Finance & Accounting Recruiters — CFO and Controller Search

Clover Search Group is an owner-led direct hire recruiting firm in Lodi, California, and finance and accounting is one of the six practice areas we run. On the employers page it is listed as Finance & Administration; in practice it is CFOs, controllers, accounting managers and the senior professionals underneath them, placed permanently with employers across the Central Valley, the Sacramento corridor and the inland Bay Area. Brooklyn and Aidan Kearney own the firm and run the searches themselves.

If you searched for a CFO recruiter, an accounting headhunter or an executive search firm for a finance seat, this is the same work under a different name: direct hire recruiting, permanent employees on your payroll.

Finance is the practice where a bad hire is quietest and most expensive. A controller who cannot close the month does not fail visibly in week two; it shows up as a covenant conversation in month nine. That is why this desk runs slower at intake and harder on references than the others, and why Aidan makes the reference calls himself.

Two shapes come up more than any others out here. The first is a family-held manufacturer, grower or distributor whose controller is retiring after twenty years and who has no succession plan, because there was never anyone to succeed to. The second is a company that has outgrown its bookkeeper and needs a first real finance leader — someone who can build a close calendar, talk to a bank, and tell the owner something he does not want to hear.

The administration half of the practice travels with it — human resources director, HR manager and office manager seats at companies small enough that finance and HR report to the same person. We place those when they sit at the leadership or professional layer, and we say so plainly when they do not.

Sacramento. The deepest finance bench in our footprint, and the one market where a CFO search has real competition. Public-sector finance, health care administration, technology and professional services all hire here, and the candidates move between them. It is also where the phrase “CFO recruiter” gets typed into Google most often in this corridor, which is part of why this page exists.

Stockton. San Joaquin County still has banks headquartered inside it — Bank of Stockton has run on its original 1867 charter, and Farmers & Merchants has been in Lodi since 1916 — and that produces a supply of commercial credit, treasury and controller talent the rest of the Valley quietly hires from. Distribution and food processing companies here run real cost accounting functions, which is a different skill from general ledger work and worth screening for on purpose.

Lodi. Home ground, and the clearest example of the succession problem. Winegrowing, food and beverage processing and precision manufacturing are full of closely held companies where the finance function is one person deep. When that person retires, the search is less about technical accounting than about whether the new hire can sit across a table from an owner and be trusted.

The practice does not stop at those three. Every market we cover has finance seats in it, and the hub is the fastest way to see how the corridors connect.

If you are a controller or a finance leader in the Valley, you have probably not updated a résumé since the job before this one. That is exactly who we call. There is no cost to candidates, ever, the conversation is confidential, and nothing goes to an employer without your say-so — which matters more in finance than in most functions, because your current employer would notice. More for candidates →