It's the middle of August and former Thomasville Furniture Industries CFO Paul Dascoli, 45, is riding a 300-foot roller coaster at Cedar Point Park with his two fearless teenagers. But his mind is on a roller-coaster journey of its own, contemplating the ramifications of a corporate reorganization that prompted him to resign rather than accept a diminished role. He has been toiling in a rented office for three months, sending out résumés and working the phones. "It is intense and tiring," he says, "but you can't let up until a deal is done."

Cut to the West Coast, where Ashley Spencer has a different attitude toward her job search. On a whim, the newly minted CPA flew from Portland, Oregon, to New Zealand and spent six weeks touring after leaving PricewaterhouseCoopers following her fourth audit season. Still not ready to work, the 25-year-old spent the next two months attending weddings and visiting friends, expecting that employers would probably move quickly once they saw her résumé.

Cruise south to San Diego and find Adam Luger enjoying life in a similar fashion. Thanks to being laid off in June with a cushy severance package, the former Pfizer finance manager was free to spend a month in Germany watching the World Cup, another visiting family, and plenty of hours enjoying California's coastline. Far from worrying about his next paycheck, Luger, 32, deliberately delayed his job search until mid-August in order to embrace the summer.

Then there's 40-year-old Scott Whitehurst. Wearied by the friction between two bosses, Whitehurst left his job as a divisional CFO at Novartis in Switzerland last February. Since then, he has reconnected with his family and started rehabbing vintage race cars. As of August 15, he had interviewed at five companies, including Microsoft, but is in no rush. "I'm looking for an environment," he says. "It's not about money. It's about finding people I enjoy working with. If I can't find that, I may never work again."

Most people don't relish the prospect of job hunting, but in finance, it's almost a way of life. Given inevitable reorganizations, layoffs, mergers, and pure and simple frustration, many finance professionals end up looking for work every three to five years. And like Dascoli, Spencer, Luger, and Whitehurst, all must make important decisions about what they want next and how they intend to get it.

What's different these days is that many seekers have the luxury of choosing when and where they go next. "Right now, the marketplace for financial candidates is hotter than I've seen it in 20 years," says Ted Buyniski, senior vice president at Radford Surveys & Consulting, thanks in large part to Sarbanes- Oxley-related needs. One indication: Financial Executives International reports that the number of its member executives "in transition" dropped from 778 to 562 between June 2004 and June 2006. "The job market for accountants, finance managers, and internal auditors is still very strong," so much so that "anyone with a college degree" is considered fair game, says Michael Assaad, vice president of permanent placement for Ajilon Finance.

Naturally, no one can count on an offer emerging from every interview, nor expect to jump three reporting levels. Still, "we're seeing companies going to greater lengths" to woo finance talent, says Buyniski. That translates into salary increases across the board (see "Pay Up"). At the CFO level, sign-on equity grants are 2.5 to 3 times the regular annual grant, and employment contracts that protect them from prosecution and takeovers are more prevalent, says Buyniski. At the nonexecutive level, sign-on bonuses can total 10 percent of base salary; staffers can also negotiate four-day workweeks or work-from-home options, adds Assaad.

But as Whitehurst says, it's not just about the money (and, of course, it doesn't have to be when it's so unequivocally good). From CFO to senior accountant roles, many finance professionals have the golden opportunity of not taking just any old job, but going after their ideal job. So what is it they really want? CFO spent a month following several job-seekers through their searches to find out what nirvana looks like for finance professionals and how they go about attaining it.

Cutting the Cord
The process typically starts with knowing what you don't want. At Thomasville (a subsidiary of Furniture Brands International), for example, the company was beginning an organizational restructuring, one that ultimately meant a new president and CEO and a shift from traditional domestic manufacturing to offshoring. For Dascoli, that shift meant that he would have to give up overseeing HR, IT, and brand licensing, a prospect that did not excite him. "The most exciting thing for me was the steady progression of responsibility," so it didn't make sense to stay when that reversed, he says.

In Spencer's case, working at PwC convinced her that there was no "life" in public accounting. After spending busy seasons working at least 12 hours a day, six days a week (often out of town), and long days on compliance work during the summers as well, she could not see any change in routine. "It's not PwC in particular, it's industrywide," she says. "They're always striving to give you a work/life balance, but I don't think it's realistic." Knowing that her credentials were good, Spencer was ready for a consistent schedule, one in which she could make plans and keep them.

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