Alexandra Charles is the Head of Finance at Nexthink in Lausanne, Switzerland. She started her Finance career in an Audit role in France, before moving to Switzerland in 2006. She spent a significant period in the beauty industry, before moving to Nexthink in 2017.

How do you find a job that makes you happy?

It may be reflective, but - with almost 20 years of experience and knowing how to get from here to there - I can think of a few things. All the jobs that I have taken in the past have brought me here, and they brought me to a place where I feel like it’s important to be in line with your values, with what makes you who you are as a person and what you really like doing, what you enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis. I’ve taken almost all my jobs because I was excited by the challenge of creating new things, developing new teams.

For me, it’s always about what makes me happy. I’ve been given the opportunity to start a new job with a blank page where I can create, I can implement in almost all my jobs. I am a very curious person, as well, so that was a big driver for me; taking a job because I’m curious to see what’s going to happen in this role, what I am going to be able to do there, what I will be able to achieve.

That is how I got here. Now, I feel more in line with my own values and who I am as a person in my role today, and in the choices I made and how I’m developing my teams. It is very much linked to my core values as a person.

What challenges do you see for women in senior Finance roles?

That’s a very tricky question, because there is no right or wrong answer, and it can be interpreted differently. I believe that self-doubt is probably our worst enemy as women. I believe that we are in a society that dictates a lot of things; today, we are in a world where women are asked to do it all, we’re asked to achieve it all in all aspects of our lives. I believe that sometimes we block ourselves, because we believe that if we try to achieve something or get to the next step in our career, we’re going to sacrifice something else in our lives.

We’re asked to be the best at everything we do, and I feel that there is some sort of pressure. This is a very personal opinion, but I believe that sometimes - especially in a men’s world like Finance – it’s harder to believe that we are able to do it and we can do it, we can get to these roles, we can access them. I think that sometimes it’s because we doubt that we can do it.

Sometimes, when I am talking to friends, I realise that they are really the ones that are creating blockages on their paths to become a more senior leader, because they have other priorities, which they believe will come next if they give priority to their work.

Sometimes, we have to care more about ourselves and think about what we want to achieve as a person and not what society dictates for us.

How can leaders create diverse teams?

The first thing is, we need to be aware of our own unconscious bias - and I believe we all have some. We need to be conscious of them and put them aside. When it comes to recruitment, I’m really looking at recruiting talents; I am never going to look at where they come from, or if it’s a man or a woman. It is about finding the right person for my team, for this role - are they going to fit into the company environment and are they going to fit within my team?  

When I joined Nexthink, we were only a team of three people. Now, Finance has a team of almost 25. I’ve recruited all these people in the last few years and, what’s funny, is that I have more women than men in my team. That’s interesting to see as a female Head of Finance - the ratio of women in my team is 70%.

I don’t know what led to that, but I guess that - because I am a woman - I was conscious about some of the biases we might have. We all think different things when we see a CV; it is important to put them aside and recruit the best person.

How do you work to retain high potential employees?

I think it always starts with the performance reviews. Like in any company, there are annual performance reviews. Then there’s a mapping that I do during this performance review to see where people fit depending on their role. Are they comfortable in their role? Does it have potential for growth? Do we believe that they can make the next career move in the next one year/two years/three years?

I always do this thinking with the other managers in my team and, based on that, we will identify a few high potential people. After we have identified these people specifically, we will think about what will make them happy and then see how we can make it happen for them.

What’s interesting is retaining talent is not only about salary, it’s not only about compensation; it’s also about what you are going to give them that will make them happy as a person, and I think that can take many forms.

For people that we want to retain, that have potential for growth, it’s important to listen to what they want and find a way to retain them. That might not necessarily be through compensation; it might be through other things like training, because that’s something that they really want to do and we allow them to take the time to do it, to pass their certifications, and grow and learn.

We do surveys internally. Once the survey has taken place, I try to catch up on the answers that are not sometimes satisfactory so I can find out more about what we can put in place as a team to make sure we value individuals’ contributions.

Do you see any difference between pre and post-pandemic in team bonding exercises and requirements, and the attitude to that?

I think it’s harder, because there are people that are still afraid to come back to the office. We currently don’t have a very strict policy, so it’s not necessarily easy to get people together. It’s no longer, “there’s a team building activity, everyone is coming,” it’s, “there’s a team activity building, do you want to join?”

I think that is what changed in the post-pandemic world – now, we need to ask the question, “are you okay to join this event, because we are going to be gathered in a room of 20, are you okay with attending?”

This is because there is still COVID, unfortunately. For people who are okay to come to those events, there is definitely a bigger appetite for these events; they really want to meet more often and I think they miss the connection that we had in the office when we were all together.

What changes have you seen to the employment market in Switzerland over the years and what, in your opinion, have been the drivers for these changes?

I’m not sure if it’s a recent change, but - when recruiting people - I see more and more senior profiles applying to the jobs, people that are maybe 50-plus [years-old]. I don’t know if it’s new, but that’s something I’m seeing when I’m recruiting. That makes me reflect on what’s happening to a population that is unemployed after 50 and how they are re-employed again.

It’s important to make the right choices, because you never know what might happen tomorrow; you might be unemployed, you might be looking for a new role, and you want people to help you. When I see all these CVs of people that may have been on the market for a few years, I feel like this is an issue that we really need to tackle.

In the digital age and in the society we’re in today, we value youth more than before. They come out of university, they come from the digital world, and they are going to be more competent. This is not my opinion, but I believe that there’s a perception of it; and there’s a perception on the opposite side that, because you’re more senior, you don’t come from the same digital world, so you’re a bit obsolete in a way.

We forget that, at first, once someone comes out of university, there are a lot of things that they don’t know how to do - and that’s normal because they’re just starting their career. There’s a lot of effort that we need to put behind this, so that these people are able to learn. Then we need to remember to value the contribution of the older population, because they’ve been working for decades and can really teach the young ones how to work.

I think we have this perception that, because young people have been born in the digital age, they are more competent, so we are willing to go for them, when there are also benefits in hiring more senior people.

What is a memorable moment from your career and why?

I started my career in France. I was in the north of France at the time, when I was about 25, and I didn’t want to stay in the audit world for too long. I had some friends moving to Switzerland, saying it’s great, there are plenty of Finance roles, you should try.

So, I sent my CV to a recruitment agency, they called me, and they presented to me the best job in the world. They were saying, we’re recruiting for an Internal Audit position and you’re going to travel around the world. That’s one of the best moments in my career, because I remember exactly where I was; I was having lunch, I was in an audit mandate and I was at the customer’s premises.

I couldn’t believe that they were presenting this job to me. Then I went for it, I attended the interviews, I took the train back and forth in one day, and I got the job. From there, I ended up travelling for three years and visiting almost 30 countries.

That is definitely one of the best moments in my career. I visited lots of different countries that I wouldn’t have visited myself, so it was an amazing opportunity and eye-opening, as well, experiencing all the different cultures.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

I think it’s important to follow your gut, follow your instinct. When I was a young manager, I was really close to some of my team members and really close in a way that I was becoming friends when I was a manager.

At that time, a manager was telling me that it’s a common mistake that young managers make, that you shouldn’t be too close to your team and there should be some boundaries. So, I listened, and I said, okay, he’s telling me I need to change this and that, so I changed my behaviour, I started to be more distant. I realised that I was becoming a bit more rigid, and the team members were not necessarily reacting well to this change.

Over ten years later, I believe this wasn’t the right advice for me, because that’s definitely not the type of manager I am. I am the type of leader who is going to create a bond with the team and that’s my management style.

But it took me a while to understand that this is how I work as a manager. This is because I was a young manager; of course, I would take any guidance I was given as the only truth. And there’s not one way to do things; there are plenty of ways, so each one is to find their own way to do it. There is lots of advice that we need to listen to, of course, but sometimes you also have to listen to your gut, and what your instinct is telling you about how you should behave and what it means to be a leader for you, as well - not just what the literature is saying about a leader.

It’s also about what you make of it and - if you believe that some aspects of your personality are important and are going to make you a good leader - you need to listen to that inner voice. Our team had a discussion last week about what values define us and, as a team, we care about each other beyond the professional environment, and we were all aligned with that. I think that is what makes me a good leader today.

What is the best compliment you have ever received?

Recently, I started a coaching programme at work. I guess that I wanted to develop my skillsets, and we had started with a survey with people in my team, peers, and my boss. There was someone that said, “it is evident that anyone that is working with Alexandra will benefit from their time with her for the rest of their professional experience.”

I was like, wow! I think I almost had tears in my eyes, because I don’t think there is anything better than that. That was beautiful and I did not know who it came from.

How have you seen your approach to Finance evolve since the COVID-19 pandemic?

I attended a board in Geneva - there is also a LinkedIn group and sometimes we gather in Geneva every six months - and there’s been a lot of discussions around cash-based forecast. So, that’s a very interesting one, because I come from a world where I always had to do a balance sheet budgets, cash budgets, cashflow management… so, especially in start-ups, cash is very important.

Six years ago, we were already doing cash-based forecast and, when I was involved in these conversations post-COVID, people from groups in bigger companies were saying how cashflow has become more crucial than ever, and they had to adapt all their tools to have cash-based forecasts, which they didn’t have in the past. That’s very much linked to the FP&A role. Usually, people look more at P&Ls; they look less at cash and balance sheets.

That is something that has definitely changed in the last two years, extended FP&A, with having more AI [artificial intelligence]-assisted protocols to be able to project some scenarios when looking at revenues. That’s interesting that we are kind of expanding and developing our competences.

Also, there is this whole thinking in the FP&A world that it is not purely about managing a P&L; there is definitely much more to it, and I think that is what the post-COVID world has brought, with more uncertainties.

Now, we are trying to think about how we project better numbers, how we make sure we still have cash to be able to cope for scenario A, B and C that might materialise. There have been lots of discussions around it, which I think are really interesting.

Thank you to Alexandra for speaking to John Bower, Director in our Finance & Accoutancy recruitment team in Switzerland.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.