Finance recruitment trends: what we’re seeing in the market now

The finance hiring market in 2026 looks calmer than it actually is. Confidence picked up at the beginning of the year with more candidates open to opportunities and clients more open to hire. Most companies have been offering CPI for annual salary increases. Although there is a perception it is easy to find quality people at the moment, in Accounting and Finance this is not the case and we are having to work hard to attract talent to opportunities, particularly in the $100-150k range as the draw of Australia continues.

Here’s what’s standing out to us right now in the finance recruitment market, and what we’ve been conversing with our clients looking to hire:

NZ’s Finance Talent Pool – The current state.

In the past 24 months, a significant number of both experienced and newly qualified finance professionals have moved offshore (mostly to Australia). Higher pay, broader opportunities, better career progression, lower cost of living – nothing new. The problem is that there’s been minimal inflow of international or returning Kiwi professionals to replace them.

The areas we’re seeing the strongest demand currently are:

• $100-150k Financial/Management Accountants, Finance Business Partners, Commercial Analysts
• The 25–35 age bracket – where you’d normally develop your next generation of leaders
• Transactional level candidates (AP/AR/Assistant Accountants etc) – This has really picked up this year while in 2025 it was very quiet
• Commercially minded and adaptable senior managers (Finance Managers, Financial Controllers) remain in strong demand
• It’s been easier to pick up finance grads at the moment as the Professional Services firms aren’t hiring as many

The most asked for skill: Commercial acumen.

In our recent market survey, 59% of hiring managers said commercial acumen was the hardest capability gap to fill in finance and accounting. It was well ahead of technical skills (33%), leadership (31%), or communication (29%). This data comes from our What the Buck? 2026 market & salary survey, conducted in January answered by hundreds of NZ business professionals.

It’s not hard to see why it’s in such demand. As finance teams are pulled further into strategy, planning, and decision-making, businesses need people who can do more than report the numbers – they need people who can interpret them, challenge them, and influence what happens next.

The trouble is that this is the hardest capability to find and the hardest to fast-track. Technical skills can be taught through training and on-the-job experience. Commercial mindset (the ability to think strategically and advise on real business decisions) comes from years of exposure to such decisions. You can’t shortcut it, which is exactly why the candidates who genuinely have it are scarce, in demand, and very aware of their value.

Job ads are doing less and less.

If your hiring strategy still relies on posting an ad and waiting, you’re fishing in the smallest pond. The people you actually want aren’t reading job ads – they’re employed, they’re busy, and they’re not looking. Importantly, we’re not in a really confident market; candidates while open to change, are still cautious and riding out the global instability.

We see this in our own numbers. 86% of the placements we made in the last 12 months came from our internal talent community – not from online job ads. These are people we already knew and had relationships with.

That tells you where the real market is. Actively going and finding the right people, and building relationships, is the biggest change in how good finance hiring works now. The businesses still waiting for applications to roll in are competing for the small slice of the market that’s actively looking – and missing the much larger group who aren’t.

What separates the businesses winning the best hires.

People are choosing environments with great cultures and leaders, stability, progression – salary is the icing on the cake, but not the main factor. The businesses that run smooth and timely processes, interview in a friendly, collaborative way, lifting “the lid” on the company have way more success than companies with formal, protracted processes.

Quality talent has a choice of opportunities so although candidates need to put their best foot forward, so do employers!

If you’d like to talk through any of these market trends or discuss what we’re seeing in your specific industry, reach out to the Consult team at info@consultrecruitment.co.nz – we’re also happy to send you a copy of our latest 2026 What the Buck? Salary Report.

This article was published in the CFO Magazine for the 2026 NZ CFO Symposium – New Zealand’s largest gathering of CFOs and a powerful forum for financial leadership, innovation, and transformation.