Qualified and Part Qualified Finance

“We started working with Headstar in March 2023 and they were engaged to recruit a compliance accountant for the European business. We had been trying to fill this role since December 2022 and had been working with a number of agencies without success. We had not received many CVs and the quality of CVs that we had received were disappointing. The role that we were trying to fill was quite niche and needed the person to have the right technical skills and experience. We were specifically looking for the person to have practice experience and be either a first time mover from practice or already in an industry role. We had an initial meeting with Headstar and so they could understand the role, the business, the team and the challenges that we were facing in filling the role. The team at Headstar quickly understood what we needed and made suggestions on where we could make the role more appealing to potential candidates ie changing the job title, salary, offering sponsorship. We agreed an approach to the recruitment process and Headstar did everything that they said they would do and within the agreed timescale. There was a lot of focus on this role by the Headstar team and they were very proactive in contacting potential candidates. Headstar were successful in recruiting a person for this role and they have found someone with exactly the right experience and skills and also a good fit with the rest of the team / business. We will definitely use Headstar again for finance recruitment and it was a pleasure to work with them” – Jen Hartley, Regional Finance Director.

A small business with a dilemma of whether they needed to recruit a Finance Director or Financial Controller, but equally needed some advice on the difference between the two. We understood their frustrations with their current finance department and introduced them to a part-time Finance Director. This worked well for them as they’d be unable to afford somebody of this calibre on a full-time basis, nor would we recommend this level of spend given their size. The part-time Finance Director was able to ‘get under the bonnet’ of the finance department and advise the board on a structure that was fit-for-purpose. We worked with the part-time FD and MD to source a competent Financial Controller on a permanent full-time basis. Both Headstar recruits are doing well, and the board now have a fully functioning finance department to aid their decision making.