How Long Does an FD Search Take in London? Data from Our Last 50 Placements

By Adrian Lawrence, Managing Director, FD Capital Recruitment

“How long is this going to take?” is the first question on almost every finance leadership brief I take in London. It’s asked before salary, before job specification, before sector focus. Most owners and CEOs have been burned by a search that took too long the last time round, and they remember the month that turned into six. They don’t always remember why.

Before the data, the honest answer to the question begins with “it depends on what you’re hiring.” A fractional CFO search and a permanent FD search live in completely different timeline universes — and conflating them is the single biggest reason clients end up with the wrong expectation set.

I’ve just pulled the data on our last 50 placements across Greater London. The breakdown tells you where our business actually sits today:

• Fractional CFO: 35 of 50 (70%) — now the majority of what we do
• Permanent FD/CFO: 10 of 50 (20%)
• Interim CFO: 5 of 50 (10%)

Each segment has its own timeline profile, and lumping them together produces a misleading average. Here’s what the data actually shows for each.

Fractional CFO searches: 2 weeks lead-to-start, sometimes 3 days

This is where the volume sits and where the speed story really lives.

• Median time from first enquiry to fractional CFO in post: 14 days (two weeks)
• Fastest in the sample: 3 days, lead to start
• Shortlist typically presented within 3–7 days of the initial brief
• Interviews usually happen within a few days of shortlist
• Start is almost always immediate — fractionals hold deliberate capacity for new clients and don’t serve notice

The reason fractional searches move so much faster than permanent ones isn’t because we’re working harder. It’s structural, and it’s worth understanding if you’re deciding between routes:

No notice period. A fractional CFO carries a portfolio of part-time clients. Adding one more, or replacing a client that’s concluded, is a matter of diary reorganisation — not a 3-month wait.

Smaller, pre-qualified pool. The population of experienced fractional CFOs in London is deeper than most clients assume, but it isn’t infinite. We know it well, and we can match against a brief — sector, scale, day rate, day count per week — inside hours rather than weeks.

Lower commitment threshold. A fractional engagement is easier to say yes to on both sides. Typically one or two days a week, a 3–6 month initial term, no permanent headcount implications, no redundancy exposure if the brief evolves.

Decision-makers show up faster. Fractional mandates are almost always decided by the founder or CEO personally, in one or two meetings. The multi-stakeholder panel problem that slows permanent searches doesn’t exist.

When a client tells me they need finance leadership in the chair next month, the answer — almost every time — is a fractional CFO, provided one will fit the brief. Not because it’s our preferred product, but because the physics of the market make it the only route that reliably delivers in that timeframe.

Permanent FD/CFO searches: 31-day median from brief to offer

The permanent side of our desk runs to a different rhythm entirely — and this is where the classic “long search” stories usually come from.

• Median brief-to-offer: 31 days
• Fastest quartile: 19 days or under
• Slowest quartile: 48 days or over
• Longest in the sample: 98 days

Then, critically, the notice period. Most London permanent FDs carry 2–3 months’ notice; PE-backed and group CFOs often 6. The search ends when the offer is accepted; the seat isn’t filled until notice is served.

The practical implication — and the one clients most often miss — is that if you’re briefing a permanent search in October and need someone in post for January, you’re already late. Either the timeline needs to flex, or the answer is a fractional CFO in post now and a permanent hire recruited behind them.

What happens week by week on a permanent search

Days 1–3: brief and market scan. A proper first call takes 60–90 minutes. We’ll then map the market against the brief — sector, scale, funding structure, leadership style — usually the same day.

Days 3–7: longlist to shortlist. A London permanent FD longlist typically surfaces 20–35 credible candidates inside five working days for a well-defined brief. We narrow to a shortlist of 5–8 through initial conversations, availability and pay-expectation checks.

Days 7–14: shortlist presented. Most clients see their first meaningful shortlist inside two weeks of briefing.

Days 14–28: client interviews. This is where the timeline lives or dies. A client running a tight two-stage process with clear decision criteria reaches offer stage inside four weeks of brief. A client who drifts into four or five stages, with diary gaps between each, is still interviewing at week eight.

Days 28–35: offer, negotiation, acceptance. Salary negotiation rarely takes more than a few days if pitched sensibly at the outset.

Interim CFO: fast, but not as fast as fractional

Interim sits between the two. An interim CFO taking a full-time, full-commitment role usually serves at least a week or two of notice from their current engagement, but rarely more than that. Median lead-to-start in our sample: ~21 days. The fastest was 11 days — an interim FD into a live insolvency situation. Interim is typically the answer when the brief is full-time, time-bound (6–12 months), and won’t wait for a permanent notice period.

The finding that held across all three segments: the hire is almost always in the first five candidates

When I cut the data by where in the process the eventual hire came from, the result was stark — and it held across fractional, interim and permanent.

• Across all 50 placements, 37 (74%) were hired from candidates 1–5 on the first shortlist.
• 44 of 50 (88%) were hired from the first ten candidates presented.
• Only 6 of 50 came from candidate 11 or later — and half of those were reactivated searches where the original shortlist had been rejected wholesale and we’d gone back with a revised brief.

For fractional the pattern is even more pronounced: most fractional mandates close on the first or second candidate met, because the fit is either there in the initial conversation or it isn’t. For permanent, the same 3-in-4 rule applies but takes longer to play out, because there are more stakeholders and more interview stages between shortlist and decision.

The fishing problem — mostly a permanent-search phenomenon

The single biggest driver of slow searches in our data isn’t candidate scarcity. It’s client indecision dressed up as due diligence — and it’s almost exclusively a permanent-search issue.

The pattern: the shortlist lands. The client meets four of five candidates, likes two of them, and can’t choose. Rather than running a second-stage interview to decide, they ask to see more candidates. We go back to market and present another three or four. Now the client is comparing eight people across two weeks instead of five across one, and — predictably — they’re further from a decision, not closer. Meanwhile, the first two favourites, who finished their first interviews two weeks ago and have heard nothing concrete, get courted by other processes and accept elsewhere.

I call this fishing, and it’s the most common reason a permanent search drifts past 60 days. Occasionally it’s legitimate — the first shortlist genuinely missed the brief, or the brief itself has shifted — but in most cases the fix isn’t more candidates. It’s a structured second-stage interview with the existing shortlist and a decision framework agreed in advance.

Fishing rarely happens on fractional mandates because the commitment is lower, the decision-maker is typically one person, and the cost of a bad fit is genuinely low (a one-month notice on a fractional engagement, versus redundancy exposure on a permanent hire). Clients make calls faster when the stakes of getting it slightly wrong are contained.

Speed correlates with decisiveness, not candidate scarcity

The recruiter truth after more than a decade placing London finance leaders is this: the speed of a search has almost nothing to do with how many candidates exist in the market, and almost everything to do with how decisively the client is willing to act once they see them.

Within the 10 permanent placements specifically — where the timeline variance is greatest — the pattern was clear:

• The 3 fastest (under 21 days brief-to-offer) averaged 2.3 interview stages, and in every one the ultimate hiring decision-maker was present in round one.
• The 3 slowest (55+ days) averaged 4.1 interview stages, and the ultimate decision-maker didn’t attend candidate meetings until round two or later.

Same candidate pool. Same market. Same underlying brief structure. More than twice the time-to-hire, driven almost entirely by process length and principal involvement.

The best-run London finance searches — regardless of segment — share three features. The ultimate hiring decision-maker meets candidates from round one. The number of stages is fixed at the brief, not added during the process. And the decision criteria are written down before interviews start.

When a longer permanent timeline is legitimate

Fast isn’t always right. There are briefs where 60–90 days is the correct timeline, not a failed one. A Head of Regulatory Finance for an FCA-authorised fintech has a much thinner candidate pool — four to six weeks to build a credible longlist isn’t slow, it’s thorough. PE-backed searches often require sponsor reference processes, portfolio-wide panel interviews or assessment days that add two to three weeks by design. Confidential replacement searches, where the current postholder doesn’t yet know, have to be paced to avoid signal leakage.

For the average London permanent FD brief — £110k–£200k, 50–500-person business, well-understood sector — none of those constraints apply. A six-month search on a brief like that isn’t due diligence. It’s process debt.

Three things that compress any London finance search

1. Be honest about the shape you need. If the real requirement is 2 days a week of seasoned CFO judgment, the answer is fractional — and the answer can be in post in a fortnight. If the real requirement is a permanent leader embedded long-term, plan backwards from your needed start date with 2–3 months of notice built in.
2. Commit to a short process at the brief. One interview stage for fractional, two for permanent. Not three, not four. If a further round is genuinely needed for a specific candidate, add it on exception, not as default.
3. Trust the first shortlist. It contains your eventual hire three times out of four across all three segments. Interview it properly before asking for more.

The candid version

The question clients ask is “how long will this take?” The more useful question, in my experience, is “what shape of finance leadership do we actually need?” If you need someone in post in 2–3 weeks, the answer is almost always fractional, and we can usually deliver. If you need a permanent FD embedded long-term, plan for roughly 5 weeks of search and 2–3 months of notice. If you need a full-time interim for 6–12 months, plan for 3 weeks.

And regardless of which route you take, the hire you eventually make is statistically one of the first five people we presented. Better to meet them decisively than to meet twenty of them politely.

Related Finance and Professional Services Recruitment

• Fractional CFO — Part-time CFO support, median two weeks from brief to in post
• Interim CFO — Full-time CFO at short notice for transactions and turnarounds
• Finance Director Recruitment — Permanent FD appointments across London
• CFO Recruitment — Senior CFO appointments for PE-backed and group businesses
• Short-Notice FD — Urgent FD requirements with compressed timelines

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Sources and Further Reading

• REC — UK Recruitment and Employment Report (time-to-hire benchmarks)
• CIPD — Resourcing and Talent Planning Survey (UK recruitment trends)
• ICAEW — Finance leadership standards and guidance
• FD Capital — 2025 Finance Director Salary Benchmarking Guide