At Broster Buchanan, we regularly support clients with complex and high-level recruitment challenges. One such assignment, led by business director Lucy Tavender, involved the hire of a French national CFO under strict confidentiality – requiring multiple layers of complexity across geography, skill-set, and stakeholder management.
As you can tell, this was not a typical executive search. The brief included a sensitive location, a very specific profile, and the need to balance input from numerous internal decision-makers. From initial research through to final offer, the process was highly collaborative, with all parties needing a transparent approach, to be efficient and effective.
International CFO recruitment presents unique challenges that extend far beyond traditional executive search. Cross-border finance executive placements require careful navigation of visa requirements, cultural alignment, and complex salary negotiations across different markets. When recruiting for French nationals for UK-based CFO roles, considerations include dual-country tax implications, professional qualification recognition, and ensuring seamless integration with British corporate governance standards. All these and more can come into play when recruiting for positions when countries or candidates from outside the UK are part of the search criteria. Further, the confidential nature of this particular search added another layer of complexity, requiring discrete market mapping and sensitive stakeholder management across multiple jurisdictions.
After a careful search and affective placement, we were delighted to receive feedback from the client’s Chief HR Officer, Nick, who had worked closely with Lucy throughout:
“Having used BB on UK based assignments, a real challenge arose to hire a French national CFO to join our executive leadership team. The assignment had significant built in constraints, strict confidentiality, difficult location, nationality, skill set, sector and numerous stakeholders to satisfy. But, working together with Lucy on all the phases from research to offer meant we made a successful hire who filled the complex brief. The key to the success of the assignment was working without the normal consultant–client barriers to face openly the very specific requirements.”
With a thank you to Nick and the wider team for trusting us with this important hire, we can show that difficult executive assignments like this can be achieved through removing barriers between consultant and client, and working in partnership to deliver against even the most demanding briefs. Building trust through a focus on putting people-first is how Broster Buchanan began and continues to grow.
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