Closing a finance hire: assume the counter-offer

To close a CFO or head of finance, ask your finalist before the offer whether they would stay if their employer matched it, find out what they would give up by leaving, and build the offer on the mandate, the founder and equity shown in dollars.

Half of finance professionals would leave anyway, and no counter lever holds more than 22%

The strongest senior finance candidates are almost always employed, and a good employer will try to keep them. Our Q2 2026 State of the Market poll asked finance professionals in our network what would make them stay put if they were offered their ideal role today.^[1]

As I wrote when the report came out, more than half are not negotiating on exit: for them, the counter that follows a resignation arrives too late. The other 48% can be kept, but each by a different lever, and the biggest, a matched salary, moves only 22%. Which means a counter aimed at the wrong lever fails, and so does an offer that rests on the one lever their employer can always pull.

Find out which half your finalist is in before you make the offer

Ask it plainly in the final stage: if your employer matched this, would you stay? A candidate who has thought it through gives you a straight answer. One who has not is telling you something too, and you would rather hear it now than the day after they resign.

Then find out what they would give up by leaving.

A counter can match the pay. It cannot match the mandate or the founder

The finance leaders worth hiring choose founders on direction and trust ahead of pay or title. In our Q3 2026 poll, finance leaders picked a clear vision (46.9%) and trusting the team (32.7%) as the most attractive founder trait, well ahead of being decisive (13.3%) or financially literate (7.1%).^[2] A good CFO can supply the finance. What they cannot supply is direction and room to run the function, and those are the two things a counter-offer has no way to match.

Many of the people you will close are coming from somewhere that can afford to counter. Of the 191 first finance hires we traced at funded Australian startups, 26% (50) came from a large corporate, a bank or a Big 4 firm, against 19% (37) from another startup. A corporate background often means someone has seen what good looks like, so it is no reason to pass on them. It is a reason to expect the counter and write the offer for it.

The story does most of the work, and it starts long before the offer. As I put it on The CFO Track in August: “When I take on a search, I build a narrative around the business, who they are, what they’re building, where they’re going, and why that role matters.” By the offer stage, your finalist should be able to tell that story back to you.

One of the most effective closes I have seen came from a client who wanted to get a preferred candidate across the line. We agreed the CEO would meet the candidate for a casual coffee, to share the strategy, where the business was going and how the role fitted into it, with no pitch. The CEO ran a business worth more than $200 million and gave up their time for a role well below the executive team. If the CEO of a business that size can find the time, a founder can.

If they call to say their employer has matched

Do not start a bidding war on salary. If a matched base is enough to keep them, pay was the reason, and you will be competing on the one lever their employer always has. Ask what changed since they said yes, restate the mandate and the equity in dollars, and give them a day. If they take the counter, let them go well. The senior finance market in Australia is small, and candidates talk.

Closing starts in the interview. I set out how to assess a CFO or head of finance, including why a corporate background should not rule anyone out.

Put the whole offer in writing, and show the equity in dollars

Put every element in one document before you make the call. The checklist I work through with founders:

1. Base salary. At first-finance-hire level the base does most of the work, because the long-term incentive is often more concept than cash in the early days. Price it for the role the business will need in 12 months. Current bands by seat and stage are in our CFO and finance leadership salary guide.
2. Superannuation. Stated separately from base, at the 12% guarantee rate or above, so nobody compares a package on one side with a base on the other.
3. Short-term incentive. Optional, and often absent for an early-stage CFO, where the package leans on the long term.
4. Equity. It is very rare for a first finance hire or first CFO to join without an equity upside. For an early-stage CFO it is usually options vesting over three or four years.
5. Title and scope. Agree the scope first. A candidate who negotiates hard on title before the scope is settled is one of the red flags in my First Finance Hire Playbook.
6. Start date. Agreed in the offer, with the notice period, bonus dates and vesting dates in view (next section).

On equity, do not present a bare percentage. State the specific number of options (for example, 25,000 options versus 75,000 options), because a percentage on its own gives the candidate no way to weigh it against a cash counter. Show the grant as dollar outcomes across a realistic range of exit values, which is the approach the equity and ESOP guide we host sets out. The same grant reads as a rounding error or a house deposit depending on which row the reader looks at.

Tax changes what the grant is worth to the candidate, so check whether your plan qualifies for the ESS start-up concession before they ask.

For how option grants on senior finance roles are structured, I set out how stock options work in Australia.

Agree the start date in the offer: four weeks for a head of finance, three months for a CFO

Good people are usually employed, and employed people have notice periods. I walked a client through this earlier this year: most strong candidates have four weeks or more, and if you insist on a two-week start you are cutting out about half the pool. What to expect by level:

• Head of finance or financial controller. Four weeks or more is standard. On an urgent search six weeks is usually workable, and eight is where businesses start to walk away.
• CFO. Three months is the norm, and most businesses accept it. Four to six months tends to come with a seasoned CFO, and at the stage I hire for, six months is usually too long.

Check bonus and vesting dates as well as the notice clause. A bonus due a few weeks after the offer, added to the notice period, can push a start back by a quarter. That is a fair thing for a candidate to wait for, and a founder who knows early can plan around it.

If you cannot wait, do not trade the right hire for a fast one. You are better off getting interim cover in so you can still take your time to hire properly. Interim cover also protects you if the start slips: I have seen a board bring in an interim CFO because the chosen candidate kept delaying their resignation while a sale at their current employer, and the payout that came with it, kept moving.

If the gap is real, I explain when an interim CFO makes sense and how to stop it becoming the permanent hire by default.

The resignation week is when you lose them, so call the day after

The week they resign is when the counter lands, and it is the week founders most often go quiet. I call candidates a few days after they resign, because it is always a strange few days after telling your team you are leaving, and the best hiring managers do the same without being asked. If you asked “would you stay if they matched?” in the final stage, you already know how that call goes.

From there the notice period is the start of onboarding. As I said on Confessions of a Recruiter, the period “between resignation to start date” can be “an absolute horror show if you don’t do it right.” The checklist I give clients has four steps:

1. Contract signed, resignation in. The person they will report to reaches out to say congratulations and welcome.
2. Two weeks out. An informal coffee or call, in person if you can: the first day and week, and anything they need to bring.
3. The day before. What to expect on day one, who their go-to person is, and access and equipment ready.
4. Day one. Show them around, with the team in the office.

Close out the runner-up properly while you are at it: tell them quickly and give them clear feedback. The same small market that talks about how you treated your runner-up will hear how you handled your finalist, and that is the reputation your next finance search starts from. For the first months after they start, see the first 90 days of a new CFO or finance hire.

Common questions

These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we work with. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.