In 2002, Foltz was CFO of Platinum Equity Holdings when the Beverly Hills–based private-equity firm acquired a large company with divisions in every major country in the European Union. Thanks to a "significant" amount of travel and help from highly qualified in-country attorneys, financial advisers, and existing management, Foltz was able to get up to speed on such issues as European labor laws and the massive severance pay they generally require for layoffs. Other challenging issues, he says, were corporate and tax structures, and director liability laws. "Like anything else, it's a steep learning curve, and you have to ask the right questions of a lot of people to get the right answers," Foltz says.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: You need IT experience.
In this case, conventional wisdom may be hard to refute. With information technology consuming half of all capital spending, and with IT underpinning many of the regulatory controls around finance, it's hard to be a technophobe these days. More than half the CFOs responding to a recent Robert Half survey ranked IT expertise as the third most necessary skill after accounting and finance. That's up from 28 percent who named it as a top-three skill five years ago. And according to the most recent CFO magazine/Duke University Global Business Outlook survey, 33 percent of CFOs say the chief information officer reports to them, while 30 percent say the CIO reports to the CEO.

A lack of IT knowledge can significantly limit a finance executive's career options, say recruiters. "The difference is night and day between one candidate for a CFO job who has experience with SAP, Oracle, J.D. Edwards, Lawson Software, or Great Plains Software and one who doesn't," says Paul McDonald, executive director of Robert Half Management Resources, which places finance executives in interim roles.

When IT is central to the company's mission, a CFO may get away with only selective involvement. ModusLink Global Corp. CFO Steve Crane, for example, will work closely with IT on a project such as an ERP upgrade, but does not oversee the CIO, because "our ERP system is very important beyond finance," he says, offering customers a window into where their merchandise is at any given point. If the system goes down for even half an hour, "we hear from them." At ModusLink, therefore, the CIO reports to the CEO.

If international experience is a requirement that is almost mandatory, IT know-how is similarly de rigueur at midsize and smaller companies. There, IT is very likely to report to the CFO, making a knowledge of everything from databases to wireless security a larger part of the CFO's portfolio. Many companies embed finance staffers within IT organizations to provide some analytical expertise on lease, purchase, contract, and other IT-acquisition matters, which can be a great way to learn what IT is up against these days.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: You need to cultivate relationships with recruiters.
Maintaining good relationships with a network of search professionals "is a must," believes Paul Dascoli, who landed his position as CFO of the jeanswear division of VF Corp. two years ago through a recruiter. "They know about more open positions than your regular networks and a lot of times will have better inroads into an organization." Dascoli says that keeping up his recruiter connections also helps him hire smarter, since "as you get to know them personally, you learn what companies they can get into and which ones they can't."

Other CFOs agree. Eric B. Weekes, now CFO of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, credits a recruiter with helping him get his first big career break, moving out of General Foods after it was acquired by Kraft Foods and into the role of treasurer for publicly traded Illinois Power Co. He had built up that relationship over two years, meeting informally with the recruiter with "no specific strategy." His "no-strategy" strategy is also what eventually led him to the CFO seat through a recruiter four years ago. "You have to let the recruiters get to know you, and then they know the right job match when they see it," says Weekes.

But say you haven't been in contact with recruiters for a while and now find yourself ready for a new job. Is it hopeless? Not if you've maintained your own personal network, which many CFOs say trumps recruiters' databases. Foltz of Gorilla Nation says only his current job has come through a recruiter, and "nothing replaces the personal and professional network that's been built over the years."

In February, James Cline won his first CFO role, at Trex Co., a $320 million maker of wood-alternative housing products. Cline, who was most recently president of Harsco Gas-Serv, jumped into the candidate pool at the last minute, at the behest of Trex CEO Ronald Kaplan, with whom he had worked 11 years previously. While he did spend half a day with a recruiter ahead of interviews, Cline says the most important thing was to convince the board he would be able to handle the role, thanks to the fact that "the CEO [already] knew what my strengths were."

CareerBuilder CFO Kevin Knapp also got his job through a personal connection, a classmate in his MBA program. Ironically, Knapp was attending the evening program specifically to expand his horizons beyond finance, having headed the function at Cars.com for six years. "I was eager to expand my skill set, and taking a job as CFO didn't seem to be the way to do it," Knapp recalls. But thanks to a good relationship with his classmate, who happened to be the COO of CareerBuilder, Knapp had confidence there would be room to grow. Indeed, as the company has gone from $160 million to $800 million in sales, he has served in a multitude of roles in addition to being CFO, leading HR, legal, customer care, and IT at various times. "Clearly this was the right thing for me," says Knapp.

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