Every controller and finance director has seen the resume with three promotions in five years and very little behind them. Titles are the easiest thing to read on a page and the least reliable. A Senior Accountant at one company does work another firm would call an Analyst role. A Manager title can mean running a close or just checking someone else's.
If you are hiring in accounting or finance, the useful question is not what the person was called. It is how much harder the work got over time. Here is how to read for that.
Start with scope, not the title ladder
Look for the point where the person moved from producing work to deciding something about it. Two candidates can both say "monthly reporting" and mean very different things.
- One prepares the package and sends it on.
- The other explains the variances, recommends a response and presents to leadership.
The first is execution. The second is judgment. Growth shows up as a shift from the first toward the second. If every bullet describes a task, ask about it in the first call rather than assuming the answer.
Measure the complexity of the environment
Similar job titles carry very different loads. Before you compare two candidates, compare what each one was actually working inside.
- Entity structure: single entity or multi-entity, with consolidations and intercompany work.
- Reporting framework: ASPE or IFRS in Canada, US GAAP in the US, and whether they dealt with more than one.
- Systems: spreadsheets and a basic ledger, or a full ERP with automated reporting and controls.
- Scale and ownership: a small private company, a PE-backed business, or a public filer with audit and disclosure requirements.
A person who spent four years in a multi-entity group on an ERP migration has likely grown more than someone with the same title in a one-entity shop. Neither is better by default. They fit different jobs, and you should hire against the one you have.
Count leadership without direct reports
Many strong senior people have never had a headcount. Leadership still shows up in the work:
- Being the contact for operations, sales or HR on numbers they rely on.
- Training junior staff or reviewing their work.
- Owning a process change from design through rollout.
- Handling auditors or lenders directly.
This matters most for Senior and Manager hires. If your role needs someone to influence people outside finance, a resume that shows only individual output is a reason to probe, not to reject.
Look for impact, not duties
A list of responsibilities is the baseline. Everyone who held the job did them. What separates candidates is what changed because of their work: a faster close, a cost decision informed by their analysis, a budget process that finally got used.
You do not need a dollar figure on every line. You do need some evidence the person affected an outcome. In the interview, ask what the business did differently because of their work. Strong candidates answer quickly and specifically.
Treat lateral moves and long stays with curiosity
A sideways move is not a flag by itself. People step sideways to get into a new industry, learn a system, or take a role with better hours at a stage of life that called for it. What you want to see is that each move added something, whether a new skill, a bigger problem or a different environment.
The same goes for someone who stayed in one role for six or seven years. Ask whether the job changed around them. Plenty of people grow a great deal without a new title, especially in smaller companies where one person absorbs more each year. Others simply repeated year one. The resume will not always tell you which, so ask.
Build the screen into your process
A few habits keep this fair and consistent:
- Write down the scope of the role before you read any resumes: entities, framework, systems, reporting line.
- Score candidates against that, not against title.
- Ask every finalist the same two questions: what did you own, and what changed because of it.
- Keep a short list of what a lateral move or long tenure would need to explain, and ask it the same way each time.
This also protects you from a common miss in a tight market. Good people undersell themselves, and a plain-looking resume from someone who ran a consolidation on an ERP rollout can be a better hire than a polished one with a bigger title.
What to do next
Before your next finance opening, write a half-page describing the real scope of the role, then screen against it. Re-read the last two or three resumes you passed on and see whether title was doing the work. If you want a second set of eyes on candidates for accounting, FP&A or controller roles, a Traverse recruiter can help with this.