Why the one-pager fails
A standard CFO job description lists responsibilities that are true of every CFO everywhere: owns financial reporting, leads the finance team, partners with the CEO, manages investor relations. None of it is wrong and none of it is useful, because it does not distinguish your role from any other CFO role a candidate is considering.
It also fails on the assessment side. If the brief does not say what the person has to achieve, the interview has nothing to test against and the process defaults to comparing CVs. For genuinely first finance or CFO hires, founders often do not have a good job description at all, and the ones provided are not always great,[1] which is usually because they have never had to write one for this seat before.
What a long-form brief actually contains
The way I work is to sit down with founders before the job description is written, and craft a brief that tells the real story of the business: the actual environment and the problems the person will walk into on day one, focused on what they need to build.[2]That is the difference between a document that attracts a strong candidate and one that filters for people who read job ads.
| Section | What has to be in it | |
|---|---|---|
| The real business context | Stage, funding, trajectory, pressure | Where the business actually is, including runway and the next capital event. Candidates at this level will ask anyway. |
| What they walk into on day one | The honest current state | The systems, the team, the reporting and what is broken. Omitting this costs you the candidate later, not earlier. |
| What they have to build | Outcomes, not duties | Specific things that do not exist yet. This is the section a strong candidate actually reads. |
| Success metrics | Twelve-month definition of done | Scoped against workload gaps, ROI, risk management and the obstacles the business can see coming. |
| The people and the dynamic | Founder, board, executive team | Who they work with and how decisions get made. Chemistry decides more senior finance appointments than capability does. |
| Package and process | Range, equity, stages, timeline | A real range and a defined process. Vagueness here reads as indecisiveness to the exact candidates you want. |
The scoping conversation matters as much as the document. Meeting the hiring manager well before hiring starts to map out objectives lets you scope the role against workload gaps, ROI and risk-management success metrics, and the business obstacles you can see coming.[3]Almost every unclear brief I see comes from skipping that step.
Being honest about the difficult parts
The section founders most want to cut is the one about what is broken. Leave it in. A CFO candidate senior enough to be worth hiring will discover the messy ERP, the audit qualification or the unresolved co-founder tension in due diligence anyway, and finding it themselves costs you the candidate. Writing it down costs you the wrong candidates, which is what a brief is for.
Be equally clear about the seat itself. Almost every founder I speak to is convinced they need a CFO twelve months before they actually do, and a Head of Finance often gets dressed up in a CFO title to close the gap.[4] Writing the brief long-form is the fastest way to discover which one you are hiring, because the work you list will either be CFO-sized or it will not.
If you are running the whole process rather than just writing the brief, here is how a CFO hire should be structured end to end here.
From brief to assessment
A good brief writes most of your interview for you. The assessment structure I use covers three areas: experience and understanding, motivations and working style, and behavioural and competency.[5] Each of those maps back to something in the brief, which is what stops a process turning into five unstructured conversations.
Done properly this also compresses the timeline rather than extending it. Story Recruitment's benchmark is a shortlist within five working days of the job brief meeting, and an average of fifteen working days from brief to contract signing.[6] The long-form work happens once, up front, and everything after it moves faster.
For the question set that turns a brief into a real assessment, the financial acumen questions are set out here here.
Common questions
What is a long-form CFO brief?
It is the document behind the job ad: the real context of the business, what the person walks into on day one, what they have to build, how success is defined at twelve months, who they work with and how decisions get made, plus the package and the process. It exists because a one-page duties list neither attracts a CFO nor gives an interview panel anything to assess against.
Why is a standard CFO job description not enough?
Because it lists responsibilities that are true of every CFO everywhere, so it does not distinguish your role from the others a candidate is weighing up. It also breaks the assessment: if the brief does not state what the person has to achieve, the interview has nothing to test against and the process collapses into comparing CVs. Founders hiring a first CFO often do not have a usable job description at all, because they have never written one for this seat.
Should a CFO brief mention what is broken in the business?
Yes, and it is the section founders most want to cut. A CFO senior enough to be worth hiring will find the messy ERP, the audit qualification or the unresolved co-founder tension during due diligence anyway, and discovering it themselves costs you the candidate. Writing it down costs you the wrong candidates instead, which is exactly what a brief is supposed to do.
Does writing a long-form brief slow the hire down?
The opposite, in practice. The long-form work happens once, up front, and everything after it moves faster because the assessment is already defined. Story Recruitment's benchmark is a shortlist within five working days of the job brief meeting and an average of fifteen working days from brief to contract signing. Processes that drag usually do so because the brief was never clear enough to make decisions against.
References
- Tom Hunter on first finance and CFO hires: founders often lack a good job description, and the ones provided are not always great, so Story Recruitment frequently helps build them out.
- Tom Hunter on how he works with founders: sitting down before the job description is written and crafting a brief that tells the real story of the business, including the actual environment and problems the person will walk into on day one, focused on what they need to build.
- Tom Hunter's process: meeting the hiring manager well before hiring starts to map out objectives, scoping the role against workload gaps, ROI and risk-management success metrics, and anticipated future business obstacles.
- Tom Hunter on CFO timing: almost every founder he speaks to is convinced they need a CFO twelve months before they actually do, and a Head of Finance often gets dressed up in a CFO title to close the gap.
- Tom Hunter's interview guide for finance hires: candidate assessment covers experience and understanding, motivations and working style, and behavioural and competency.
- Story Recruitment benchmarks: shortlist presentation within five working days from the job brief meeting, and an average of fifteen working days from job brief to contract signing.