If you’re hiring within your finance function, you already know the market is competitive. What you might not know is that salary alone is no longer enough to win the candidates you want. In our day-to-day conversations with finance professionals across the market, one thing is clear: pay still matters, but it’s rarely the deciding factor for qualified candidates weighing up two offers.
Today’s finance professionals are evaluating your business through a wider lens. They’re assessing your leadership, your growth story, your flexibility, and your culture just as closely as the number on the offer letter. Finance teams that understand this shift – and communicate it clearly throughout the hiring process – are the ones winning their first-choice candidates and seeing far higher offer acceptance rates.
Here’s what finance candidates are actually prioritising right now, and what it means for how you hire.
Strong, Visible Leadership
Finance candidates want to know who they’ll be working for, not just what they’ll be doing. A finance leader who is visible, communicative, and genuinely invested in their team’s success is now a major differentiator.
Candidates are asking pointed questions in interviews: Who does this role report to? How involved is the CFO or FD in day-to-day decisions? What’s the leadership style – hands-off, collaborative, directive? Vague or evasive answers raise red flags. Confident, specific answers build trust before an offer is even made.
If your leadership team is a genuine strength, put them in front of candidates early. A short conversation with a hiring manager or senior finance leader during the process can do more to secure a hire than another round of salary negotiation.
Career Progression and Development
Finance professionals – particularly those in the first ten years of their career – are thinking several steps ahead. They want to understand not just the role in front of them, but where it leads.
This means candidates are looking for clear answers on:
- What does progression typically look like in this team?
- Is there support for further qualifications (ACA, ACCA, CIMA, CFA)?
- Are there examples of people who’ve moved up or across the business?
- What does investment in training and mentoring actually look like day to day?
A role with a defined growth path – even an informal one, clearly explained – will consistently beat a higher-paying role where progression feels uncertain.
Flexible Working
Flexibility has moved from a nice-to-have to a baseline expectation. This doesn’t always mean fully remote work. For many finance candidates, it means trust: the ability to manage their own time, work from home when it makes sense, and avoid rigid, presenteeism-driven policies.
Being upfront and specific about your flexible working policy – hybrid split, core hours, remote allowances – removes ambiguity and signals a modern, trust-based culture. Candidates consistently tell us that unclear or overly restrictive flexibility policies are one of the fastest ways to lose interest in an otherwise strong opportunity.
Interesting Projects and Business Transformation Opportunities
Routine, transactional finance work is increasingly seen as a step backward, not a step up. Candidates want exposure to the work that’s shaping where the business is heading: systems implementations, process automation, M&A activity, ERP migrations, or building out new reporting frameworks.
Even in more traditional finance functions, highlighting the transformation or improvement projects on the horizon, and the candidate’s potential role in them, makes a role far more compelling. It signals that the business is evolving, and that the candidate won’t just be maintaining the status quo.
Stability and Long-Term Growth
After a period of economic uncertainty across many sectors, stability has climbed back up the priority list. Finance candidates are looking closely at the underlying health of a business: its financial performance, market position, and growth trajectory, not just the role itself.
This doesn’t mean candidates expect a job for life. It means they want evidence that the business is well-run, has a credible plan for growth, and isn’t likely to be restructuring again in six months. Being transparent about company performance and future plans during the process reassures candidates that they’re making a sound long-term decision.
A Positive Team Culture
Finally, candidates are paying close attention to team culture, often more than the job spec itself. They’re asking about team size, how the team collaborates, workload and pressure during peak periods (such as month-end or year-end close), and what support looks like when things get busy.
Introducing candidates to future teammates, being honest about busy periods, and describing the team dynamic authentically all help candidates picture themselves in the role, which is often what turns a good candidate into an accepted offer.
Why This Matters for Your Offer Acceptance Rate
The businesses seeing the strongest offer acceptance rates aren’t necessarily the highest payers. They’re the ones communicating clearly and consistently on leadership, progression, flexibility, project variety, stability, and culture throughout the entire recruitment process, not just at the offer stage.
Candidates who feel informed and confident about these factors are far less likely to be swayed by a competing offer, and far more likely to accept and stay.
Attract and Retain the Best Finance Talent with Talent Finance
Knowing what today’s finance candidates value is one thing. Communicating it effectively, to the right candidates, at the right time, is another. That’s where a specialist recruiter makes the difference.
At Talent Finance, we work exclusively within finance and accountancy recruitment. We understand what drives finance professionals’ decisions because we have these conversations every day, and we know how to position your business, your leadership, and your opportunities in a way that resonates with the candidates you want to hire.
We don’t just fill vacancies. We help you build a compelling, honest case for why a finance professional should choose your business, and we help you move quickly and confidently when you find the right person.
Ready to strengthen your finance team? Get in touch with Talent Finance today and let’s discuss how we can help you attract, secure, and retain the best finance talent in the market.
