A manufacturing company in Pune hired a finance manager in January. Chartered Accountant, seven years of experience, cleared three interview rounds comfortably, references checked out. He resigned in the last week of May.

Nobody did anything obviously wrong, and that is exactly the problem. When a hire fails without a dramatic reason, the same mistake quietly repeats with the next person.

Finance roles break down early more often than most functions. The reasons are fairly predictable once you know where to look.

The first reason is that you hired for the role you advertised rather than the role that actually exists. The job description said financial reporting and MIS. The real job turned out to be chasing branch accountants for data, fixing a Tally to SAP migration nobody mentioned in the interview, and sitting in on sales meetings because the founder likes a finance person in the room. None of that is unreasonable work. But a candidate who accepted one job and arrived at another starts recalculating his decision in week three. Describe the messy parts honestly during the interview. You will lose two candidates and keep the one who actually wanted this job.

The second reason is that finance teams almost never onboard properly. Sales has a product training programme. Technology has documentation and a buddy system. Finance hands the new manager a laptop, a login that takes nine days to activate, and a vague instruction to pick things up. Then everyone is surprised when month end closing in March goes badly.

A thirty day plan solves most of this, and it does not need to be elaborate. Week one, walk him through the chart of accounts, the entity structure and who prepares what. Week two, let him shadow a full reporting cycle without owning it. Week three, give him a defined piece to own end to end. Week four, sit down and ask what is still unclear. Thirty minutes a week from the reporting manager prevents months of quiet floundering.

The third reason is unclear reporting lines. This is specific to finance and it causes real damage. A manager who reports to the CFO on paper but takes instructions from a promoter, a plant head and an external consultant is going to disappoint at least two of them every week. He will also discover that nobody will back him when he pushes back on something. Decide who he reports to, decide who can assign him work, and tell everyone else to route requests through that person.

The fourth reason is the counter offer that was accepted and then regretted. A candidate who resigns, receives a counter offer from his current employer, declines it and joins you is in a more fragile position than you think. He has burned a bridge, told himself a story about why the move was right, and will look for early confirmation that he made the correct choice. If the first six weeks are chaotic, he will conclude he was wrong. This is why the first six weeks matter disproportionately.

The fifth reason is that nobody told him anything until it was too late. Finance managers often work with reviewers who correct the work silently. The schedule comes back amended, the note gets rewritten, and no conversation happens. The new person has no idea whether he is doing well or badly. Four months in, he is called into a meeting and told his output has not been up to standard, which is the first he is hearing of it. Say the small things early, in two sentences, when they happen.

The sixth reason sits outside your control but inside your planning. In India, finance hiring collides with the appraisal cycle and the statutory calendar. Somebody who joins in February is thrown straight into year end. Somebody who joins in September walks into tax audit season. If you cannot avoid these windows, at least acknowledge them to the candidate and reduce what you expect in the first quarter.

There is one more thing worth saying plainly. Sometimes the hire was simply wrong, and no amount of onboarding would have fixed it. That usually traces back to a screening process that tested technical knowledge thoroughly and tested everything else barely at all. We see this constantly in finance and accounting recruitment. The candidates who fail in month five almost never fail because they did not know Ind AS. They fail because they could not handle ambiguity, could not push back on a senior without creating friction, or could not explain a number to someone outside finance.

Those qualities can be tested. Ask about a real past situation rather than a hypothetical one. Give a short practical exercise. Ask references open questions instead of closed ones. Twenty extra minutes in the interview is cheaper than five months of salary and a restarted search.

If you have lost two finance hires in a year, the pattern is almost certainly in your process rather than in the market. Look at the job description you published, the first thirty days you offered, and the questions you asked. The answer is usually sitting in one of those three. If you want help structuring a finance search properly, our team works with CA firms and finance teams across India.