Why “Like-for-Like” Hiring Is Costing Finance Teams More Than They Realise

I have the same conversation on briefing calls more often than I’d like. A client comes to us needing to replace someone in their finance team, and before we’ve even got into the detail of the role, the brief has already narrowed itself down to one thing: find someone who has done this exact job, in an almost identical business, and will move for roughly the same salary they’re on now.

On the surface, it looks like a sensible way to hire. It feels safe. It’s easy to justify internally, and nobody gets challenged for playing it that way. But I’ve watched this pattern for long enough now, across enough clients, to know it isn’t solving the problem it’s meant to solve. If anything, it’s quietly setting businesses up to be back in the same position a year later, asking us to fill the same seat all over again, and the data on turnover, career development and pay backs up exactly what I’m seeing on the ground.

That’s the part I want to unpick here, not because “like-for-like” hiring is a silly idea, but because I don’t think many finance leaders realise how much it can cost until they’ve lived through the cycle two or three times.

Seeing it from the candidate’s perspective

There’s a real risk-aversion around hiring decisions at the moment, and I understand why. But picture the call from the candidate’s end. A recruiter rings with a role that, on paper, ticks every box: same title, a very similar business, and a salary that’s a modest step up from what they’re on now. It’s flattering, and in a market where plenty of people feel some pressure to move quickly, it’s an easy offer to say yes to.

But taking a job and staying in it are two different things. What that candidate is actually being offered is a chance to repeat what they’ve already mastered, in a slightly different building. There’s rarely much conversation about where the role goes next, or what new ground they’ll be given to cover. So, they take it, and for a while, everything’s fine. Then, somewhere around the 10-to-12-month mark, the same restlessness that pushed them to move last time starts creeping back in and they are back on the market and the client is right back where they started, funding another search for a role they only just filled.

Career development, or the lack of it, has been the single most cited reason employees quit their jobs for over a decade running, according to annual retention research that has tracked exit interview data across industries. Employees consistently say the same thing on the way out: they weren’t learning, weren’t growing, and weren’t being given a path to something bigger, so they found it somewhere else.

It’s not just the lack of stretch – it’s the lack of reward for it

There’s a layer to this that doesn’t get talked about enough. Even in the cases where someone does end up taking on a bit more than the original job description, that extra effort rarely gets reflected in what they’re paid. So the person is doing more, but not necessarily better off for it, and that combination tends to push people out faster than a role that was simply “comfortable” to begin with.

This isn’t just anecdotal. Workforce researchers have flagged this exact dynamic as a specific and growing driver of turnover in its own right: when someone is effectively performing at a more senior level while their pay and title stay still, it creates real flight risk among precisely the people a business can least afford to lose. The employee-side research backs it up almost word for word – people who are quietly handed more scope without a corresponding pay adjustment describe feeling burned out, undervalued and overlooked. That’s exactly the sentiment I hear echoed back from candidates who’ve lived through it.

If we want people to grow into a role rather than outgrow it within a year, that growth needs a genuine, visible path to being recognised and paid for it. Otherwise, the most capable people in a team are quietly looking for somewhere that will offer them that path instead.

What I’d encourage clients to look for

This is the bit I find myself saying most often on calls now: look at the diversity of skill set and experience a candidate brings, not just how closely their last job title matches yours. There’s real value in bringing someone in from a slightly different industry, or someone who’s eager to learn and just needs a bit of an opportunity to grow into the role.

The wider research on career development backs this up too. Employees who see a genuine growth path are dramatically more likely to stay – the vast majority say they would remain at a company longer if it invested properly in their learning and development. It isn’t just an employee-side benefit, either: organisations that treat career development seriously see measurably better outcomes across the board, including meaningfully higher internal mobility, one of the strongest levers available for retaining top-tier talent.

Give a candidate a genuine shot at the extra 10%, and what you tend to get in return is longevity, someone who isn’t banging on your door after 12 months looking for a promotion you never planned to give them, and you’re not left in the sticky situation of paying another recruitment firm to backfill a role you only just filled.

None of this means lowering the bar on what someone needs to bring technically. It means asking a different question at the start of the process: not “who has already done this job?” but “who has the range to grow into where this role is heading, and are we prepared to reward them when they do?”

Why this matters more than the cost of one hire

Every time this cycle repeats, it costs more than most businesses account for. UK estimates for the true cost of replacing an employee (factoring in the fee, lost productivity, and the ramp-up time before someone reaches full output) regularly land around £30,000 for a mid-level hire once the full picture is accounted for, and for more senior or specialist finance appointments, that figure climbs a good deal higher.

On top of the number itself, there’s the part that never shows up on an invoice: the knowledge that walks out the door with someone who’s only been there a matter of months, and the disruption to a team that has to absorb the gap while a replacement is found. Let alone the time commitment from senior leadership to run through another round(s) of interviews for a role they thought was already sorted.

Run that cycle two or three times for the same seat, and it’s worth pausing to ask whether it’s really about the candidates – or about the brief they keep being hired against.

If your last few finance hires have moved on faster than you expected, I’d encourage you to look at the brief before assuming it was the wrong candidate. Often, it’s the same job, the same salary, and the same story on repeat – and the data on why people leave says as much.

We work with CFOs, FDs and hiring managers across our Accountancy & Finance team to build finance teams that last. Get in touch with me directly at [email protected] to talk through your next hire.

Sources referenced:

1. Work Institute, Retention Report — career development as the top cited reason for voluntary turnover
2. Innovative Human Capital, “Retention Through Growth, Respect, and Fair Pay” — pay/responsibility mismatch and turnover risk
3. Empower Work — employee accounts of “quiet hiring” and unrewarded scope increases
4. LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report — employee willingness to stay given L&D investment
5. Paycor, employee retention statistics 2026 — internal mobility as a retention driver
6. 360 Wellbeing / Oxford Economics — UK cost of replacing an employee (~£30,000 mid-level benchmark)