I only work in markets I understand.

Most SBA BDO searches start in the wrong place. A CLO posts the role, gets a stack of resumes from candidates who all claim strong production, and ends up scheduling interviews based on whoever sounds most confident on the phone. Six months later, the hire isn't performing — and the search starts over.

Production numbers alone don't tell the story

A BDO who closed $40MM last year at a bank with a strong credit team, a fast underwriting process, and an existing referral network is a fundamentally different animal from one who closed $40MM building a program from scratch. Both look the same on paper. They are not the same hire. The first question I ask every SBA BDO candidate isn't how much they produced — it's what their support infrastructure looked like.

Credit authority matters more than most banks realize

A BDO with former credit authority understands the deal from both sides. They know how underwriters think, they know which deals are worth pushing and which aren't, and they don't waste your credit team's time on deals that were never going to close. When I'm representing a candidate with credit authority in their background, that's one of the first things I tell the hiring executive — because it changes how you use that person.

Geography and vertical concentration is a real risk

Some BDOs have production that looks national but is actually concentrated in one geography, one industry, or one referral source. If that source dries up — or doesn't follow them to your bank — the production doesn't come with them. Ask specifically: where did your deals come from? What percentage came from your top three referral sources?

What you're actually trying to find

The BDO you want has genuine production across multiple geographies and industries, understands the credit side well enough to self-qualify deals before they go to underwriting, has referral relationships that are personal rather than institutional, and has been tested in an environment that wasn't already set up for them to succeed. Those candidates exist. They're just not the ones who apply to job postings.

The Controller hire is one of the most consequential decisions a mid-market CFO makes — and one of the most commonly mishandled. Not because CFOs don't understand the role, but because the role itself has changed significantly, and most search processes haven't caught up.

The mistake most mid-market companies make

The most common Controller search failure I see is a CFO who defines the role entirely around the close process and financial reporting — and then wonders six months later why their new Controller can't lead the team, communicate upward, or think beyond the month-end checklist. Technical accounting skill is necessary but not sufficient. A Controller at a mid-market company is a leader first.

What the intake conversation should actually cover

When I take a Controller search, I spend more time on context than most recruiters spend on the entire intake. What's the relationship between the Controller and CFO meant to look like? What does the team look like and what kind of manager does it need? Is this a process improvement hire, a scale hire, or a replacement? What does the outgoing Controller's departure tell you about what went wrong?

Where to actually find good Controllers

The best Controllers at mid-market companies are almost never actively looking. In DFW specifically, the strongest mid-market Controller candidates come from three places: Big 4 alumni who made the jump to industry five to eight years ago, Controllers at slightly smaller companies ready to step up in complexity, and strong Assistant Controllers being underutilized where they are.

The brief matters as much as the search

A CFO's time is limited. Every candidate I submit comes with a detailed write-up covering technical background, leadership profile, compensation expectations, and a plain-English recommendation. By the time you're on the phone with a finalist, you already know why they're worth your hour.

Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the most active finance and accounting hiring markets in the country — and one of the most misunderstood by recruiters who don't actually work here.

The talent pool is deep but not always visible

DFW has an enormous concentration of finance and accounting talent — driven by decades of corporate relocations, a strong regional banking presence, and a thriving mid-market business community. But the strongest candidates in this market are not on job boards. The only way to reach them is through relationships built over years in this specific metro.

Compensation has moved faster than most job postings acknowledge

One of the most consistent reasons DFW searches stall is that hiring company compensation expectations haven't kept pace with what the market actually pays. The cost of living advantage that used to make Texas salaries look competitive has narrowed significantly. A CFO who pegs their Controller search at what they paid three years ago will lose good candidates at the offer stage.

The relocation dynamic cuts both ways

DFW continues to attract significant corporate relocations, which creates both opportunity and competition. Those relocations bring large HR teams and internal recruiters actively poaching local talent. For mid-market companies without dedicated talent acquisition resources, speed and decisiveness in the process matters more than it used to.

The personal attention gap is significant

What I hear most consistently from CFOs and VPs of Finance in DFW is that they've had disappointing experiences with large national search firms — strong pitch, weak execution, junior associate running the actual search. That gap is where I operate. Every search I take in DFW gets worked personally, with the same market knowledge and candidate network I've been building in this specific metro for six-plus years.

KRE — the regional bank ETF — is within 5% of a technical breakout. In the trend-following framework I used to manage money, that's the level where you pay attention before the move, not after. The market is pricing regional banks as though the credit stress narrative of 2023 is over.

Bank M&A is at a 7-year high — and DFW is the epicenter

The deal flow supports what KRE is signaling. Huntington's acquisition of Veritex, Comerica's announced restructuring in Frisco, FirstSun's acquisition of First Foundation — three major transactions touching Dallas directly in the last six months, with analysts expecting more before year-end. Consolidation creates two talent markets simultaneously: institutions shedding headcount and institutions that need to grow into the gap. The 10-year at 4.38% isn't the headwind it was in 2023. Over half of banks plan to add commercial lending staff this year. The institutions waiting for rate relief before they hire are giving away the talent pool in the meantime.

Same bank, completely different mandates

Here's what I'm actually seeing in live searches right now: it's not uniform. A recent Assistant Controller and Financial Reporting Director search at a Texas regional bank moved fast — clear process, decisive hiring. A current CAE buildout at the same institution is the opposite: deliberate, exacting, every candidate scrutinized closely.

In an M&A integration environment, the financial reporting function needs to be staffed quickly. The CAE needs to be the right person — because audit is the function that catches what goes wrong after two balance sheets become one. Banks aren't rushing that hire.

That's the bifurcation playing out inside regional banks right now. Financial reporting and accounting functions are being stood up with urgency as institutions integrate. Internal audit leadership is a different conversation entirely — slower, more exacting, and for good reason. Conflating the two timelines is why hiring managers get frustrated when searches don't move at the same pace.

The lending talent pool won't stay available

The talent being displaced by these integrations — relationship managers, lending officers, senior credit professionals — wasn't on the market six months ago. Banks positioned to take commercial market share from distracted acquirers need to move on that talent now, while the pool exists. It won't stay open.

The market says regional banks are breaking out. The search data says: act on operations carefully, move on leadership with urgency, and don't wait on the lending talent.

The question I hear most from CFOs right now isn't "should we be using AI in finance?" It's "which of my current seats am I hiring for the last time?" Those are different questions, and the second one is the right one to ask.

The bottom is compressing

The roles most visibly affected are the ones defined by volume, repetition, and rule application: junior financial analysts running variance analysis, staff accountants doing month-end close tasks manually, AP and AR clerks managing exceptions. These roles aren't disappearing overnight, but the headcount required to do the same work is contracting. CFOs who hired eight staff accountants three years ago are running the same volume with five. That math is not reversing.

The top is expanding — in expectation, not just scope

What's growing is judgment-heavy, relationship-dependent, and requires someone who can be held accountable for a recommendation. CFO, VP Finance, FP&A leadership, business-partner-type Controllers — these seats aren't compressible. If anything, the bar is rising. The CFO who used to have eight people doing the data work now needs four who can interpret it. That's a harder hire, not an easier one. I'm placing Controllers in 2026 who are expected to have a working understanding of what their tech stack can automate — and the judgment to know when the output is wrong.

The seat most CFOs are getting wrong right now

The mid-level accounting manager hire. The instinct is to hire a process manager — someone who can run the close, manage the team, keep things moving. But if AI tools are compressing the close and shrinking the team below them, the role needs to look more like a decision-support analyst than a traffic cop. Most job descriptions haven't caught up. Most intake calls I take are still written for the 2019 version of the job.

What I'm actually seeing in the market

Controllers and Directors of Accounting who've been in their seats for five or more years are often under-invested in AI tooling — not because they're resistant, but because nobody made it their problem until now. The strongest mid-market F&A candidates I'm placing in 2026 have a specific profile: they understand what the tools can and can't do, they've built teams that lean on them, and they still have the judgment to push back when the output doesn't make sense. That last piece is not common and is not easy to evaluate in an interview.

Two questions worth answering before your next search intake

First: what specifically does this role own that AI is not going to own in two years? Second: what level of AI fluency is a real requirement versus a nice-to-have? Most roles have an honest answer to both. Most intake conversations don't surface either. If you're thinking through the right shape of a finance team in an AI-leveraged environment, that's worth a conversation before you write the job description — not during the search.