General Perspectives from one first CV Screening for a position in an international industrial group, headquartered in Italy
by Giovanna Combatti
One main aspect dividing into three categories the interviewed candidates, refers to their experience and “closeness” to manufacturing or sales costs or their general coordination of a Controlling team. And it is evident that those who had an exposure to manufacturing processes, to lead times, stock evaluation, structure and standard costs and so on, do offer the first preference for the Controlling position we are working at.
The second main aspect that has a great impact on the first step of this recruiting process has to do with the organizational context where the candidates could learn and grow. The candidates who seam “closer” to meet company specific expectations (for this position) are those who could grow up in a structured environment, where the Controlling function had a real business, managerial or even “consultative” style, partnering with the different functional leaders and divisions. And besides that, another important factor is the exposure the candidate could have to an international environment, where the company controller needs to confront and identify ways for working across different countries and cultures for reaching common goals.
On the other side controller grown up in smaller or more “just local” companies tend to be more devoted to the administrative part of the job, more focused on controlling the past rather than helping to shape the company future by identifying the issues and the proper measures to make an impact on the profitability side.
In this first screening we also considered how much experience they show in the specific function, how motivated they could be towards the challenge of creating and shaping a brand new function, how easy will be for the candidate to reach the company site and, of course, how much english skills they possess.
One thing that will need to be considered during the next recruiting phases is the company “dimensional” factor. Expecially candidates who grew up in bigger structured organizations tend to assign great importance to role definition, to clearly defined responsibilities, to the opportunity of interacting with a number of people and functions. Moreover the opportunity for growing that sometimes has to do with dealing with more complex or just new issues, with the opportunity the company gives them to learn, train and deepen their technical knowledge or sometimes with helping growing people or getting closer and closer to the business strategy. It will be also very important for this function to explore the ERP system they used and, on the other side, what IT system the company actually adopts.
Another aspect that of course will have a great impact on the selective part of the process, mainly during the interviews, will 
be the candidates personality. Here there will be the need to try and “sort out” the candidates with traits that could fit better with company cultural environment. So there will be the need to explore the relationship style, how outgoing and assertive they are, what sense of direction and self confidence they show, how much they can impact others, what influencial skills they show, how effective they have proven to be, dealing with their collaborators as individual and with their collaborators groups, how skilled they are at involving others and motivate them. In addition how do they respect diversity and how they can adjust their communication to diverse groups of people. And last but not least how they proved to be able and interact “locally” with an “enterpreneur-owner” by providing at the same time an effective interaction and exchange with a central Financial or controlling function.
Another main area that will need to be explored with all of the candidates refers to themotivational side: how they learn and what they want to learn , how and where they see themselves growing, what was their greater success and how they obtained it. Further questions to explore this side will be related to the reason why they want to leave their company, what they are looking for, what they would not accept at all and all what has to do with candidate actual boss, what kind of managerial style the boss has, why he/she appreciates the candidate, where would he/she want the candidate to do more or just in a different way. This last exploration area aims to gather information about the kind of managerial style/context the candidate is most comfortable with and is looking for. And at the same time this area often reveals more about the real reasons why the candidate wants to leave his/her company.
