The State of Finance and Accounting Talent

Welcome to our first state of finance and accounting talent! You’ll be entertained to know that I write this from a two foot tall, pink arts and crafts table. My knees are basically in my mouth. The new baby fell asleep in a fort my daughters made, and I’m stuck in their playroom for the foreseeable future.

Before I forget to do the button thing:

Yea, so I’m going to start doing these on a monthly basis now that I’m running a boutique recruiting firm on the backs of this newsletter.

For those whom I haven’t bothered yet, it’s called Mostly Talent and we specialize in placing manager, director, and VP level finance and accounting pros. 

These updates will take the following format (until I inevitably wake up and choose to change them, as one does) 

Ok, so the first big thing me and Callie (my recruiting partner in crime) had to grapple with is how we got paid. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to find CFOs willing to pay something, as this is traditionally the harder side of the marketplace to crack (there will always be people looking for jobs, and they don’t have to pay anything to be placed. The scarcity here is how talented they are. Luckily we have an incredible talent base amongst our 75,000 readers)

Traditionally there are two common recruiting models: contingent and retained.

In a contingent model you only get paid if you successfully hire someone.

In a retained model, as the recruiter, you get paid no matter what.

Tangent: I also flirted with a low friction match making option. Yes, I tried to invent a business model.

I had to put that model in the hard pile. Inevitably it was too novel. And people were not sure what it was worth paying (including myself.)

This was a good lesson for business in general - not every problem needs a new approach (see: New Coke, The Juicero, Quibi). It was too hard to change people’s ways.

Sometimes it’s better to go with the devil you know and either just approach that model by doing it better (faster, higher precision) and / or cheaper (undercut competition). I’ve done a combo of both, which you’ll see below.

We came to the conclusion that we are a retained firm.

Why? It aligns with the principles of what we strive to be, designing it backwards from our experiences as both job seekers and hiring managers. 

As a candidate I only want to be put up for jobs that have a high degree of “good fit” (and at really great companies). And as a hiring manager I only want to see the best candidates; don’t flood the block with dog walkers and bar tenders for my controller role. 

We are all about precision. On both sides.

And more specifically, as it relates to the finance function, this group budgets for everyone else, yet always seems to eat last. They typically don’t get the same in house recruiting support as the people who build or sell the product. And even if they do, the roles they are looking for are infrequent and outside the wheelhouse of their TA team. 

Plus, me and Callie were partners for three years. I was the director of FP&A and she was the director of recruiting where we worked together. We want to bring that same experience into the companies we help. You can’t do that in a contingent model. 

(Oh and I like to get paid. I’m a cfo, remember?)

So that’s what we’re rolling with. It’s 30% of base paid in three installments.

Simple.

So that’s how we’ll monetize in a way that feels mutually aligned to the level of service and precision we bring.

Ok now what are Callie and I seeing in the market? 

This month we want to talk about how Claude is straight fucking shit up for everyone. Truly. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the Claude of times.

Living in 2026 is just waking up each morning and seeing if what my company does just got carpet bombed by a plugin. 

We were speaking with a hiring manager at a pre ipo company last week who was interested in our services. She reflected that they’re hiring for an ex investment banker like person to help with strategic finance. But she also realizes that much of this role will be absorbed once Google wakes up from its dirt nap and makes it so you can do cool AI stuff in sheets without a Claude plugin, and for free. 

Also how did Claude get there faster than the company who owns excel? Disgusting speed we are seeing, folks. 

She explained that AI will automate a bunch of their reporting and analysis, and they’ll ultimately shift their hiring focus from investment banker types at the junior level to those with deeper data knowledge at the mid to senior level.

So maybe SaaS is displacing the roles we’ve come to love. Or at least changing the mix shift.

But then, on the other hand, you still have this: 

So maybe we aren’t fully there yet.

But org charts are changing along with the technology. People are going to be hiring fewer and fewer junior roles, and repurposing that budget into a select number of mid to upper level finance hires. My goodness I’m happy I’m not still trying to slug it out in the trenches as a first year analyst. I’d be cooked (as the kids say… ergh, 6, 7, 6, 7)

So we expect more manager and director roles to open up, shifting the budgets and balance to those who can do the work coming out of the forecasting and making that powerpoint slide’s background a lighter shade of green. 

A lot of this is like a snake after having a big meal. Finance teams are still trying to figure out the appropriate size and shape of their teams. They’re digesting the tools they have at their disposal. What can I actually do with these? 

On a micro level, I used to pay $120 per podcast episode for someone in Bangalore to transcribe it accurately. This week I found assembly.ai where I can do it for 14 cents. 

Will forecasting using AI go the same way? Even if you don’t have to pay the analyst $120K per year any more, you still need someone to go and execute on the plans on the other end. The entire value chain predicated on that input is unfortunately not reduced to 14 cents. We as finance leaders are not dealing with finite tasks with concrete outputs. We are dealing with messy operational improvements that eventually turn into a number on the P&L. And that’s where the value of the middle manager becomes increasingly important. The lieutenants who can go and work with the marketing and engineering teams to implement change. And do it with a high degree of EQ. Since managing people’s motivations and expectations become the real blockers to any process improvement.

So while I don’t think AI is going to take your job, your job will absolutely be taken by someone with EQ who can use AI.

Thanks for hanging out with me and Callie in this inaugural issue. 

If you’re a candidate, drop your info like it’s hot. It’s confidential and we’ll send you job opportunities when we think there could be a match. Up to you if you take the call or not.

And we are working with a select group of A+ companies to land A+ finance and accounting talent.

If you’re looking to hire go here. We can activate your pipeline overnight with candidates we’ve pre vetted and spoken to 

We are currently hiring for:

Wishing you great talent,

CJ