Lessons from choosing the talent to power a Finance and Analytics function in fast-growing tech companies. Part 1 of 2.

In the previous post, I wrote about some of the learnings from leading finance teams in fast-growing tech companies. This one is dedicated to the hiring of team members.

In one of my previous roles, I had the opportunity to build a finance function from the ground up. As a result, I was either involved in the hiring process or directly hired almost all of the (~40) team members myself. The team was very diverse (gender and nationalities), scored well in the various “happiness” 😆 surveys, and had a very low turnover rate.

Most of my team in my various roles were not accountants. They operated in areas that they were more experienced in, than I was.

Who should you hire? 🤔

Experience vs capabilities

As in every industry and company, you want to hire capable, experienced, proactive, resourceful people that tick all of the boxes. Once again, as in every industry, often, this isn’t possible 😉. I think that potentially in tech, it is even harder. Tech in Australia is a growing industry and as such, it is harder to find the “ticking all boxes candidate”.

Arguably, this is also not the desired selection process. One of the principles that guided me when hiring was to prioritise capability and personality over experience. The reason for this is that it’s much easier to teach someone accounting than to teach them to be resilient or creative. In a growing and changing company, the needs of today are different to those of tomorrow. Hiring based on capabilities will increase the likelihood that the team can adapt.

I had a large team that worked extremely well together. Their professional background prior to joining was diverse, they came from mining, manufacturing, utility, betting, etc. The thing they had in common was a desire to excel, and a growth mindset.

I always prioritised intellectual horsepower, creative thinking, and a can-do attitude over experience.

A word on ‘cultural fit’

It took me a long time to decide how I feel about “cultural fit”. As a woman that came to Australia around 15 years ago, I bring with me a different culture. A different culture is not only the food one eats or how one dresses. It comes into play in how one thinks, how they express themselves, how they debate issues, and much more. I found it difficult to reconcile ‘cultural fit’ with diversity.

Cultural fit is important, you want your team to get along with each other, trust each other, and preferably, like each other 🤗. But you also want them to be diverse, to bring different ways of thinking, and diverse experiences into every discussion and every problem. A concern of mine is that sometimes ‘cultural fit’ is just a convenient justification for letting our biases make the decisions.

The way I reconciled it was that, for me, a culture fit is having shared values and shared goals. Those two are non-negotiable. All the other cultural aspects, such as whether the candidate drinks beer on Fridays 🍻, watches Star Wars, or follows footy 🏉 are secondary.

Make sure you have a mix of personalities and backgrounds in your team. Diversity is much more than gender. What I wanted is a mix of views, capabilities, and personalities. No doubt this makes it harder to reach a consensus and to organise team events that will appeal to everyone, 😵 but it increases the likelihood of achieving better outcomes.

Scaling

When leading teams in fast-growing businesses, the needs of the business develop over time and become more and more complex. Generally speaking, the skills and capabilities that would suffice for a 50 person business are not the same as for a 150 person business. Hence, the capabilities of the finance and analytics teams need to evolve accordingly, and the team will be required to scale with the business.

My advice is to hire for the potential growth rather than the growth achieved already. If you hire for the current level, you may find yourself in 6–12 months’ time with someone who is behind the curve. The downside for hiring someone too senior may be that you will need to pay them more, or that they might not be interested. Paying a little more (and getting more) in this case is not a bad idea. Given the cost of replacing people is high, it can still be preferable financially. I would recommend leaning towards the overqualified candidate and prioritise their capability to grow.