Christmas Recruitment Math: Decide in October, or Hire in March

Every year, somewhere around the middle of October, I have roughly the same conversation with a client.

The role has been approved. Everyone agrees it matters. Someone says it would be great to have the new person “in the seat before Christmas”. Then we get the calendar out.

It’s usually a short conversation after that.

Senior finance hiring runs on notice periods, diaries and stakeholder availability, and the last quarter of the calendar year is where all three get tight at the same time. The businesses that do the maths in September and October tend to fill the role. The ones that don’t tend to find themselves restarting the search in February, carrying the vacancy through the half-year close, and wondering how it got to March.

The maths nobody does until it’s too late

Take a fairly typical Financial Controller search, run well, starting this week.

Let’s say two weeks to a properly assessed shortlist puts you in mid-October. Two interview rounds, if diaries behave, takes you to the end of the month. References, the offer and whatever sign-off your business needs lands you around Melbourne Cup week.

Your preferred candidate resigns and works four weeks’ notice. They finish in early December and start with roughly two working weeks before most of the country shuts down.

That’s the good version. Everything went to plan.

Now let one thing slip. A second-round interviewer is travelling. The candidate asks for a week to think. The offer sits in someone’s inbox waiting for approval. Any one of those pushes the finish date into mid December, and nobody sensible starts a new role four days before Christmas. It becomes a mid January start, by which time half your own team is on leave.

For a CFO, or anyone on three months’ notice, the maths is simpler and less forgiving. An offer accepted in early November is a February start. It was a February start before anyone booked the first interview.

None of this is a problem if you know it going in. It becomes a problem when the plan quietly assumes a start date the calendar was never going to allow.

The vacancy doesn’t take a holiday

This is the part that is particular to finance, and the part that rarely makes it into the business case.

For June year-end businesses, the half-year closes on 31 December. The work that follows (the close itself, half-year reporting, the review, board packs, covenant reporting to the bank) lands in January and February. That is exactly when a role left open in October is still open.

So the cost of drifting isn’t just a quiet few months without a Financial Controller. It’s the rest of the team, already thinner over the break, carrying the half-year without the person who should be running it. Usually with a CFO filling the gap on nights and weekends, or an external adviser billing for work that was meant to come in-house.

When a good senior accountant resigns in March, a half-year they got through short-staffed is often part of the story. That’s a second vacancy you didn’t budget for.

The candidates are free now

There is a second reason October matters, and this one works in your favour.

For June year-end businesses, FY26 bonuses have now largely been paid. The people who were sensibly waiting to collect them, and there are plenty, are now in a position to move. That makes the next six to eight weeks one of the better windows of the year to approach good people who aren’t actively looking.

The flip side is worth knowing too. Candidates sitting in December year-end businesses are in the opposite position. Many are hanging on for a February or March bonus, and moving them before Christmas usually means a buyout conversation. Better to know that at the brief than at the offer.

Either way, the pool you can realistically move before Christmas is available now. It won’t be in late November, when good candidates start mentally parking decisions until the new year.

“See out the year” is a very effective counteroffer

A short word on resignations, because timing changes them.

A candidate who resigns in October has a fairly straightforward conversation with their boss. A candidate who resigns in late November gets a harder one: stay and see out the year, we’ll look at your package in the February review, please don’t leave us short over the close.

It’s flattering, it sounds reasonable, and it works more often than it should. The later your offer, the more of that pressure your preferred candidate walks into.

Three good options, and one bad one

Here’s where I land. By mid October, every business with an open senior finance role should have made one of three decisions.

Go now, properly. Run a tight process with the dates locked in before the search starts: interview panel booked, approver available, offer path agreed. If it all holds, you get a December start and someone in the seat for the half-year close.

Plan for a January start, and say so. Nothing wrong with this at all. Run the search through October and November, make the offer before the break, and have the person start in the second or third week of January. You’re still well ahead of the businesses that start briefing in February, and candidates tend to respect a business that is honest about timing.

Bridge it. If the half-year close is the real risk and the permanent hire won’t land in time, put an experienced interim in the seat now and run the permanent search at a sensible pace. Good contractors don’t sit around waiting, though, so this one needs deciding early as well.

The bad option is the one most businesses end up in by default. Leave the role open, agree it’s important, get to December, and “pick it up in the new year”. In practice that means briefing in late January, interviewing in February and making an offer in March. Add four weeks’ notice and your new Financial Controller starts in April, after the half-year was closed without them.

That’s not a hiring strategy. It’s just the calendar deciding for you.

Do the maths this week

None of this needs a planning workshop. Take the role, a calendar and the notice period you realistically expect, and count backwards from the start date you actually need.

If the answer says the search should have started last week, it’s far better to find that out in October than in December.

At Recruitment Labs, the searches that land cleanly before Christmas almost always start with a calendar conversation, not a job description. If you have a senior finance role open and want a realistic read on timing, it’s worth having that conversation now rather than in December.