Here’s Why You Should Come Work In Finance!

The finance function has changed. No more beancounters. A lot more business partners. No more Excel-hell. A lot more advanced analytics. No more management reporting on the tenth working day. A lot more real-time data available. No more sitting outside the door with no ears listening. A lot more sitting at the table making an impact. However, somehow, the outside world’s view of the finance function is still stuck in the dark ages and we’re finding it difficult to attract business people into Finance. Earlier we discussed what it would take to attract these people and started formulating a value proposition which you can read here. Now we’ll build upon that and start making Finance a place where top talents go to flourish and have stellar careers. 

I’ve seen your marketing campaign but it’s not real! 

Obviously, there’s a difference between what we say the finance function is all about and what it’s like to work there. It reminds me of when I was playing Warcraft 2 (the computer game) in the 1990’s. Here you could click repeatedly on various units and they would make a few funny remarks. One of them was from a sailor on a war boat and the talk went something like this. 

“Join the Navy they said

 See the world they said

 They must be joking!”

 So, of course, if your finance function still looks more like this…  

• …beancounters stuck outside the door…
• …with their work day ten management reporting…
• …which includes no real insights into how to improve business performance…

…you have a way to go before you can start marketing the new-look finance function. But it’s not because the finance function doesn’t have anything exciting to offer business people as a concept. We asked several people who had made the switch from the business side into Finance what attracted them to the function and below are the key takeaways. 

• Full P&L and balance sheet scope
• Helicopter view on the business
• Objective sparring partner
• Data-driven decision-making
• The opportunity to make a strategic impact.

It might not all be real today but then it’s your, without excuses, responsibility to make it happen. Otherwise, you can’t expect any top talents and high-potentials from outside Finance wanting to join your function. It’s one thing though to stuff these responsibilities into a job description but another to make it concrete and tangible for when your new hires start. Here are some of the questions to answer. 

• How do you work with the P&L and balance sheet? Is it through standard reports with drill-down or ad hoc analysis every time?
• What does it mean to have a helicopter view on the business? Is it through capital allocation, performance dialogues with business unit heads, or something different?
• Are you truly an objective sparring partner? It’s likely difficult for any one person to be fully objective as we all carry our biases so what is it that makes Finance objective vs. line functions?
• How does data drive decision-making look like? Are all significant decisions documented in terms of the reasoning for making the decision or are you just randomly looking at some numbers before you decide and then claim that data was taken into consideration?
• How are you making a strategic impact? Is it through quantifying the choices the company can make and challenging recommendations or is it simply by translating the choices management has already made into a 5-year plan without any real questioning?

Answering these questions will enable you to make a concrete and compelling value proposition to attract talents from outside Finance into Finance and make them stay. Likely this will function as a multiplier of your effectiveness as a function and drive value creation throughout the company. So, the benefits are clear and now you just need to make it happen!

If you have any experiences of changing from Finance to the business or the other way around then please tell us about it and we’ll be happy to feature your story in an article! It’s critical that we succeed with attracting more business people into Finance and we can only do that by making a clear and compelling value proposition and then tell the story.

I encourage you to take a tour of my past articles on finance transformation, finance business partnering and not least “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” which is really the starting point for the transformation. You should join our Finance Business Partner Forum which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community where we will continue to discuss this topic and you can click here to follow him on Twitter.

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Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Head of Global Finance Program Management Office at Maersk and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 6,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to create a world-class finance function not least when it comes to Business Partnering. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 24.000+ followers.