Leadership

What Are the Key Factors When Hiring Financial Analysts?


by Didi Gurfinkel

Those in the position of hiring financial analysts for any organization must establish a minimum threshold of industry professionalism and knowledge of best practices to be met by all serious candidates. However, in 2022, there are many other factors to consider, even beyond setting a high experiential standard.

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The financial industry starts the new year having mostly been spared the effects of the “great resignation.” But it is still the case that the labor market writ large has been in turmoil for the better part of a year, and employers in any vertical must be aware of that heightened volatility spreading in any direction.

Amid such a volatile employment environment, it’s more imperative for institutions to hire analysts that can go the distance – and in order to do so, industry leaders must formulate viable strategies for courting, assessing, and bringing onboard new financial professionals.

Those in the position of hiring financial analysts for any organization must establish a minimum threshold of industry professionalism and knowledge of best practices to be met by all serious candidates. However, in 2022, there are many other factors to consider, even beyond setting a high experiential standard. For instance, it is impossible to ignore the influence of technology on the field and how important it is for professionals to be in sync with those developments. And in the age of COVID-19, sustaining a healthy company culture is more important than ever. Business leaders should consider these factors and more as they vie for stability and performance in the months and years to come.

Professionalism

The landscape of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) is changing rapidly, and analysts will need to keep up with the latest skills if they hope to thrive. At a bare minimum, execs must be supremely confident in new hires' ability to meet the basic competencies required of an FP&A professional, including assessing financial health, monitoring financial KPIs, determining profitability and ROI for new projects.

That said, the ability to meet these needs is not sufficient. These basic skills require knowledge of key finance principles and core processes, a technical ability to work seamlessly with numbers, and communication and reporting.

The influence of technology and data

There’s a reason why the Data Scientist role has emerged as one of the most impactful of the digital age. And while big data is still a relatively new concept, technical and practical knowledge of data science is set to become a fundamental skill-set for any potential FP&A hire.

As digital interconnectivity becomes more and more pervasive and the lines between verticals continue to blur, is it easy to predict that financial analysts with backgrounds in AI and adaptive learning technology will be more desirable to employers. Everyone agrees that data analytics is increasingly essential to financial services. It is whose responsibility data management should be. This window of uncertainty, while the industry reckons with the answer to that question, is the perfect opportunity for FP&A analysts to rise to the occasion and become ever more valuable.

Work culture and environment

In FP&A technical know-how is only part of the bigger picture, and FP&A is no exception. This includes skills like task flexibility, the ability to think ahead, and understanding of current events.

The most valuable FP&A professionals are not necessarily defined by the extent of their technical know-how and professional skills. Those financial professionals most able to go the distance are those adept at going beyond the data, which is often fairly limited in its use if not connected to a larger picture. It’s one thing to be able to demonstrate fluency with data. It is another thing altogether to connect the dots and provide the insights that underpin a company’s financials. CFOs are catching wind of the growing gap between the part of FP&A that is just number crunching and the part that calls for an understanding of the meaning behind the numbers.

When it comes to hiring anyone new for a company, particularly in a financial role, the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. HR reps must be trained to identify a promising ensemble of factors when they see it.

Equally as crucial is that HR reps  account for the changing work dynamic of a post-pandemic world, taking a flexible and holistic approach to employees’ well-being.

Finally, for a company to thrive, it must achieve an environment that facilitates synergy and structures roles in such a way as to promote effective collaboration and innovation. Getting the formula right will be no mean feat -- but companies that manage to do so will reap massive rewards in 2022.

Didi Gurfinkel is the CEO of DataRails.