Don’t Let Tenure Fool You

Reliable Ways to Identify Top Finance Talent

This still floors me. If you’ve ever hired (or been hired), you’ve seen it: 5+ years required. 10+ years preferred. It’s written like a proxy for certainty - like time served automatically equals capability.

But years of experience is often a comfort metric, not a performance predictor.

Time is a Weak Predictor of Performance

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: two people can have the same number of years and wildly different levels of competence, judgment, pace, and impact. One has spent seven years doing progressively harder work, learning new systems, building relationships, and improving decision-making. The other has spent seven years repeating Year One…seven times.

So why do we keep using it? Because it’s easy to screen, easy to justify, and easy to explain. It feels objective. It isn’t.

Below is why I believe ‘years’ breaks down, and how candidates and employers can move to signals that actually predict whether someone will perform.

1. Time doesn’t measure difficulty, scope, or complexity

Two roles can share a title and have nothing in common.

• A Finance Manager in one business might oversee AP/AR, payroll, month-end, and cashflow in a stable environment

• In another, the same title might mean building forecasting from scratch, wrangling messy data, implementing a new ERP, and partnering with sales on pricing. Both might be five years in duration but the context determines whether those years contained real problem-solving or just routine execution.

What to look for instead:

• Scope (budget size, stakeholder breadth, systems owned)

• Complexity (ambiguity, pace, data quality, multi-entity, change)

• Decision depth (advising vs reporting)

2. Experience can create muscle…or scar tissue

Experience is not automatically positive. It can reinforce habits that worked in one environment but fail in another. Some people become faster, sharper, and more commercial over time. Others accumulate coping strategies: over-control, risk aversion, 'that’s how we’ve always done it' or performing busywork to avoid judgment calls.

In many roles, performance is rarely about knowing more - it’s about making better decisions with imperfect information and communicating them clearly. That’s not guaranteed by tenure. Sometimes it’s blocked by it.

So what’s potentially a better predictor? How someone reacts to new constraints.

• What do you do when you are up against a deadline and things are running late?

• What’s your approach when stakeholders disagree?

• Tell me about a time you changed your view after new data arrived

3. Tenure is a poor proxy for learning velocity

In fast-moving SMEs, learning velocity is everything. A person who learns quickly can step into ambiguity, pick up your business model, understand your data, and start improving decisions within weeks. A person who learns slowly might take months to become functional, and still never move beyond 'tell me what you want me to do'. Years of experience doesn’t reveal how quickly someone turns new information into better output.

A better predictor is operating from first principles, thinking and adaptability

• Ask for an example where they entered a new industry or system

• Give a small scenario and see how they structure the response

• Look for clarity, not jargon

4. Years required hides bias and shrinks your talent pool

This matters for both sides of the market.

For employers, hard time requirements can eliminate:

• Return-to-work parents

• Career changers with strong adjacent skills

• High-performing juniors from high-growth environments

• Candidates with non-linear paths

For candidates, it creates a fake hierarchy where the most ‘eligible’ person is simply the oldest on paper.

When organisations rely on years, they often miss the people who can actually do the job, and accidentally select for those who are best at appearing experienced.

So what should we use instead?

For employers - hire on signals, not tenure. Replace ‘5+ years required’ with a short scorecard:

Outcomes (what they must deliver)

• Produce a weekly cashflow view with driver commentary

• Deliver a forecast we can make decisions with

• Improve month-end close by X days

Capabilities (how they’ll do it)

• Systems thinking (process + data + controls)

• Commercial judgment

• Stakeholder influence

• Communication clarity

Evidence (how you’ll verify it)

• A 30-45 minute work sample (short, realistic, paid if substantial)

• A structured interview with scenario questions

• Reference checks focused on behaviours, not personality

  
  

For candidates - prove impact in one page. Instead of leaning on years, lead with:

• Here’s what I improved

• Here’s what I built

• Here’s the decision I influenced

• Here’s how I think

A short portfolio beats a long timeline: a dashboard screenshot (anonymised), a forecast approach, a one-page memo you’d send to a founder explaining variance and actions.

And the bottom line of approaching the matching process like this?

Years of experience measures exposure, not effectiveness. And in most roles - especially in SMEs - effectiveness is what matters.

So let’s stop treating time like a credential. The better question isn’t ‘how long have you done it?’ but ‘can you produce the outcomes we need, in the reality in which we’re living?’