As labor trends continue to influence executive decision-making, employees are capitalizing on the opportunity to exercise their present leverage. Conversations surrounding preferred work settings, compensation, and career progression are now regularly raised during job interviews with CFOs. Based on this month's Peer Audit, it's evident employees are increasingly comfortable assessing what they can gain upfront from a potential employer.
We asked CFOs: What is your biggest demand and/or request from new hires?
Howard Wilson
CFO, PagerDuty (cloud computing SaaS)
Howard Says:
While discussions around compensation, benefits, and flexibility are still prevalent in the hiring process, new hires are keenly focused on assurances of job stability and career growth. Their need for certainty in stability has shown up in wanting to understand the financial health of the business, wanting to be sure of the commitment of executive leadership, and wanting to confirm the relevance of our product in the current economic environment.
For career growth, new hires are seeking to understand how we are using new technologies in finance, what we see as the impact of GenAI, how they can make a substantive impact, and where their career path can take them.
Sandra Beaver
CFO, Evolus (pharmaceutical developer)
Sandra says:
The first is equity compensation — and more of it. Many of our new hires are excited to join a high-energy company at the intersection of the medical and beauty industries, but they want a tangible share in the company’s financial success. New employees are seeing great opportunity in joining a smaller company that is on our trajectory toward becoming a multi-billion-dollar consolidator of medical aesthetics products and are advocating for more equity accordingly.
The second is, perhaps unsurprisingly, schedule flexibility. We know there are competing levels of desire for fully remote vs. in-office working environments. We have found that our employees — and many high-talent candidates we’re recruiting — are looking for a mix of the two so they can collaborate with coworkers in person, but also have some days to work from home. We’ve found balance in a hybrid model where employees come to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and the output of this model has led to incredible creativity, engagement, and job satisfaction.
Kate Peachway
CFO, TS Imagine (SaaS-based financial trading services)
Kate says:
We look to hire self-motivated problem solvers. One of the key values of TS Imagine is that talent rises. We have a strong track record of promoting capable and talented young people. We also look for team players who will work harmoniously with their colleagues.
Business building is a team sport, and it is critical that we bring a high level of respect for each member of the team. We operate in an environment of trust where we encourage debate and differences of opinion.
Ben Yankowitz
CFO, RocketFuel (cryptocurrency payments platform)
Ben says:
The most popular requests from new hires often revolve around working remotely. There’s a desire for greater flexibility and improved work-life balance, allowing individuals to design their work schedules around personal commitments.
Although we have a co-working space we use as an office when we have staff meetings, at RocketFuel, 100% of our staff works from home.
Michael Bayer
CFO, Wasabi Technologies (cloud-based storage provider)
Michael says:
First and foremost, we hear that our new employees want to have opportunities to learn and develop. We do this through a variety of means: engaging roles with lots of responsibility, opportunities to try new things, and formal and informal mentoring among them.
We closed a significant financing last year — a $140 million Series D round. During that process, we talked to a number of different investors, presenting to some at a very high level, and others in a more deeply engaged diligence process. Throughout the fundraising effort, I tried to include as many of the folks in the finance team as I could reasonably add to a Zoom call without overwhelming our investors. That way, they could hear the types of questions investors asked and the way I and others answered them.
Second, we hear from employees about benefits they would like. Of course, we have all the standard benefits. But we get a number of more specific requests. We are a global company, so some of the requests reflect local or regional differences in what is “standard” for benefits.
Our approach is to try to get the most out of every dollar we spend, including what we spend on benefits. Sometimes people ask for benefits like pet insurance. I understand the desire to protect pets, they are part of our families, but the cost of pet insurance offered through companies usually costs employees more than what they can get on their own.
The peer audit is a recurring series. For the previous edition, click here.