“This is the course that I wish had been available to me when I first joined the industry. We have received incredible feedback from our programme and I’m delighted to hear it’s made such an impact on people’s professional progress.”
Time and again through my work with SME recruitment businesses, I came across many well-qualified but inexperienced finance professionals who had found themselves as head of finance and leading a team at a young age.
Initially the head of finance makes significant progress in their role and the CEO is impressed with their new look finance team, but this momentum is often lost. The CEO knows that they have the potential to deliver more but doesn't know how to help them realise that potential. The head of finance knows that they need to develop and evolve to move into an FD role, but doesn't know what that evolution looks like.
The problem is obvious: If you’re the most senior finance person in your organisation, who do you learn from? Without an experienced coach or mentor, how do you get to understand the hard and soft skills that make the difference between a head of finance and a finance director? Fifteen years ago, I thought I was a finance director, but I was wrong. I was a very good financial controller but I wasn’t providing the kind of strategic input a CEO should expect of the FD.
This is an issue that I saw so commonly that I was inspired to launch a development programme to help financial professionals operate successfully at board level. And so in 2016 Aspiring FDs was launched.
About Paul
Paul has almost 15 years experience working with SME recruitment businesses and has developed a reputation for sector expertise and customer service.
After running finance teams in high growth recruitment businesses over a number of years, Paul founded Aristar Financial Consulting in 2011. With a client portfolio whose cumulative turnover exceeds £120m, Aristar is an innovative outsourced financial management service focussed on helping great SME recruitment businesses to transform and grow.
In 2016, Paul launched Aspiring FDs, a development programme to help financial professionals working in recruitment businesses to operate successfully at board level. Click here to find out more about the programme.
Following the success of Aspiring FDs, in 2018 Paul launched the Recruitment FD Network, a group who meet regularly to keep up to date with market developments, as well as networking with like-minded professionals. Click here to find out more.
Paul lives in Surrey with his wife, young twins and black Lab. He loves to travel, play squash and is currently attempting to learn magic (he won't be giving up his day job anytime soon)!