3 Secrets CFOs/CHROs Need To Know When Hiring A Lead Tax Executive
With more than thirty years of experience, and a track record of more than one thousand tax executive searches successes by our tax executive search team, we have learned a lot about hiring and retaining a lead tax executive for a corporate tax organization. This article’s focus is to help CFOs increase their knowledge in how to attract and retain the best tax executives in the corporate tax profession. Understanding this information will help you greatly in building a tax team that saves your organization millions and in some cases billions of dollars in what would otherwise be revenue lost to tax revenue authorities forever. If you do not know this information, you will lose access to the best executives in the tax profession.
CFOS searching for a management level tax executive generally do not hear everything during their tax executive candidate interviews. With over three decades of experience speaking privately to hundreds of thousands of tax executives, we have learned what is important to them. An understanding and awareness of what a tax executive candidate is thinking may not always come up during your interview with them. Yet it is vitally important for you to be aware of these thoughts in the selection of a lead tax executive(s) for your corporate tax organization. There is a lot of valuable information that a tax executive will share with a trusted tax recruiter, yet the potential employer is unaware of this information that is often unspoken during an interview. You will learn in this article what tax executives may never tell a potential employer when considering a lead tax executive role within a corporate organization.
What We Learned From 1000s Of Private Conversations With Lead Tax Executives
- Many highly qualified tax executive candidates will never submit their resume to a company job site portal. When you post a tax job on the job boards and interview candidates only from these sources, you remove yourself from the wider pool of technically sophisticated tax executives that may be available to interview with you throughout the tax community. The primary reason multinational corporations today are unable to access extraordinarily talented tax executives for their lead tax role is because these folks are happy, gainfully employed, and not actively looking at new tax opportunities. These gainfully employed tax executives are very busy actively clawing back tax dollars and savings their companies in the millions(billions). These tax leaders are working hand in hand with their corporate CFO to increase tax savings.
These tax executives protect their privacy fiercely and often only available through a tax recruiter they trust who will protect their privacy and current employment. As a result, most companies posting tax jobs never see the full talent pool available to them on a search for a management level tax executive. The company human resource department posts an ad on a job board and meets only those tax executives brave enough to respond to an online portal offering them little privacy. Most tax executives we work with demand a high level of privacy and this does not mean submitting their resumes to company job portals. There is no guarantee of privacy for these tax executives through a resume portal.
There is an underground pool of available tax executives who will never respond to a tax job posted on multiple job board sites. Tax executives value privacy above all else since privacy is the nature of the work they do for the companies that hire them to deal with confidential company information.
If you are relying on leading technically talented tax executives to submit their resumes to your company online, you will never be able to access the full pool of talent available to you. To attract top tax talent, you must retain an expert tax recruiter to thoroughly research, individually contact and reach out to all potential tax executive candidates to draw the very best to pay attention to your lead tax opportunity. You must also work with your recruiter to actively protect their privacy. The responsibility of a retained tax recruiter is to screen for the requisite technical tax knowledge, strong interpersonal skills needed, and the strong work ethic required to run a multinational organization. Your Head of Tax running your corporate tax organization works tirelessly to meet tax deadlines worldwide. You must conduct thorough research first to access and attract the best of the tax profession to your organization. CFOs who try to save money by missing the opportunity to conduct a thorough tax search a thorough retained tax search, often miss opportunities to attract a tax executive who has the deep technical knowledge to create extraordinary tax savings for the company.
Due to thousands of baby boomer tax executives who have retired over these past few years, including the early covid retirees, we have experienced a brain drain of extraordinarily talented tax executive talent. Companies who are not properly staffed with the very best minds in the tax profession will lose millions(billions) to tax revenue authorities all over the world. Tax revenue authorities globally are clamoring for more tax revenue from multinational corporations with operations all over the world. More than ever, companies need a tax executive with deep and sophisticated technical tax knowledge and expertise to claw corporate revenue back to the corporation for growth.
- Another important private conversation shared with us by hundreds of lead tax executives is their disinterest in working for a company when the lead tax role reports to someone other than the CFO. If you are searching for a Head of Tax (HOT) and your organization chart does not have the lead tax executive reporting directly to the CFO, many tax executives have told us they have no interest in interviewing or working for a company. The reason is the lead tax executive wants to partner with senior management to understand the business objectives of the CFO/CEO. They are very strategic thinkers who want to be involved in developing the best overall business strategy for the corporation to reduce taxable income. One of the biggest problems we learn of is when the CFO did not involve the Head of Tax in a company acquisition; with no long-term tax strategy in place, and the company ends up paying millions more in taxes. Over the years, I have been asked by many CFOs who have retained me to find a tax executive with possible solutions.
3. The third trend we often hear about involves AI gathering compensation information from the online job boards posting tax jobs. The truth is companies never list the highest amount they are willing to pay a tax executive, resulting in many tax executives telling us privately they would never consider interviewing at a company offering such a low salary for the highly sophisticated corporate tax work they do for a multinational corporation. The new state laws on pay compensation transparency have had a negative impact on drawing the attention to submit resumes through tax job boards. I know this for a fact as hundreds of tax executives have told me they would never considering leaving their current employer for the low compensation being offered on the job boards. As a result, attracting the top of the tax executive profession through online job postings is not effective in drawing out the tax executives who are technically sophisticated and have the lowest tax rates. This will no doubt have a negative impact on corporations who want to hire the best in the tax profession. Many tax executives are talking about the low salaries listed by the tax jobs on the job boards. The result of this misinformation is no interest in talking to the company about the lead tax opportunity. The best company solution is retaining a highly experienced tax recruiter to talk to hundreds of lead tax candidates and provide a compensation study on lead tax executives back to our retained client. Now the company CFO and CHRO can make a more informed decision how a lead tax role should be presented throughout the market.
I want to add that tax executives leading multinational tax departments are the most educated, technically sophisticated, and hard working professionals in your organization. Pay them well and they will become one of your most valuable profit centers in your corporate organization. In January 2025 we completed a three month study on the compensation of lead tax executives in software companies in the 1-20B in annual revenue range. When a company retains us on a search, we provide this $2500 Value Lead Tax Executive Compensation Report as an added bonus to our clients. We also conduct an up to date report on Compensation on every retained tax search we do for clients. Contact Ki***@******ch.com on all tax executive search information.
The best solution for every CFO hiring for a lead tax executive role is to do the following:
- Retain a tax recruiter who the CFO describes all the requisite technical skills, strong the interpersonal skills, and strong written and verbal communication skills needed to be successful in the lead tax role.
- Retain a qualified tax recruiter with experience and trust throughout the tax community to represent your company to tax executives to draw the best possible pool of tax executive candidates to interview for your open tax job.
- Retain a tax recruiter to create a research and marketing plan that enables you to cover the market and be thorough and deliberate in identifying the very best of the tax profession. It is their job to identify top tax executives throughout the market, call them, and privately introduce interested tax executive candidates to you and your company. If you do not hire a highly trained tax recruiter to go after this extraordinary pool of tax talent, you will never meet them! Failing to find the best tax executive to lead your corporate tax organization is not an option; finding and hiring the best of the tax executive profession is the solution to your company survival, success and continued growth.
- Partner with a proven and experienced tax recruiter to find you a tax executive who can communicate complex corporate tax issues to a CFO and CEO in a language management can understand. There are tax executives who are outstanding in explaining highly sophisticated technical tax issues and impact to the corporation in a language management can understand. Hire them!
- If you have a Lead Tax Executive who may be retiring within the next two years, you should start your search now for the smoothest transition. It will take a year for the new person to learn the inner workings of your company and another six months year to one year to start a search for a lead tax executive and they may need to wait to start with your company to pick up their annual bonus unless you buy out the bonus to have then start earlier. Now is the time to start your search if you want the very best result for your organization.
If you anticipate a need for a management level tax executive search, and want to make a selection from the very best pool of tax candidates, please contact ki***@******ch.com or call (or text to arrange a call) at 858.232.4415. It would be my pleasure to help you any day of the week; contact me 7 days a week. I am available to help you with any questions you may have regarding the staffing of your tax organization.
All the best,
Kitty Jennings, CEO
www.etsearch.com
858.232.4415
