Call or text 262-893-1523 or email marc@mdmrecruitingllc.com.
I place FP&A professionals and financial analysts at companies across Wisconsin and northern Illinois. If you need someone who can build the forecast, own the budget, and tell you what the numbers actually mean, that is the search I run.
This is the forward looking side of finance. An accountant tells you what already happened. An FP&A analyst helps you decide what to do next. When you are trying to plan a year, price a product, or explain a variance to the owner, this is the person who makes that possible.
What an FP&A analyst actually does
At a 50 to 200 person company, this person owns budgeting and forecasting, builds and maintains the financial models, and turns raw data into something leadership can act on. They run the monthly variance analysis, help set the annual plan, and answer the questions that start with why. Increasingly they also own the reporting tools and dashboards the rest of the company relies on.
A financial analyst earlier in their career often supports that work, pulling data, building reports, and growing into the full FP&A seat. Whether you need a seasoned FP&A lead or a sharp analyst you can develop, I help you figure out which one fits the work you actually have.
Why this role is hard to hire
The hard part is finding someone who is strong with numbers and also good with people. Plenty of candidates can build a model. Far fewer can sit with a sales leader or an operations manager, understand the business behind the numbers, and explain a forecast in plain language. That combination is rare, and it is exactly what I screen for.
There is also a real difference between someone who has built a forecast from scratch and someone who has only maintained one they inherited. Titles do not tell you which is which. I dig into what a candidate actually built versus what they were handed, so you know what you are getting.
What I look for in an FP&A hire
I look for the person who is curious about the business, not just the spreadsheet. Can they explain a variance without hiding behind jargon. Have they built a model someone else could actually use and trust. Do they push back with a better number when the plan looks wrong. Are they comfortable being the person in the room who says the forecast does not add up. Those traits matter more than any single tool on a resume.
Technical skill still counts. Strong Excel is a given, and experience with your planning or BI tools helps. But I have watched too many technically perfect hires fail because they could not connect the numbers to the business. I weight the judgment as heavily as the mechanics.
The kind of hire this matters for
This search matters most when you are trying to run the company on better information. You are growing and the guesswork is getting expensive, or the owner is tired of not having numbers they trust, or the finance team can close the books but cannot tell you what is coming. When you need a real partner in planning and decisions, this is the search I am built for.
Hiring for FP&A or a financial analyst? Let’s talk about it.
Tell me about the work and the team it sits on, and I will tell you honestly whether I can help and what a realistic search looks like. No pressure and no obligation.
Call or text 262-893-1523 or email marc@mdmrecruitingllc.com.