The Challenge

An Amsterdam based VC backed SaaS company had requirement for a CFO to replace the Founding CFO with experience of exiting. Due to the nature of the position our client wanted a European wide search focused on recruiting CFO professionals from The Netherlands and The UK specifically. The CFO would be responsible for financial reporting, due diligence, investor relations and they needed to have experience of working in a tech start up as well as experience of growing and managing teams. The position was to lead the current team of 2 accountants and a Finance Manager with the budget in place to double the size of the Finance function, so team recruitment experience was also required.

The Solution

Our tech executive search team market mapped SaaS based companies in The Netherlands and The UK market and targeted the best CFO talent in the SaaS sector. We first exhausted all of our CFO candidate network throughout both countries and interviewed approximately 110 suitable CFO professionals. We then focused our search on headhunting from our client’s direct competitors which were approved by our client. At this level our peerless network of senior finance professionals that we have built up and worked with over the years came into its own, especially when carrying out background checks and cross-referencing.

Success

Our tech company recruitment team submitted our shortlisted candidates 14 days after receiving the brief. After a rigorous search and jeans interview process we presented our final five qualified candidates to the client. Three candidates were subsequently shortlisted to interview and meet the CEO and the board in Amsterdam before our client selected the strongest candidate.

Our client remarked that our market report was a great help for them in understanding where their company stood in terms of compensation and how they were perceived by the market in general.