Role(s) Filled: Director of Finance
Timeline: 3 months
The Challenge
As an employee with 25 years of tenure headed toward retirement, the leadership team at Oshkosh Door found themselves in a tough spot. They needed to bring on a new Director of Finance, one with a wider range of capabilities than the job title typically includes. Additionally, as a company with impressively low turnover, they worried about the longevity of the hire. They didn’t want to bring someone on who’d jumped between jobs, seeking constant change and chasing fancier-sounding job titles. The team at Oshkosh wanted to find someone who’d still be around in two years, five years, even beyond.
We’ve worked with them for years, helping them with executive searches and other leadership roles across operations, finance, engineering, and beyond. That long history of working together led them to bring us in to find them a new Director of Finance who could check all their boxes.
The Strategy
The Director of Finance role would cover a wide range of financial and accounting-related responsibilities. They needed someone who could do all the bookkeeping, analysis, tackle tax savings, and lead a team of three people (an account manager, plus AP and AR people). We also knew to look for alignment with their company’s culture and values. They’d focus on someone who does business “the right way,” prioritizing responsibility, human connection in business, and a strong moral compass.
While there are many financial professions, the Oshkosh hiring team specifically wanted to find someone with finance experience with a manufacturer versus someone from a financial institution. Between our internal talent database and external research, we sent them eight candidates to review by the end of the search.
The Solution
The candidate they hired came out of left field, in a way. We found her through LinkedIn, but it was hardly a straight path to find her. To start, there really isn’t a set of job titles that accompany the skillset Oshkosh wanted for this role. In her case, identifying her as a candidate was made even more difficult by a previous career industry switch.
When we recruited her, she wasn’t actively working for a manufacturer, and manufacturing experience was a must-have for Oshkosh. But she’d spent a fair portion of her career in that space, which is ultimately what put her on our radar. She previously held a VP title with a manufacturer, then left to consult for an accounting firm. But she was highly interested in returning to the industry she came from, wanting to make a big impact on a growing company, and the timing was perfect.
During her tenure in manufacturing, she took on every responsibility the Oshkosh team hoped to find in a Director of Finance: leading a small team, handling cost accounting, bookkeeping, month-in-close processes, tax saving, strategic analysis, even projections. It was immediately clear she was incredibly sharp, smart, and had an outstanding work ethic. She presented incredibly professionally and brough an executive-level presence.
The Outcome
She was one of the last few candidates we sent to them. While the hiring team had to come up on their budget a bit to bring her on, she was the perfect candidate. They knew it’d be worth it, and so far, it has been. In the meantime, we continue working with them on other executive and leadership searches when they need us.
