Tic, Tac, Toe, Who Can Be the CFO?

Tic, Tac, Toe, Who Can Be The CFO? “This is a clinical situation, client needs candidate, candidate comes with a personality... understand the client hires a personality finally, not his certificates or baggage.” Many recruiting firms are driven by this logic, which is wrong. It is a transition for the organizations, when recruiting a senior management. Each of us comes with a personality, it is behavior which at certain extent enhances the job performance, but it is only one among several factors that impact the job performance. Few things like taking the right decisions at the right time can come through experience which comes by doing the right jobs. Few recruiting organizations uIn days of yore, he was called chief accountant, a.k.a. bean counter and book keeper. But in the past 10 years, there has been a paradigm shift in a CFO’s role. Add to this, the advent of technology, breakdown of geographical barriers and the global financial crisis. The spotlight is now glaring on the CFO as never before.

This is what Jeetun Patki needs to keep in mind as he defines his ideal candidate. The CFO is not merely a name change, but a new role. Increasing investments from private equity brought the CFO to centre stage in managing stakeholder expectations and investor relations. Increasingly, the CFO is being seen as the shadow CEO, and in many companies, the CFO has become a natural successor to the CEO. Apart from corporate governance, the CFO now takes operational and strategic decisions, moving from supplying financial information to providing business advice, especially about mergers, acquisitions and divestments. In progressive organisations, the CFO is often seen deftly handling areas that were previously not considered his domain of expertise (such as talent management), contributing beyond finance.

Often, the CFO is the custodian of ethics and governance. The contemporary board governance structure offers an opportunity for the CFO to work closely