A forward-thinking finance team can be defined as one that consists of individuals who are tech-savvy, agile, strategic decision makers, apt at crisis management and damage control, and can manage budgets efficiently.
Companies need resourceful finance teams to remain nimble, competitive, and successful. It is very important to establish critical baselines for recruitment when you’re trying to formulate a team of sharp, forward-thinking employees.
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What You Should Look for in a Team
This is the threefold formula recommended for efficient and effective talent hunting.:
Automation Experience
A startup with an effective and qualified finance team should make efforts to automate all repetitive tasks, with a mind to offload unnecessary workload and enable a greater range of flexibility.
Potential finance recruits might be asked if they have any prior experience with automation. This could include building databases using tools such as Tableau, an automated data analytics software, writing complex COUNTIF formulae, creating complex financial models using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) on Excel, etc. Such experience might also determine if they are capable of managing automation without training.
Autonomous Working Ability
When building a workforce, it is important to ensure that they are not the kind that needs excessive oversight. Young and burgeoning finance hires, for example, need to be autonomous workers and self-starters. They should be capable of taking charge, finding solutions, and executing damage control measures when faced with a problem or crisis, without any micromanagement or intervention from supervisors, or managers.
The kind of candidate a business should add to its finance team is one who shows signs of having an entrepreneurial mindset. Such independent professionals immediately provide an infusion of intelligence and vigor to an organization.
Willingness to Collaborate
The first few financial recruits in any organization set the tone for the team to follow. They are also key factors in allowing your company to scale. Early hires need to be highly collaborative and initiative oriented. Not only should they be able to work with the business’s leadership, but they should also be able to propose development processes that are sustained against the pressure of hypergrowth.
The importance of employee motivation is paramount to growth; a direct determinant of how willing and capable employees will be.
What Measures Can You Take to Facilitate the Team?
A toxic work environment is the worst place to expect responsible and loyal behavior from employees. To attract highly trained and professional employees, a business must make itself worthy by adopting a strategic and efficient model based on integrity and forward-thinking, and sincere intentions toward their employees. Here is how you can do your part:
Lead by Example
It is surprising how much leadership rubs off on company employees. If employees see their top management demonstrating drive, integrity, responsibility, morality, and initiative, they are likely to feel inspired to mirror such behavior.
As a matter of example, if you want employees to prioritize time management, you will have to set an example yourself.
Set Clear Strategic Goals and Realistic Expectations
Having a clear and proper line of communication is very important to ensure smooth operations at any organization. The team must understand the company’s vision and be clear about its (and their own) goals.
Implement Analysis Based Business Solutions
The tools a company uses speak volumes relative to their forward-thinking approach, or lack thereof. Strategic and forward-thinking businesses use the most up-to-date tools for their operations. Automation can be a game changer for companies, particularly in the finance department. There have been manifold developments in data science and analytics, and AI that simplify financial operations drastically.
Budgeting, for example, has become much easier, using business intelligence solutions. Predictive analytics can be used to create financial forecasts for the upcoming year to improve budget allocation. Similarly, employee performance tracking has also become much easier, because some of the best employee monitoring software can be leveraged to offer direct insight into trends in employee behavior and to predict future performance.
It is a widely known fact that recruitment, particularly for financial departments, is a tedious process. To avoid the trouble of searching for new recruits in a costly and time-consuming manner, you can always leverage a staffing agency in Pittsburgh. Not only would it save you the trouble of launching a recruitment program, but it would also expedite the process of hiring by introducing you to qualified and relevant talent pools.
