Additional Skills You Should Look for When Hiring a Finance Professional to Join Your Team

Additional Skills You Should Look for When Hiring a Finance Professional to Join Your Team
Adam Simpson
11/17/2014
Updated:
4/23/2016

When seeking a finance professional to join your company, it’s likely that excellent number skills and solid knowledge of the field are the main priorities in your search.

Of course, it’s vital to hire a person that knows their stuff when it comes to finance, but this shouldn’t be the sole criteria when looking for your ideal candidate. Financial roles, just like any other position, require a number of other skills; and regardless of how excellent a person may be with numbers, if they don’t have certain other basic requirements in place, they won’t make the grade in your organization.

According to Florida staffing agency HH Staffing Services, additional skills vital to any financial role include:

  • Ability to Sell: If the role requires any aspect of working with clients, then it’s important that your candidate demonstrates evidence of having basic sales and marketing skills. Even finance professionals should be equipped to present their company in the best possible light to potential customers, even if it’s not their job to clinch the deal. They must be also be able to present themselves effectively, in order to ensure the client feels comfortable using their services.

  • A Firm Grasp of Technology: In the 21st century, knowledge of technology is vital. In finance, nowhere does this apply more than in Excel. At the very least, your finance candidate should be able to know their way fluently around Excel (and indeed Microsoft Office in general), and ideally, they'll be able to show skills using other software tools too.

  • Communication: It’s likely that your candidate will need to communicate with clients on a fairly regular basis. As a result, it’s important that they’ve got the necessary skills to convey concepts and ideas, present important information and communicate a positive message about the company. They'll also need to be able to be able to communicate well through writing.

  • Organizational Skills: It’s probable that your financial professional will have a good level of organizational ability already (those who work with numbers for a living often do!) However, you'll need to make sure that they’re able to organize their workload effectively too.

  • The Right Attitude:When it comes to creating a harmonious team environment, good attitude is everything. The ideal candidate should show genuine passion and commitment to the role, and have an approachable, pleasant demeanor. They'll also need to show a certain level of endurance, as financial roles are often demanding.

Finding the Right Financial Professional for Your Business

There are a variety of ways that you can approach the task of seeking a candidate for your role. However, if you take on the task yourself, you need to be aware that it is a laborious, time-consuming process; and even then, there’s no guarantee that you'll find a person who is entirely suited to the position.

As a result, it’s often more effective to work with a staffing solutions team; who will take on the arduous task of locating an ideal candidate for you. This has the considerable advantage of not only saving you time (and potentially money in the long run) but vastly increases your chances of finding someone who can offer real value to your business.