Benskin Talent Partners

09/02/2026

If they offer you a water at an interview, take the water.

You might not be thirsty. Doesn't matter. Take the water.

The advice came to me secondhand, from a career counselor by way of a friend of a friend, and the idea is to be a guest. When somebody offers you a water, or ten minutes to freshen up before you start, they're hosting you. Accepting lets them. Every little yes makes the visit warmer, and every reflexive no, polite as it feels, keeps things stiff.

Interviews are visits, and everybody in the room is reading everybody else. Taking the water says you're comfortable being there. It gives the other person the small pleasure of having looked after you.

So take the water. Worst case, you sit through the interview holding a free water.

08/31/2026

Before you set the salary for an open role, ask your recruiter one simple question. What are people with these skills actually accepting right now?

I love getting that call. Somebody is about to budget a new role, and instead of guessing, they want to hear what the market is really doing. And I can tell them, because offers get accepted and turned down in front of me all year long.

Pay has been moving faster than published ranges can keep up with. What the last person made, the range on some website, the number that worked two years ago, the market has moved on from most of it.

When a role has been sitting open for months and good people keep saying no, the first thing I check is whether the pay fell behind the market. It usually did. And when the number is right from day one, the whole search feels different. Candidates come to that first call interested, and offers get signed instead of dragging through weeks of back and forth.

So before you post the range, make the call. It's one conversation, and it can save you months.

08/28/2026

08/27/2026

Somebody told me recently that I have nothing left to prove.

I'd been telling them I was in a holding pattern, not sure which direction I wanted to take the business. And they meant it kindly. You've already done it, they said. You have nothing to prove to anyone.

Everything in me went, but I haven't.

I've been at this 25 years. I've built a firm I'm proud of and made placements I'm still proud of. I understand what they were trying to hand me. Permission to relax.

But I think we're always evolving and growing. I still want to strive and do more. I look back at my younger self and cringe at things I didn't know yet, and I hope the version of me ten years from now looks back at today and cringes a little too. It will mean I kept learning.

Contentment is a fine place to land. Some seasons of a career are just about getting through, and that's allowed. I'm just not in either of those seasons.

What do you mean I have nothing to prove? My life's not over.

08/25/2026

Most of the new business I get today was earned years ago.

People I bent over backwards for early in my career still call, still refer me, and still tell the CEO, CFO or CHRO they just hired to look me up when they need help.

Back then it didn't look like business development. It just looked like doing the job as well as I possibly could. I stayed available and went above and beyond on service, because I couldn't stand the thought of a client feeling let down. When a search demanded it, I worked through the night, some weeks two or three nights. I wanted every client and every candidate to hang up the phone glad they'd called.

I look at it now and it's paid off. If I stopped marketing tomorrow and just nurtured the relationships I already have, I would probably be okay.

So if you're early in your career and wondering whether the extra effort adds up to anything, it does. Care enough to do the job in front of you to the very best of your ability. Answer quickly, prepare thoroughly, keep the small promises.

Somebody you go the extra mile for this year will still be calling you years from now.

08/21/2026

In accounting and finance there's a path everybody knows by heart. Degree, sit for the CPA, pass all four parts, a few years in a Big Four or a large regional firm, make manager, then out into industry. I call it the picture perfect background.

And I'd never talk anybody out of it. It opens doors, it builds a foundation, and if you're just starting out and asking me, I'll probably tell you to take it.

But once the call is about a controller seat or a CFO seat, clients stop asking me where somebody started and start asking what they've been through. They want to know if a candidate has come through a merger or an acquisition, whether systems got implemented on their watch, what they did when the numbers weren't behaving.

Some of the best candidates I present have seen a best in class operation and a messy one. And the messy one usually taught them more. They know what wrong looks like, because they've watched it up close.

So if your background took some turns the path never mentioned, put them on your resume and be ready to talk about them.

Some of the strongest people I've placed did their learning in the years that looked the least picture perfect.

08/19/2026

Being the most technical person on the team is usually not what gets somebody the CFO seat.

And that stings, because for most of an accounting or finance career, technical skill is exactly what gets rewarded. You passed the exams. You knew the standards cold. Every promotion came from being the person in the room with the answers.

Then the CFO conversation starts, and the questions change. Boards want somebody they can sit with. A CEO is looking for a partner who understands the whole business, and if private equity is involved, they need somebody who can stand in front of them quarter after quarter with a straight story. And the technical piece moves down the list, because at that level, the deep technical work ends up with the strong people coming up the ranks underneath you.

It has nothing to do with ability. A CFO seat is simply a different job than every job that led to it.

So if that seat is where you're headed, start collecting the rest of the toolkit now. Raise your hand for the merger, the acquisition, the systems implementation. Get close to the operators and learn what the business actually sells. Ask for time in front of the board when the chance comes around.

You've earned every promotion so far by having the answers. This one goes to the person the board wants in the room.

08/17/2026

Tell me you need a CFO and my first questions will be about everybody except the CFO.

Who's already on your finance team, and what are they carrying? How seasoned is the bench behind your controller?

Clients are sometimes puzzled by this. They called about one hire. But you could send me the strongest finance resume in St. Louis and I still couldn't tell you whether that person is right for your company, because that answer lives with the team you already have.

Maybe your controller can quote the revenue recognition rules from memory. Wonderful. Then the seat is about everything else, sitting with your board, partnering with your CEO, keeping the PE firm comfortable, setting a direction the strong people underneath can run with. Flip it around, thin bench, nobody deep in the standards, and technical weight jumps right back to the top of my list.

I've watched a candidate be wrong for one company and exactly right for the one down the street.

Candidates get ready for this seat in pieces anyway, a merger here, an acquisition there, a systems implementation nobody enjoyed. Which pieces your search needs depends entirely on what's already in your building.

So before you send over the job description, walk me through your people. Who you already have changes who we go looking for.