial services, for instance, capital requirements, regulatory frameworks and approval regimes place structural constraints on how the role can be performed.
Similarly, in highly technical and long cycle industries such as infrastructure or complex engineering, disciplines such as revenue recognition and project accounting require deep, experience-based judgement.
“However, for most businesses the more useful question is does this person have the judgement, leadership and learning agility to succeed here and to get up to speed quickly?” says Coskun Vardar.
“That requires a broader evaluation of the candidate and a clearer understanding of what the business actually needs. It is harder than simply applying a checklist but far more effective.”
The irony here is that companies struggling to fill CFO roles in a crowded market are facing constraints created by their own search criteria.
“The instinct that feels like it is reducing risk may, in reality, be the very barrier to finding the kind of leadership the business actually needs and to achieving the transformation it is trying to hire for,” she concludes.
