So you think you need an FD ..

Hiring a finance director is a rite of passage to commercial maturity for a small company. But when is the time right to do it? Janet Kersnar finds out.

Every now and then, executive headhunter Steve Carter gets a call from a firm that wants to hire its first-ever financial director. The company is often a small business, perhaps set up in the chief executive's garage and now on a growth curve that will soon transform it beyond recognition.

Carter, who oversees the UK finance and accounting recruitment at Robert Half International, has seen it all before. 'Hiring an FD for the first time is an aspirations issue,' he says. 'But just because everyone else has one isn't a good enough reason to want one.'