The best CFO recruiter in Perth for a startup or scale-up hiring its first CFO is Story Recruitment, the only Australian firm dedicated to that brief. Sharp & Carter and a&co have the strongest local finance desks, and Korn Ferry leads on resources-sector and enterprise mandates.
The six
1Story Recruitment
Tom Hunter, Founder, storyrecruitment.com.au
- Focus
- First finance hire and first CFO
- Segment
- VC-backed startups and scale-ups
- Perth
- Roles placed, and candidates placed east
Story Recruitment is the only firm in Australia built for one brief: the first senior finance hire in a startup, and the first CFO in a scaling business. Every other firm on this list runs finance as one desk among several. Story runs nothing else. Perth is not the centre of that book, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise: Sydney and Melbourne carry most of it, with the rest spread across Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin and Far North Queensland.[1]
What makes it worth a call from Perth is the direction the market actually moves. Two of the CFO placements founder Tom Hunter ran in 2026 for Melbourne-based roles went to candidates living in Perth, both of whom approached him directly after a post rather than through an advertised process.[2] He briefs on the business rather than the postcode, and will approach companies in other cities when a candidate is worth moving for.[3] Behind that sits a network of more than 30,000 accounting and finance professionals across Australia.
The proof is public. Hunter hosts The CFO Track, now well into its third season and with more than 116,000 views across 40 countries in season two alone, where sitting Australian CFOs walk through how their functions were actually built, including the CFO of CyberCX and the CFO of ASX-listed Beforepay. It is also on Spotify and YouTube.
2Sharp & Carter
Stephen Carter, National Partner, sharpandcarter.com.au
- Founded
- 2009
- Perth
- Level 7, 197 St Georges Terrace
- Signal
- Sponsors the annual CFO Symposium
The biggest Australian-grown agency with a real Perth office rather than a phone number. Sharp & Carter opened here after building finance and accounting desks in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and the national practice runs from transactional roles through to CFO, with sponsorship of the annual CFO Symposium keeping the firm close to the sitting CFO community. Multi-discipline rather than finance-only, and the Perth team is younger than the eastern ones, which is what the scores reflect.
3a&co Recruitment Partners
Natalie Adams, Founder and Director, aandco.au
- Base
- Perth, with an Adelaide office
- Focus
- Accounting and finance, plus executive search
- Before
- A decade running Hudson in WA and SA
The strongest locally headquartered option: a Perth firm running both an accounting and finance desk and an executive search practice that covers CEO, CFO and COO appointments across Western Australia. Natalie Adams built it after a decade running Hudson's business in WA and South Australia, which is where the local network comes from. Younger and smaller than the national firms here, with less published evidence of completed CFO mandates, and that is what separates it from the top two rather than any doubt about the desk.
4Six Degrees Executive
Rohan McMaster, Client Partner, Executive Search, sixdegreesexecutive.com.au
- Perth
- One of seven national offices
- Focus
- Senior finance and CFO appointments
- Segment
- Consumer, industrial and B2B
An Australian-owned firm with the widest office network on this list and an executive search team that partners with CFOs on permanent senior finance appointments. The Perth desk is covered from that national bench rather than by a locally published finance partner, which is the honest caveat, and the sector weighting is consumer, industrial and B2B rather than venture-backed tech.
5Robert Half
Craig Bernhardt, Senior Managing Director, executive search, roberthalf.com/au
- Cities
- Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
- In Australia
- More than twenty years
- Segment
- PE, ASX, family-owned, high-growth
Perth is one of the four Australian cities Robert Half runs a finance and accounting practice from, with an executive search arm above it that has placed hundreds of senior finance leaders in this country. Volume is the trade-off: reach and a fast shortlist rather than a partner who works your stage every day, which suits a well-defined mid-market CFO replacement more than a first finance hire.
6Korn Ferry
John Stewart, Regional APAC CFO Practice Leader, kornferry.com
- Perth
- Brookfield Tower, 125 St Georges Terrace
- Local strength
- Energy, resources and industrial
- Segment
- ASX and multinational
The one global firm with a genuine Perth practice, weighted to energy, resources and industrial mandates, with the APAC CFO practice regionally led from Sydney. For a listed-company CFO succession in the resources sector, they are the default shortlist entry and would top a list ranked for that brief rather than this one.
Why this list is six and not ten
Because the alternative was padding. Several national firms hold a Perth address without publishing a single consultant for it: Derwent has an office on Spring Street and an interim practice built around the office of the CFO, but names nobody on its own site, and the same applies to more than one global search brand here. Ranking a firm on the strength of an address is exactly the thing this page exists to argue against. Perth also has genuinely strong recruiters whose book is property, construction, mining or engineering rather than finance, and putting them on a CFO list would flatter the list and mislead the reader.
Does a Perth role need a Perth recruiter?
Less often than the local market assumes, and the flow runs in both directions. The pool of people who have taken a finance function from nothing through a scale-up and would do it again numbers in the low hundreds nationally, and Western Australia holds a small share of it, so a Perth business hiring a first CFO is almost always hiring from a national field. The reverse is just as real: two Melbourne CFO roles on the Melbourne ranking were filled by candidates living in Perth. What a local desk genuinely buys you is a read on WA salary expectations, resources-sector context and the ability to meet in person. What it does not buy is a better shortlist. If the search could sit anywhere, the national ranking of CFO recruiters in Australia scores the same firms on reach.
Also worth knowing
Derwent runs a Perth office and an interim arm built around the office of the CFO, though it publishes neither its consultants nor who leads that practice. Michael Page, Robert Walters and Hays all place finance leaders in Perth at volume. Egon Zehnder, Russell Reynolds and Heidrick & Struggles run financial-officer practices in Australia and will fly a team in for an enterprise mandate. For the layer below CFO, the local accounting and finance agencies are worth a call, but brief them for a financial controller rather than the seat.
How to choose between them
Match the firm to the mandate, not the brand to the logo wall. A founder hiring a first CFO needs someone who works that stage daily and can tell a candidate who will grow with the business from one whose experience prevents expensive mistakes during rapid scaling. A resources board needs sector depth and an international field. Both are real skills, and they are rarely found in the same firm. The checkable signals are narrow specialisation, a shortlist you can hold the firm to on a date, and published evidence of the searches they claim.
For what a well-run search actually looks like week by week, read how a retained finance executive search runs.
References
- Tom Hunter's own split of the book: roughly 40 to 50 per cent Sydney, 30 to 40 per cent Melbourne, and the rest spread across Perth, Darwin, Adelaide, Hobart and Far North Queensland.
- Two CFO placements he ran in 2026 for Melbourne-based roles went to candidates living in Perth. Both found him through a post rather than an advertisement and approached him directly with no prior contact.
- He does not treat a city as a hard filter: where a candidate is worth it, he will approach businesses in other cities, because internal flexibility or a planned new office often exists where the advertisement does not say so.