A recent VP of Finance search brought to mind an important hiring lesson that often gets overlooked.

The company had just promoted their previous VP internally, and the CFO and I were working closely to fill the open role. After several months of searching, one candidate clearly stood out.

He was a CPA (rare in senior finance leaders) with a proven track record: building systems, improving processes, and driving EBITDA growth. The catch? He did not have Big Four experience.

When I presented him, the CFO hesitated.

“We really need someone who’s been through the rigor of a major accounting firm,” he explained.

I understood. Big Four training builds discipline and structure. But this candidate brought something equally valuable:

• Hands-on experience implementing systems
• Managing rapid growth phases
• Solving real operational challenges

We discussed the trade-offs, but in the end the CFO passed. He wanted the replacement to look like the predecessor.

Three months later, the search continues.

Meanwhile, the candidate who was “missing” Big Four experience landed at a competitor. Within a year, he was promoted and played a key role in helping them scale from $50M to $100M.

This is the risk of over-indexing on pedigree. When companies get locked into replicating the past, they can miss candidates who bring a different, yet equally powerful, set of skills.

The Hidden Cost of Extended VP of Finance Recruitment

What that CFO didn’t calculate was the true cost of perfectionism in finance executive search.

According to Robert Half’s 2025 survey of finance and accounting leaders, the average time-to-fill for permanent roles in this sector is now 7 weeks. For complex senior positions like VP of Finance or CFO recruitment, the timeline typically extends to 8-12+ weeks end-to-end, with many roles exceeding 60 days according to Workday data via HR Dive.

But time isn’t the only cost. Let’s look at the real financial impact.

Using the standard cost of vacancy formula: For a company with $150M in annual revenue and 600 employees, a vacant Director of Finance position carries significant weight. With revenue per employee at approximately $250,000 annually (or $961.54 per day), and applying a 3× multiplier for executive-level impact, each day that position remains open represents roughly $2,885 in uncaptured value.

Over a 70-day search—well within the average for VP of Finance hiring—that vacancy costs approximately $201,923 in unrealized revenue. This figure doesn’t include recruitment costs, overtime for covering staff, potential control risks, or strategic opportunities missed without senior finance leadership.

When the CFO chose to restart the search rather than hire the “imperfect” candidate, he unknowingly triggered another 12+ weeks of this drain—adding another $250,000+ to the company’s hidden costs.

The Research Behind Pedigree Bias in Finance Recruiting

The CFO’s hesitation wasn’t unique. It reflects a well-documented phenomenon in hiring.

Harvard Business Review research reveals that elite organizations concentrate recruiting at a handful of universities and firms, creating a “pipeline bias” that favors candidates with prestigious credentials—even when equally or more competent candidates exist elsewhere. In top-tier firms (investment banking, Big Law, and yes, accounting), these biases run deep.

A landmark study by Rivera & Tilcsik, published in HBR, demonstrated that subtle class markers on resumes—elite clubs, specific volunteer activities, certain hobbies—significantly influenced callback rates, independent of actual merit. The signal of “coming from the right place” often mattered more than demonstrated capability.

Even more concerning: hiring committees that believe they’re neutralizing bias through group discussion often end up amplifying these biases and reducing diversity, according to research documented in Harvard Business Review.

The preference for Big Four accounting experience in CFO recruitment and senior finance roles follows this exact pattern. It’s a credential that signals “rigor” and “training,” but the research shows it’s an imperfect predictor of actual job performance.

What Actually Predicts Success in Accounting and Finance Recruiting

If pedigree isn’t the best predictor, what is?

SHRM’s synthesis of decades of meta-analytic research on hiring reveals a clear hierarchy of validity:

Highest Predictive Validity:

1. Cognitive ability tests – Among the strongest single predictors for entry-level performance
2. Work samples and performance tests – Especially valuable for technical roles; high fidelity with actual job requirements
3. Structured behavioral interviews – Far superior to unstructured conversations; focus on past behaviors and anchored evaluation criteria

Lower Predictive Validity:

• Years of experience
• Educational pedigree
• Firm prestige

SHRM’s guidance is clear: combine multiple assessment methods, verify validity and job-relevance, and avoid using pedigree proxies (prestigious school, Big Four experience) as rigid filters. The research shows these credentials correlate weakly with on-the-job success compared to demonstrated competencies and problem-solving ability.

In the case of our VP of Finance candidate, he had:

• Proven work samples (systems he’d built, processes he’d improved, measurable EBITDA impact)
• Demonstrated cognitive and technical ability (CPA credential, which only 67,000 people attempted in 2022—a 17-year low)
• Clear behavioral track record of managing growth phases and operational challenges

By research standards, he checked the boxes that actually matter. The Big Four credential was the one that didn’t predict his future performance.

The Talent Reality: CPA Shortage and Finance Hiring Challenges

Here’s what makes the CFO’s decision even more puzzling: he was being selective in a market with severe talent constraints.

The data on finance and accounting recruiting tells a stark story:

The CPA Pipeline Is Shrinking:

• Bachelor’s degrees in accounting fell 7.8% between 2021-22, according to AICPA’s 2023 Trends report
• Master’s degrees in accounting dropped 6.4% in the same period
• CPA exam takers hit a 17-year low at approximately 67,000 in 2022, down 7% year-over-year (per NYSSCPA)
• The U.S. accounting workforce contracted roughly 10% from 2019-2024 (Reuters)

Current Hiring Difficulties: Robert Half’s 2025 survey of finance and accounting leaders revealed:

• 86% report challenges hiring and retaining qualified talent
• 47% say filling vacancies takes longer than anticipated
• 15% describe the situation as “critical”

When firms are offshore-expanding to India to fill basic capacity gaps, and the domestic pipeline is contracting year after year, the luxury of insisting on Big Four pedigree becomes a strategic liability.

The candidate with the CPA credential, proven systems implementation, and growth-phase experience wasn’t “imperfect”—he was rare.

Success Without Big Four: CFOs Who Prove the Point

If Big Four experience were essential for finance executive success, we’d expect to see it dominate at the top. But Fortune 500 and high-growth company leadership tells a different story.

CFOs of Major Tech Companies:

Ruth Porat (Alphabet/Google) – President & Chief Investment Officer

• Background: Morgan Stanley (including CFO role)
• No Big Four experience
• One of the most respected finance executives in tech

Amy Hood (Microsoft) – CFO since 2013

• Background: Goldman Sachs (investment banking and capital markets)
• Career path: IB → Microsoft IR/Strategy → CFO
• No Big Four experience

Susan Li (Meta) – CFO since 2022

• Background: Morgan Stanley analyst, joined Facebook 2008
• Rose through Meta’s finance organization
• No Big Four experience

Colette Kress (NVIDIA) – CFO since 2013

• Background: 25 years at Cisco, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments
• Operational finance in tech hardware and software
• No Big Four experience

Luca Maestri (Apple) – CFO

• Background: 20 years at General Motors, CFO roles at Xerox and Nokia Siemens
• Global operational finance experience
• No Big Four experience

Spencer Neumann (Netflix) – CFO

• Background: Disney, Activision Blizzard, private equity (Providence/Summit)
• No Big Four experience

High-Growth Company CFOs:

The pattern continues in Series B and C companies scaling rapidly:

• David Eckstein (Vanta CFO) – ex-Menlo Security/OpenDNS
• Dan Kang (Mercury CFO) – ex-Digit and Square, first finance hire
• Jimmy Sexton (ClickHouse CFO) – ex-Snowflake/ServiceNow
• Rama Katkar (Notion CFO) – ex-Instacart/Credit Karma
• Marten Abrahamsen (Vercel CFO) – ex-Fundbox, Coatue/TCG

These finance leaders share a common thread: operational experience, proven ability to scale finance functions during growth, and track records of delivering results. What they often don’t have is Big Four training.

For balance: yes, some successful CFOs do come from Big Four backgrounds (Vaibhav Taneja at Tesla, previously 17 years at PwC; John David Rainey at Walmart, who started at EY). The point isn’t that Big Four experience is bad—it’s that it’s not a prerequisite for excellence.

The CFO who passed on our candidate was essentially arguing that the only path to success runs through a specific firm pedigree. The evidence says otherwise.

The Current State of Finance Executive Search

Today’s market makes this conversation even more urgent. While SHRM reports that overall time-to-fill has improved from 48 days (2023) to 41 days (2024) across all functions, senior finance roles remain stubbornly difficult to fill.

LinkedIn’s Workforce Reports for Financial Services (August 2025, covering data through July) show a hiring index of 0.94—indicating continued slow hiring with a 9.9% monthly uptick but still down 0.9% year-over-year. The sector is hiring, but cautiously.

Combined with the talent shortage, this creates a challenging dynamic: companies need senior finance talent, that talent is increasingly scarce, yet many organizations maintain rigid credential requirements that eliminate strong candidates.

The research on internal mobility adds another dimension. LinkedIn’s DNA of High-Growth Businesses (2025) study shows that scaling the finance function correlates strongly with company growth events. Companies that successfully scale from $50M to $100M+ almost always expand and upgrade their finance leadership during that journey.

The candidate who was passed over? He’s now helping a competitor execute exactly that transition—the one his would-be employer is still struggling to make with a vacancy in place.

A Better Framework for VP of Finance Hiring

If pedigree isn’t the answer, what should guide CFO recruitment and senior finance hiring decisions?

Based on the research and real-world outcomes, here’s a more effective approach:

1. Define Success Metrics First What will this person actually do in the first 12 months? Build systems? Manage a growth phase? Improve processes? Drive EBITDA? The candidate should map to these outcomes, not to a credential checklist.
2. Use Structured Evaluation

• Conduct behavioral interviews with anchored criteria
• Request work samples (financial models, process designs, strategic documents)
• Test for cognitive and problem-solving ability in finance contexts
• Assess proven competencies over presumed pedigree

3. Weigh the Shortage Reality With 86% of finance leaders reporting hiring challenges, and the CPA pipeline contracting year over year, you’re competing for a shrinking talent pool. Every “nice to have” requirement that becomes a “must have” dramatically narrows your options.
4. Calculate the True Cost Every week a senior finance position remains open costs real money—potentially $15,000-$20,000+ per week in larger organizations. Perfectionism has a price tag. Is the incremental value of Big Four experience worth another $200,000 in vacancy costs?
5. Look at Parallel Success Who has succeeded in similar roles? As we’ve seen, many top CFOs built their capabilities in banking, private equity, and operational finance roles—not public accounting. Pattern-match to success, not to pedigree.

The Lesson for Accounting and Finance Recruiting

In today’s market, where great talent moves quickly, the best hire will not always be the obvious one. Sometimes, the candidate who looks “imperfect” on paper is the one who delivers outsized impact.

The research is clear:

• Pedigree bias is real and well-documented (HBR)
• Credentials predict success poorly compared to demonstrated competencies (SHRM)
• The talent pool is shrinking while demand remains strong
• Success comes from many paths, as proven by CFOs across Fortune 500 and high-growth companies

The CFO who insisted on replicating his predecessor’s background is still searching. His competitor, who hired the “imperfect” candidate, has moved on to their next growth phase.

That’s the real cost of over-indexing on pedigree in finance executive search.

At Integrated Management Resources, we specialize in accounting and finance recruiting and have helped hundreds of professionals make this exact transition. Whether you’re two years into your career or a seasoned manager looking to make the next move to VP of Finance or CFO-level roles, we understand what actually predicts success—and we can help you chart the path that gets you where you want to go.

We’ve seen firsthand that the best candidates don’t always come from the expected places. They come with proven track records, relevant competencies, and the drive to deliver results. If you’re ready to move beyond credential checklists and find finance leaders who can actually scale your business, let’s talk.