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Accountants in business are fortunate to have an almost endless selection of sectors and roles to aim for, but how can you ensure you’re on course to take the right step? Whether you want to progress in your current role or move to pastures new, George Carey explores how you can prepare for success.
Demand for skilled D accountants is robust, with research showing that 73% of businesses have difficulty hiring, according to Search. Opportunities are plentiful, but how can you ensure you’re in good shape to progress in your career?
Talk the talk
Members of the finance team, unfair or otherwise, aren’t generally thought of as the great communicators in an organisation. Working on your communication skills and developing good relationships throughout your company is therefore a great way toget yourself noticed. Neil Morling, CFO at Handley House, has had a storied career and, throughout, he has observed that those in the finance team who can position themselves as trusted advisers are the ones who progress.
To improve his own skills Morling opted to challenge himself, speaking at conferences.
“There’s nothing more terrifying than standing up and speaking in front of 100 of your peer group, many of whom have paid to be there,” he recalls. Putting yourself in such a pressured situation is, he says, a fantastic way to push yourself and adapt.
Gary Darlington, an associate director with recruitment consultancy Robert Walters, has also witnessed the boost that good stakeholder relations can give a finance manager’s career. He says: “Sometimes there can be a barrier between finance and the rest of the business, so if you’re the person who people are comfortable to go to with ideas, that’s really important.”
Look outside your remit
Whether you’re looking to step up in your current organisation or make yourself attractive to a new company, having a diverse skill set will set your CV apart from the rest. Anthea Morris went from a role in finance to a wider role in resources, before co-founding sexual health company Better2Know. Her career is a testament to the power of looking beyond your existing role.
While working for a charity, her finance director revealed that he was interested in taking on a director of resources role within the organisation, bringing together responsibility for finance, HR and IT. Taking the time to involve herself in both HR and IT, she helped her manager with his expanded responsibilities and took her own career in an exciting new direction. “I joined The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which offers a fast-track scheme for experienced managers, so I’m now chartered with them as well as a chartered accountant.”
Capitalising on her new skills, she went on to secure her own director of resources role in a smaller organisation. This increased responsibility gave her the expertise and confidence to countenance co- founding a company. She encourages anyone looking to diversify their skills to ascertain their manager’s career goals and see how they could benefit their own professional path.
While Neil Morling has stuck to roles in finance, throughout his rise to CFO he is in no doubt that making the effort to involve himself in parts of the business outside his remit has bestowed huge benefits on his career.
“When I was CFO for a law firm, I sat with the partners listening to how they developed cases. It was a way for me to get to know more about them as individuals and how that part of the business worked.”
When not taking on the responsibilities of other departments, Anthea Morris also took her cue when finance team members left a business to see if she could absorb some of their role.
“The company instantly has an important business function taken care of and I can add another skill to my arsenal. It’s win-win,” she beams.
Machine learning
Gartner predicts that through 2024, only 40% of cloud financial management solution implementations will achieve their goals. With such challenges in place, becoming tech savvy will elevate you in the eyes of current and potential employers.
David Bailey is a partner at executive search firm Eton Bridge Partners, and has seen enough software rollouts to know how they affect the finance function. While most vendors will pitch their product as a panacea it’s vital, he says, to understand that however good the software, it will need to integrate with a vast existing infrastructure comprising cobbled- together elements and historic operational issues. “As a finance manager, you become valuable when you understand the drivers and restraints of joining those things together,” he says.
By involving yourself in any new system’s implementation you can gain valuable experience and position yourself as a subject matter expert within the business, adds Darlington.
“Sometimes new tech can frighten people, so if you can make yourself the go-to person for tech queries that’s a huge advantage,” Darlington says.
Realising your worth
If you’ve been hard at work adding new skills to your portfolio and becoming a subject matter expert
in your company, it’s reasonable to expect this will be reflected in your salary. Pitching a raise to senior management is often easier said than done, so you need a compelling narrative. As a CFO and specialist headhunter, David Bailey knows what it takes to secure the salary you deserve.
“Understand what the rules of the game are and how raises are awarded,” he says. “Is it a meritocracy or a popularity game. Are raises discretionary or formulaic? If it’s
the latter, do you understand the formula?”
Equally important, he asserts, is to have a bigger picture view of what you’re worth, what the market pays and where your organisation sits in that landscape.
Looking further afield
A great way to appreciate the wider market and where you sit within it is by grasping networking opportunities whenever and wherever they arise. Whether through professional bodies, recruitment firms or vendors, there’s no shortage of opportunities for those who make time to attend.
The long-term career advantages of an extensive professional network are obvious but Gary Darlington often sees finance managers benefit in their current roles, too.
“It’s useful, to focus on something outside your business and find out what’s going on in the wider world so you can bring that knowledge into the organisation,” he says.
If these forays into the wider world have turned your head, it’s important to know what job opportunities are available in the marketplace. According to David Bailey, though, when a vacancy becomes available it may already be too late. Rather than looking for a job, he urges people in the job market to seek out companies offering a set of themes and circumstances that match and overlap with their skills and experience, which may have vacancies in the future.
“One of the great things about finance leadership is that there’s generally a cycle to it,” he explains. Asserting that more than half of all CEOs will change their CFO within the first 18 months of appointment, he urges candidates to look for changes further up the food chain to anticipate upcoming opportunities at their level. “If the business you’re interested in has a new CEO, sooner or later there’s a good chance it will have a new CFO, which then filters down to the rest of the department as that CFO looks to appoint new team members.”
By anticipating openings that may arise in the next 12-18 months, you can put effort into building your visibility and connectivity with individuals
in that business, Darlington adds: “When ambitious people start a new role they already have an eye on the next opportunity.”
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