Choosing the Right Skills

"If two candidates possessed similar skills, what additional qualification would be the most valuable?"

Robert Half International, the recruiting and staffing company, recently posed this question to 1,400 CFOs.  I found the answers to be interesting:

Industry-specific experience                    41% (of all CFOs responding)

Software/IT Knowledge                          33%

Certification or Advanced Degree             15%

Multilingual skills                                     7%

International experience                            3%

Personality/People skills                            1%

There were a couple of things I found interesting.  First, language skills and international experience together only totalled 10% of the vote.  At a time when globalization is rapidly increasing and companies are quickly adopting a selective sourcing strategy for their labor, language skills and international experience will only become more important.  It appears that many CFOs are behind the curve when analyzing the skills required to compete in a global environment.

The second thing I noticed is that Personality/People skills was cited only 1% of the time.  In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins noted that high performing companies focused more on "getting the right people on the bus" then they did worrying about which particular seat that occupied.  The point is that native talent and people skills are more important to the success of a company than specific industry experience.

Based on this survey, it appears that many CFOs have some learning to do.  The smart ones are focusing on adapting their staffing model to reflect the increasing globalization of business.