Category: Career Advice and Training

Businessman Warren Buffett recently spoke at a shareholders' meeting for his company Berkshire Hathaway. In what one attendee referred to as "the best one day economics seminar in the world," the billionaire investor offered advice on getting ahead financially, as well as general predictions for the future. More than 18,000 people showed up to hear him speak at the event.

Buffett was optimistic about the improving economy and had reassurances for those with jobs in finance. He offered an upbeat assessment of the U.S. banking system, saying it was in far better shape than it was several years ago and compared favorably with European banks, which are "gasping for air."

Proudly touting Berkshire Hathaway's domestic investments, Buffett said, "There is no shortage of opportunity in the U.S." He also called the stock market "the most obliging, money-making place in the world." However, he admitted that there was no simple path to riches, and that the market "does strange things."

He urged investors to proceed with caution when considering large-scale acquisitions, telling them to think about the value a purchase would bring, rather than the headlines it might generate.

However, he also said his audience should avoid making investments that will turn out to be unproductive. As an example, he advised his listeners to think about the fact that if "you have an ounce of gold now," in 100 years "you'll still have an ounce of gold."

Buffett also spoke about the importance he placed on elevating only the most capable people to top positions at Berkshire Hathaway. He stressed the significance of filling jobs in finance and investing with extraordinary individuals.

One of the most effective ways to ensure quality during a financial professional search is to use a reputable executive search firm. Experienced recruiters work full time to find the best candidates, leaving a company's current staff free to focus on their business.

A commonly repeated phrase is that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." But, getting to know the right people is often a challenge, as the best potential contacts tend to be the busiest individuals.

A company in need of financial project consulting can obviously send a representative to the next big convention on the subject to find a professional in the field. But, getting that crucial meeting with the most talented expert at the event – therein lies the challenge.

Whenever possible, the best tactic is to arrange an introduction in advance. Adding a mutual acquaintance to the equation makes it much more likely that a first-time meeting will lead to a productive professional relationship. And in any case, it makes the experience more comfortable.

The most important thing to do when meeting new people is to show respect for their time. Even if someone is too polite to abruptly end a conversation, that doesn't mean they have all the time in the world to stand around figuring out how they can help you. Your focus should be on making a good impression and getting contact information so you can follow up later.

Following through after an introduction is critically important. A new relationship will not last long if it isn't continually built upon and strengthened through ongoing contact. This can be as simple as sending a note to thank a person for their time.

Sometimes a company may not be able to wait for organic networking to drive desired results. In this case, it may be high time to consider contacting a professional corporate recruiting and financial project consulting firm. Whether the goal is to find new permanent staff or fulfill an interim role, professional services are available to help take your business to the next level right now.

Attending a conference can be a great opportunity to network – if you come prepared and focus on making good use of your time.

You can make valuable business contacts, learn about your industry and just meet interesting people.

There is also the chance to embarrass yourself and discourage any other attendees who may interested in working at your company.

Most events wind up falling somewhere between the two extremes, but with only a little extra effort, you could considerably raise your rate of conference success. It's all about staying focused and using your time well.

In his blog Both Sides of the Table, entrepreneur Mark Suster explains that the most important part of having productive conference experiences is to be selective in choosing events. Being gone from the office for days at a time is bad for productivity. It's best to pick out only the most interesting or important events, prepare carefully and then focus on using your time well while you're there.

It's critical to plan out your schedule and set meetings in advance. The major advantage of attending conferences is that so many potentially valuable contacts will be in one place at the same time. If you want to have a meeting with a particular person then you should schedule one.

One good idea that isn't obvious to everyone is to spend a while hanging out in the lobby, rather than spending all your time taking meticulous notes on every single panel discussion. It's easy to meet people while milling around in the lobby and you may even be able to get in a word with someone who you wouldn't have been able to meet otherwise.

For executives who still don't feel like they are getting much out of their networking efforts, it might be time to consider hiring a firm of professional recruiters. This can be especially useful if your company needs to fill high-level positions. Working with a top-quality executive search firm holds distinct advantages. Conducting a financial professional search can be complex and time-consuming. Outsourcing to a recruiting firm frees up core staff to focus on their main responsibilities and has the added benefit that professional recruiters bring their hiring experience to the table, giving you the best chance to find the right candidate.

Every company looks for ways to save money, but many benefits can also be achieved by simply avoiding over-committing current employees.

Every new project that seems like a good idea at the time may turn out to restrict the brainpower that is available to take advantage of new opportunities or may even become a drain on the ability of employees to perform day-to-day tasks. A new distribution deal can turn out to necessitate technical support or place other ongoing demands on a company’s staff.

Companies looking to keep their employees free to focus fully on their main responsibilities should strongly consider reaching out to a professional recruitment firm, especially in the case of businesses searching for great CEOs or trying to fill other upper-level positions. In addition to the benefit of shifting the time-consuming work of recruiting managers away from a company’s full-time employees, there is also the experience that professional recruiters bring to the table. They do their job, which allows their clients to focus on running their businesses and doing what they do.

Beyond headhunting firms, there are many other services that can help a company keep their core staff focused on offering quality service to customers. For instance, hiring an internal audit consultant can also have the same effect of removing demands from a company’s staff. Hiring an outside firm to do financial project consulting may allow a company to postpone a full-time financial professional search or just get by while such a search is in motion.

Outsourcing has been used as a dirty word by some, but relying on outside resources is still an effective way to reduce the strain on a company’s employees, especially when it comes to complex or time-consuming tasks such as recruiting for auditing positions.

Companies may finally be starting to realize the full burden of the recession, as years of operating with fewer resources has begun to overburden some business professionals.

That is according to a study by emotional intelligence service Six Seconds, which determined that leaders are increasingly seen as being more to blame for business woes – 58 percent of respondents mentioned leaders as being the top personnel-related problem this year, compared with only 51 percent in 2010. A separate question determined that nearly 30 percent of respondents viewed talent retention as the top issue this year.

A Paradigm Learning whitepaper – "Developing Critical Thinking in Today's Leaders: No Room for Old-School Leadership in the New Normal" – tackled leadership from another angle, finding that as businesses emerge from a deep recession, their leaders must be able to think critically and constantly reassess their organizations if they are to return to their former levels of success.

"Now, more than ever, business acumen is foundational to effective leadership," paper author Catherine Rezak said in a press release. "It is impossible to apply critical thinking skills to the business of making money without an understanding of the business drivers that connect day-to-day decisions and actions to key financial and strategic performance goals of the organization."

In order to find employees with these skills and retain the ones that already have them, many companies are turning to in-house training programs to teach managers skills related to accountability, big-picture thinking and analytical skills.

These skills may be especially important among companies recruiting for auditing positions and other vacancies related to financial management. Corporate recruiters and job search firms have the requisite experience to identify candidates with these unique qualities and help businesses expedite their financial professional search.

At the dawn of the internet era, Yahoo became one of the first stalwarts of this new process for accessing information and communicating in real time. A generation later, the company has lost its market positioning, ended its most recent CEO’s brief tenure through a phone call and instituted layoffs affecting more than 10 percent of its workforce.

Simply put, Yahoo is in the midst of an identity crisis, as it seeks to operate in an internet space where it has been surpassed by Google and Facebook in both traffic numbers and advertising pull. Compounding these challenges is the fact that the internet is constantly evolving, so instead of being a market leader that sets the tone – as it once was – Yahoo must now respond to fluctuations over which it has little control.

"It all adds up to an identity problem for Yahoo, a company that began as a portal to the web," David Rosenbaum writes for CFO.com. "Today, the very idea of a portal seems anachronistic, replaced by apps that immediately serve up whatever anyone is seeking. The difficulty of defining what Yahoo is today, and what it may become tomorrow, may make challenges like Big Data, mobile and new computing platforms seem trivial."

In order to successfully complete its ascent back to the lofty peak of internet dominance, Yahoo needs to begin thinking long-term, which means, in part, catering to consumers who prefer to access its services through mobile devices. Yahoo will also focus solely on its most popular services, which include news, sports, finance and email. Despite this leaner business structure and a 1 percent increase in profits year-over-year, the company’s expenses still outpace its profits.

By working with headhunting firms that have experience recruiting managers and accountants, companies like Yahoo can begin to think more strategically about their organizations and institute more effective long-term plans. Similarly, a financial project consulting service can bolster staffing positions in the short-term as needed.

By the very nature of the job, auditors are expected to be skeptical of the information they are presented, although according to a recent study, some may have lost their way.

The report, titled “Professional Skepticism: Establishing a common understanding and reaffirming its central role in delivering audit quality,” was conducted by England’s Accounting Practices Board (APB) and it laid out the steps that companies must take to ensure that their auditors constantly remain skeptical and pragmatic when assessing a company’s financial profile and organizational strategies.

“A bit of history is also thrown into the mix to help auditors understand their origins,” according to a review on Accountancy Age. “Many may be pleased to know part of their role derived from auditing servants in the manorial estates of the 14th century. The auditor was the most trusted servant in the household and all other servants reported to them.”

One of the problems auditors have is that businesses lack a significant degree of control over contextual and environmental effects that can have a lasting impact on a particular entity. These constantly oscillating factors, coupled with the slightest change in a company process or procedure, could produce unintended consequences that spiral into and cause other issues.

Many companies prefer internal auditing services because of the ease of such processes, in lieu of hiring an external service provider. The report recommends that auditors remain insulated from management so that they can best make objective assessments without the filter of biased business decision makers.

To truly enhance skepticism among auditors, businesses should work with an internal audit consultant that knows how to train these individuals to develop a more discerning eye. When recruiting for auditing positions, this expert will understand who can best best perform these responsibilities adequately.

Few top-level business executives have time to get to know every one of their employees, but some organizational benefits could be derived from CEOs and CFOs who interact with other members of their business outside of the executive team.

A CareerBuilder survey released this week found that a considerable number of employees – 40 percent – have never met the CEO of their company. Employees in retail, IT and financial services are even less likely to be familiar with their organization’s CEO, and even fewer workers across-the-board do not know other C-level officers in their business.

“They need to find a level of accessibility that allows them to connect with employees, while on the other hand, dedicate the necessary time for building relationships with outside stakeholders,” Rosemary Haefner, an executive with CareerBuilder. “Employees realize their top leaders can’t know everyone on a first name basis, but they do expect their leaders to be a public symbol that embodies the organization’s values.”

While it may not be important for employees to understand the inner workings of their accounting departments or the exact annual profit-and-loss numbers, some degree of transparency on the part of the an executive team – in the form of communication with workers – could help the entire organization better understand the company’s position in the market.

Workers are likely to feel more invested in a particular company when their superiors engage with them directly and solicit feedback from them from time to time. To find business leaders willing to take on these responsibilities, in addition to their day-to-day tasks, companies can hire headhunting firms to conduct a financial professional search. Accessible CEOs may benefit companies more than CFOs who behave in that way, but such actions may still be appreciated by employees.

Any time a business invests in something – a product, a service or even an employee – there will always be an expected cost attached. Business decision makers who stay within the parameters of their budgets understand that doing so requires careful planning and, in many instances, a consideration of unexpected related costs.

Inc.com contributor Mark Davis wrote last week that the “snowballing” effect of purchases can lead actual costs to greatly outpace the advertised or expected price of a product or service.

“While getting a new TV for the conference room seems to balance in your checkbook, you must also factor in the cost of installation, the complementary speakers, monthly cable fees and maintenance,” Davis, CEO of social media startup Kohort, writes. “The full cost of ownership might not fit into a bootstrapper’s budget.”

Financial planners and CFOs who do not look far enough down the road could place their businesses in dire financial straits. Once committed to a product, service or employee, the organization may already have reached a level of commitment that makes it impossible to transition away – the initiative either needs to be scrapped entirely, thereby beginning the process again, or additional resources could be poured into the initiative, which could further sap the company of vital funds that could be better used elsewhere.

When headhunting CFOs and recruiting accountants, a business should seek finance professionals who are able to produce meaningful work related to a company’s business dealings, while also looking to the future as business plans and expected expenses are considered. Finding business professionals with these dual skill sets could be challenging, but experienced finance recruiters can expedite this process with care and precision.

Lifeblood, oxygen – experts use a variety of terms to stress the importance of cash flow to the future success of a business. If an organization does not ensure that it is receiving payment in an efficient manner, its development could be significantly curtailed or even stalled entirely.

For this reason, experts advise small business owners to take a myriad of steps to ensure uneven cash flow does not undermine a company. For longer term projects, organizations may want to request that customers make milestone payments throughout the process, instead of waiting until the conclusion of the service to receive payment. Having that cash-on-hand will benefit a business significantly.

For one-time purchases or short-term sales, experts recommend that organizations encourage their customers to pay up-front and quickly for products or services. This may force a business to provide customers with an incentive to pay early, perhaps in the form of a discount, but receipt of that payment is more critical than the money lost through a reduced cost.

“Once you give up your final service or product to the customer without payment, you ultimately are giving up your leverage. Don’t lose your leverage,” author Scott Gerber said in a video for Inc.com. “Make sure that you find ways to retain as much ownership over your final work product until the payment goes through.”

Once an organization solves the problem of uneven cash flow, it should expect funds to roll in on a continual basis. While this surely is to a company’s advantage, it could also overwhelm their finance department and produce accounting errors if financial professionals are unprepared for such an influx of information and money.

To ensure that financial departments operate smoothly, companies may rely on corporate and finance recruiters to find real quality applicants for these positions, from CFO down to accounting staff members.