When Daniel Jang began reaching out to his network for a new job opportunity, he struck gold: One of his close friends happened to work at a company that was in the CFO search process.

“I had been in my last role for six years. We had just gone through two transactions, so I was starting to think about, ‘Do I want to stay? Do I want to think about doing something else?’” Jang told CFO Brew. And, so, the process to take on a new role began. He’s now CFO of CommentSold, an e-commerce company, but the process took two months and six interviews.

For companies and candidates alike, hiring, accessing, and getting buy-in from stakeholders—like the board of directors and auditors—for a new CFO can take as long as four months, according to Linda Barham, managing director for Russell Reynolds Associates’s Financial Officers Practice, a leadership advisory firm, told CFO Brew.

That isn’t to say that finding an adequate candidate list takes that long—Barham told CFO Brew that more than 85% of the time, Russell Reynolds has identified who the successful candidate is in the first 45 days of the search. What takes the most time is getting stakeholder buy-in. Jeff Constable, who leads the North American financial officers practice at executive search firm Korn Ferry, said the process averages around 20 weeks.

The process. Hiring a CFO for a private versus a public company can differ slightly, experts told CFO Brew. For public companies, due to the sheer amount of public information available that can impact public markets, candidates are often asked to sign NDAs  and often only the CEO and CHRO of a company are involved in the process for the first few weeks, Barham said. But private companies, while somewhat shielded from the scrutiny of the public markets, aren’t necessarily posting CFO listings on job boards. Continue reading here.—KT

Another month of CFO moves and despite it being the beginning of the year, CFOs are in higher demand than ever as the financial environment continues to be rocky.

Patrick Hallinan, CFO of Fortune Brands, was appointed to the CFO seat at Stanley Black & Decker, replacing Donald Allan Jr. (with a 2021 total comp of $5.5 million), who was promoted to the CEO seat last summer. The appliance company has had some finance-function drama over the past few months, slashing a “large portion” of its finance jobs last fall in its cost-cutting measures. Additionally, Stanley Black & Decker’s chief accounting officer retired in September, so Hallinan will be largely shaping out the finance organization. While the contents of the hardware company’s toolbox may not fix a balance sheet, it looks like the firm is hoping Hallinan comes with some savvy money-saving gadgets of his own.

Salary: $800,000 base salary + $350,000 sign-on bonus

Getting a promotion six months into any job sounds like a dream, but ascending to the CFO role seems like hitting the jackpot, which is what Claudia Jaramillo, the newly appointed finance chief at engineering consulting firm Jacobs, apparently did. Last July, Jaramillo joined the firm as its EVP of strategy and corporate development, a role that she will be in until August 2023.

Salary: TBD

Whoever said it pays to try something out was right for Matthew Cagwin, who was bumped from interim to official CFO of Western Union, the cross-border payments company. Cagwin said that the company is at an “pivotal inflection point” on its growth journey, which sounds like maybe the task at hand is larger than sending money to your cousin studying abroad in South America. Continue reading here.—KT

Coworking is a weekly segment where we talk to CFOs and others in the finance space about their experiences, their companies, and the larger economy. Let us know if you are—or you know—a CFO we should interview.

Joshua Bryant is chief business officer of the Taft Union High School District in the Central Valley region of California. Bryant, an alumnus of the school district, has been in the position since 2017. Previously, he was a finance and accounting manager for Management and Training Corp. at Taft Correctional Institution, and a tax accountant at Berry Petroleum Co.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Describe your job for someone who doesn’t work in finance.

If I was looking to raise eyebrows, I’d say “I take taxpayer money intended for kids’ education and spend it.” That said, that’s not entirely untrue. It does get spent on their education (through salaries, supplies, etc.), but it’s fun to see their eyebrows raise when you don’t specify as such. Ultimately, if it touches money within our school district, it comes through me.

How do you think the CFO role has changed over the past five to 10 years?

Ultimately, it’s become more obviously political and visible. In years past, the buck stopped with the CFO, like it or not. Today, that takes much more massaging—both internally and externally—to ensure that feathers aren’t ruffled anywhere, to ensure transparency, and to ensure solvency.

When did you know that you wanted to have a career in finance?

I started taking a business math class when I was a freshman in high school. Then, I took an accounting class, and then accounting classes at different levels for the next few years of high school, so it was an idea from early on. Keep reading here.—LR

Stat: 0.2%. That’s how much consumer spending fell between November and December (seasonally adjusted), which suggests inflation continues to decline. (the Wall Street Journal)

Quote: "There’s nothing like the experience of bringing together a curated group of friends to share life stories and enjoy a great culinary experience.”—Anna Sorokin aka Anna Delvey, convicted con artist/fake heiress speaking about her new reality show, which she’ll work on from her apartment in New York, where she’s under house arrest. (Insider)

Read: A look at how Elon Musk’s dad jokes and “epic quest for LOLs” at all costs may be affecting his companies. (Bloomberg)