What Does It Take To Go From Audit Associate to CFO of a PE-Backed Startup?

In this episode of Careers in Finance, host Meeyeon reconnects with longtime friend and finance leader Sharron Xiao to explore the career choices, transitions, and leadership lessons that shaped her journey from the Big Four to the C-suite.

This is a must-listen for anyone looking to build a future in finance, especially those considering the CPA route, a career pivot into startups, or long-term CFO goals.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Sharron navigated her early career at PwC through co-ops, exams, and structure
• Why joining a startup with no finance team was the most pivotal move she made
• What skills you must build to go from reporting roles into leadership
• How industry choice shapes your CFO potential and why timing matters
• Practical advice on networking, job search, and getting noticed by recruiters
• What to do now if you want to become a CFO later

Who this episode is for:

This episode is perfect for corporate finance professionals, especially CPAs or aspiring CFOs, who want to understand how to strategically navigate career growth. It’s also valuable for mid-career analysts, managers considering a move into startups, or anyone seeking practical advice on career planning, leadership skills, and standing out in a competitive finance job market.

Transcript

Meeyeon (00:00)
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Careers in Finance. I’m here to have a little bit of a walk down memory lane with one of my wonderful friends that is an accomplished woman in finance, Sharron Xiao. Sharron, welcome.

Sharron Xiao (00:15)
Thank you.

Meeyeon (00:18)
So Sharron and I went to school together way back in the day for university. And we took pretty similar but different paths. Sharron went down the CA, now CPA path. But she’s had a really, really interesting career path in that she started off in a structured way. And then now you’ve gone through more kind of like the startup side and whatnot. And so.

think our listeners would love to hear about your career and how you’ve made the decisions to be where you are. So I guess the only question that I want to open up this entire discussion with is, how did you get your interest in finance? Where did you get it from? Did you get it from your parents? Did you go through it for school? Like from high school, did you have an idea of what you already wanted to pursue?

Sharron Xiao (01:10)
That is a great question.

I think I really stumbled into this because your your decisions on what you want to be when you grow up all starts in high school when you have to pick what courses do I want to take? Am I going to continue with my sciences and math courses or do I not need to take them anymore? ⁓ And so like for me, I think what I really liked was I did like sort of the numbers and analysis side of it, but I also really enjoyed the people side of things too. So…

For me, I wanted a career that would sort of…

allowed me to use both of these skills. so, you know, not really knowing that much about the field, I kind of just blindly said, okay, I’m going to do business. Let’s go and apply to some business programs. And it’s really like after starting university and talking to people that have the different jobs and have different career paths that I really started to learn, okay, what are the possibilities with a business degree and what can I do

with my career because really like even I think in high school and even in the beginning parts of university, we only know of very few professions. It’s like, I can be an accountant. And then outside of that, it’s like what professions are available in the finance field? There are so many that people don’t know about and I didn’t learn about those till much, much later. So,

I think I chose accounting not necessarily because I was like, I’m really like passionate about it this is what I want to do. It was because it’s like one of the only professions in the field that I was really sure and aware of at the time versus the others.

Meeyeon (02:59)
I remember, so in high school, this is a long time ago, but it’s fun to think about the fact that as a 15-year-old, kids are kind of under the pressure of, you’re going to go to school for this, and then you need to find a job. And then you’re going to have to start paying your bills and living your life. But in high school, were you already thinking like, okay, you know, after university, either I’m going to pursue further education and like delay reality, or I have to, I have to have like internships, I have to ultimately get a job at the end.

Did you already have that mindset when you were in high school thinking like university has to lead to a job? And so for like, at least for me, I was like, okay, well, you know, arts, English and whatnot, that’s really fun, but I’m probably not going to be a journalist. And then on the science side, I was like, I do not have the stomach to be a doctor. And so I thought, well, by process of elimination, this seems most practical. Were you, did you think that way too in high school early on?

Sharron Xiao (03:58)
Yeah, I definitely think so because it is like kind of an Asian immigrant

Meeyeon (04:02)
Totally is.

Sharron Xiao (04:03)
parents mindset, right? Like your, you know, your parents come to the country for a better opportunity for you. So it’s like, I’ve got to make the most of this opportunity and I need to be able to make a living ⁓ and get a job and be successful in life so that my parents sacrifices will ultimately be worth it. So I think that message was kind of drilled into me even growing up. So in my mind, I was always sort of driven by that. And so I never

really considered, I mean there’s like kind of certain professions that you know the Asian immigrant families tend to consider and definitely those were kind of top of mind for me as I was starting out in terms of figuring out what is it that I want to do. I’m obviously going to pursue a degree that’s going to afford me job opportunities. And so I think that was a big driving force behind it rather than sort of you know it coming from oh I’m

super passionate about this thing, so I’m gonna go and pursue it. It’s like, what is the most practical approach to a career choice that is going to ensure that I have success in life? So that was definitely the Asian immigrant mindset, if you will.

Meeyeon (05:21)
Yeah, and I had the same thing and the whole idea of like, okay, well, I’m not going to be a doctor maybe and I wanted to for a long period of time, I was like, maybe I’ll go into law. But at the same time, it’s, you know, a law degree is not an undergraduate degree. That’s a master’s degree. So I figured, well, if I do if I do an arts degree or science degree, and I decide not to do the law degree, like, where am I going in between? But in our in our undergraduate program, my whole thing was

I still didn’t necessarily know what I wanted to do. So I wanted to do something which seemed to make sense to me at the time, which was let’s go where everybody wants to go. Like everybody wants to try this like investment banking thing. People must have researched it. There’s like, it seems really popular. So that’s where I’m going to go. And then so luckily it worked out for me. Like I did my first internship with Brookfield and that was more of like a fund accounting role in their private equity fund that was starting up. But then,

afterwards, my main one was at Ontario Teachers in Portfolio Management, then I went into investment banking, and then here I am today, several years down the line. But the really popular path that I thought was a very academic, was really, really challenging path, and I thought was kind of intimidating, was the path that you went down, which is to go with one of the big audit firms and then go through that entire process, write the exam, get the designation. Tell us how like…

how that path was and then after you finished your years in audit, you moved on from being at a PwC and then going on to your next role. What was that like?

Sharron Xiao (06:55)
Yeah, so I think I really found out about this career path because I had

friends that went down the same path and so it seems like okay these people are doing relatively well this job seems to be, you know and highly regarded and you can make a good living for yourself and so was like okay let me pursue this this sounds like something that I could do I could potentially be really interested or good at this and so I really was like okay

I’m going to go and do this. Once I am the type of person that’s like, okay, once I make a decision, I want to follow through with it. And then so that decision was kind of made and sort of at the end of high school, it’s like, okay, I’m going to go and apply for universities that best support this path. And our school really was like very counting heavy because a lot of the people even in years ahead of us, everyone’s trying to get like, you know, an internship with the big four with our co-op terms, those were like very highly regarded jobs. And it was to be honest, they did

a lot of campus recruiting and marketing to push the profession in our school. then so, yeah, and so I was like, okay, great. So that’s kind of what really motivated me to want to get a job. Yes.

Meeyeon (08:02)
Yeah, heavy recruitment.

I still remember the guy’s name, Keith Kwan. Remember? He was the Deloitte guy and he was so, like he was so visible on campus all the time.

Sharron Xiao (08:21)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so like, you know, the students in sort of the upper years, a lot of them who were like, well known in school, had jobs with the Big Four. And so it’s like, OK, well, yeah, if I want to be successful, I should try and get an internship with the Big Four as well. And so that’s sort of that was like my goal coming into the process and going to the networking events and like coming into university is like so fresh, had no skill,

like no interviewing skills, like barely knew what I was doing. It just like, okay, you know, your whole life, you’re like, just, you know, do well in school, get good marks and then, you know, things will kind of fall into place later on.

Meeyeon (09:03)
That’s something you were really good

at doing though. Those of you listening, of course, don’t know Sharron as well as I do, but Sharron is super academically smart, very high achiever. You’re always getting the top marks. So it’s like when your job is being a student, you certainly did that very…

Sharron Xiao (09:23)
Yeah, so I would say being in business that matters, but only to a certain extent. So it’s important that you you do well, but but actually I think versus some other fields being like academically strong is only one piece of the puzzle. It’s like you really have to have super strong like soft skills like people skills, communication skills, even being able to go to networking events and being comfortable in that kind of environment took a lot of practice.

Meeyeon (09:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sharron Xiao (09:53)
Pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and sort of learning these soft skills that aren’t taught in school. And so so yeah, it was kind of a wake-up call for me when I went into university So I would say like when getting a job with these companies like it’s actually the soft skills that you have that stand out more and and that’ll. And that will make you stand out because you know once you pass a certain threshold like yeah, you do well in school. But it’s like the other thing

and the impression that you make on these recruiters that will set you apart.

Meeyeon (10:29)
Yeah, and I find that generally, so think about ourselves when we were, I don’t know, graduating university or like just finishing up the first job. Think about like how we, you know, thought of networking and what we were at like at those large events versus what we would be today. It’s like such a huge, huge disparity. feel like even like myself, I’m like a fairly social person. But when I think about like attending a networking event when I was like 22 versus today, oh, it’s just like, I just look back and I cringe a bit, but it’s…

huge learning process and I think it’s really like the first transition out of your very first full-time job into the next chapter that really helps like develop you in that way. How was what was your time at PwC like? How many years did you stay and then how did you find your next opportunity afterwards?

Sharron Xiao (11:18)
Yeah, so we had three co-op terms when we were in school. So I did three terms with Peter. So that was actually really helpful, which means I only had to go through the job search process when I was in school and I didn’t actually have to find a full-time job when I graduated, which is like super lucky because I know like friends and others that didn’t just like go and have their co-op terms with the same company and had to go through that full-time job search process.

So it was like, we could get experience and you get paid for the work that you’re doing, which helps pay off any student debt that you could have accumulated throughout the time. And then you start right away with a full-time job. So there’s less stress of, oh my gosh, am I going to be able to find a job? Because you already have that experience under your belt. And then what really helped with the CPA process in general is that all the time that you spend at the job,

Meeyeon (12:08)
I got one.

Sharron Xiao (12:18)
in co-op, it counts towards your experience and then so I was able to you know Just even starting at the firm I was like a year ahead of everybody else that would have graduated and just started right after they graduated So I think the co-op program especially in business is like super valuable for that and then in business like everybody now wants some sort of experience It’s like really hard to get your first job if you don’t have any experience And so being a part of the co-op program really helped with that.

And so, and then being in a company like PUC, they hire a lot of new grads and, you know, co-op students and things like that. And so I think it was a great place to build

my network to learn from peers, because there’s a whole group of us, right? And then you’re learning how to do things the proper way, because there’s very established processes. They put you through rigorous training. It’s very hierarchical versus the environment that I am in now, right? But I think it was a great learning opportunity, for sure, because you know, OK, this is sort of

Meeyeon (13:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Sharron Xiao (13:26)
you know, how things are done the right way as you’re working with with clients at PWC and then you’re talking to, you know,

clients that are in the industry. say, you people at all levels in the company that normally wouldn’t be able to talk to in other jobs. So there’s a lot of exposure to different industries, different processes that different companies have. And so just in general, think, you know, great learning opportunities with the work, with the training that they put in place, having access to a network of peers and even people that are like older that have left the firm and then been in industry. So just overall, I think, you know, if you want a

profession or job in the accounting field and even like in other finance-related fields like starting your career in a big four I think is a valuable opportunity in terms of a career start. So I enjoyed it even though ⁓ you do work long hours. ⁓

Meeyeon (14:27)
It was very tough. Yeah. I remember if you were on a winter co-op

term, it would just be like death because it was very busy season. But also I felt like it was probably nice to have the continuity in terms of structure. Like for example, when you’re in high school or structured curriculum exams, SATs, whatever, and then in university, the same process, you need to complete that degrees, midterm finals, yada, yada, yada. And then for people that don’t have the internships and just go and find a full-time job, they completely lose that structure.

Sharron Xiao (14:32)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (14:56)
But if you’re interested in career in finance or business strategy and you start, if you’re lucky enough to start with an audit firm, one of the big four, you’re already going into another structured kind of chapter of your life where you have to have your audit hours. You have to go and write your designation exam. You have all of these peers that are introducing you to kind of like next steps and then taking you through clients. So it’s nice to have that structure ⁓ from the very early stage of your career. But then after that, like, how did you find your next job?

Sharron Xiao (15:22)
Yeah, yeah, totally agree.

Yeah, yeah. think having that structure earlier on in your career helps you to learn versus say like if I had joined a startup environment like right away outside of school, I don’t think it would have been as great for my career growth as starting at PwC because like in the startup world, generally like your finance function is one of the last functions that you invest in. And then so there’s no structure, there’s no processes. You’re like building everything from the ground up. And if you have no idea,

Meeyeon (15:34)
Yeah.

Sharron Xiao (15:55)
what good looks like. It’s really hard for you to go through that. And so I think just especially when you’re early on in your career, you want some structure and you want ⁓ mentors that you can learn from and people that will support you in your learning versus like a very, very unstructured environment. ⁓ And so it really kind of depends on sort of your career goals. Obviously, if you’re going the more entrepreneurial route, getting started

experience is great, but if you’re like, I want to sort of, you know, potentially be a CFO one day, actually getting your start in sort of a more structured environment is really, really valuable.

Meeyeon (16:40)
And so you’ve had, okay, so this is gonna anticipate the future, but you’ve been in a CFO role. But between that role and audit, take us through how you found your first job outside of PwC and where you’ve been since and how you got to where you are today.

Sharron Xiao (16:55)
Yeah, one of the things that we’ve already talked about is starting it before is a great way to start your career. I think other companies out there realize that, recruiters realize that. And so there is very high demand for individuals that kind of went through the audit route. So I left when I was like a second year, right after my second year, senior year, like that busy season after

my second senior year. And sort of when I was making the decision to leave, I talked to a whole bunch of people because it was like, okay, well, if I want to leave, where do I want to go? Because there’s so many different career paths outside of the big four. And then there’s, course, like recruiters reaching out. And so you’re talking to, you know, your friends, your peers, other people that have left before you’re trying to find out, okay, what are they doing now? Would that be something that I’m interested in? At the same time, there’s recruiters like reaching

Meeyeon (17:29)
You…

Sharron Xiao (17:55)
out to you very actively, know, feeding you job opportunities. So it’s like, I think that ⁓ is a really ⁓ important cusp ⁓ or decision point for people because like what you choose at that point is will direct kind of like, know, where you start to go because really like you start to specialize in certain areas as you

progress in your career. And so for me, in considering all of the job opportunities, like I talked to people who like went to on one side of things, ⁓ people who worked in internal audit and banks, and then I decided, okay, I’m not interested in that. That’s great for some people. It’s very structured. You have like generally decent work-life balance. And so it’s very, it’s more similar to what people were doing like in the big four, right? It’s just in industry. And there’s other people who went into reporting supporting

roles in industry as well, which is like, okay, if you’re really interested in sort of the technical accounting aspects of accounting, that’s really suitable for you. And then for me, actually those weren’t sort of the areas that were interesting to me. Like to me, I always sort of like, liked to sort of…

creativity, innovation. I don’t necessarily, know, in terms of a lot of structure, like that was fine for me. But I did appreciate sort of the startup environment that is really interesting to me. It’s like you get to

be involved in the whole business. You get to kind of take a company’s journey from like cradle to grave and you get to own processes because you’re building out a function that doesn’t currently exist. And it’s just, it was just like really exciting to me. And then sort of the people that you’re working with, usually there’s a lot of like young people in startups, right? And so,

Meeyeon (19:51)
Mm-hmm.

Sharron Xiao (19:52)
it’s much, much less structured, much more like usually younger, more sort of,

you know, less like formal processes and things like that. And so, and there’s a lot of like sort of creativity and innovation that doesn’t always exist in other industries, like say, for example, banking, where it’s very like heavily regulated, rules driven, which is more suitable to some people. But for me, I’m like, okay, this is really interesting to me. So I’m going to take this opportunity. And so it’s actually a company called Top Hat that I worked after P2C. And it was somebody from Top Hat, their recruiting team that reached out

Meeyeon (20:25)
Yeah, I remember.

Sharron Xiao (20:30)
to me about the opportunity and just going through that process and talking to the people that worked there, really drew me to that opportunity just because it was so different than what I was used to. I was like, think I would actually really like this. And the people that I met were amazing. So I was like, OK, I think I want to work here. And so really, that’s what kind of drove my decision.

Meeyeon (20:56)
And then what did you do at Top Hat? how was it? Because it’s quite different from what you did at PWC, right? PWC were mainly doing the audit function, getting those hours in. What did you do at Top Hat? And you were there for several years. So take us through ⁓ how you developed professionally in those years.

Sharron Xiao (21:13)
Yeah, so I was a top hat for almost six years, so quite a long time. And actually, it was a bit of a…

Meeyeon (21:18)
Wait, tell us about what type of company Top Hat is.

Sharron Xiao (21:21)
So Top Hat is an educational software company. And so when I started, it was like maybe about 50 or so employees when I joined. ⁓ when I left, it was like about 350 or so throughout the six years. So it grew rapidly. The company grew like 10 times in size from a revenue perspective. So just like being a part of that journey was super exciting. And yeah, so when I

joint top hat. It was a bit of a culture shock to me actually because it was so different than PwC. PwC is very formal, structured. There’s a lot of guidance. There’s best practices and ways to do things and you know exactly what your career path looks like and what’s expected of you versus going to a startup where it’s the exact opposite. There’s no structure, no processes, extremely informal. ⁓ Actually, most people in the company did not have a financial background.

And then when I joined, the finance function was in its very beginning stages. And so part of my job was actually to build out the whole finance function that didn’t exist before. And so was a lot of ground up, like building out schedules,

building out proper financial statements, going through a first time audit, switching like accounting systems to one that made sense for the company, just like making sure that our books were in order and that everything was correct and making sure people got paid on time and correctly. So it was a lot of foundation building.

Meeyeon (23:02)
So it’s like everything. It’s like even like an HR kind of like payroll, everything was getting built up,

Sharron Xiao (23:07)
Oh yeah, yeah, literally. So I had to do everything that you could possibly imagine that would vaguely touch finance. And so in a company, and because you’re like wearing many different hats, it’s like, okay, you’re, you could be part of like our finance team was super tiny, right? It’s only a couple of people.

Meeyeon (23:15)
finance at all.

Sharron Xiao (23:26)
And so yeah, we’re basically doing everything ⁓ from the ground up. so, ⁓ but as sort of those were kind of the early years and it was really fun because, you know, we were a small team. ⁓ You get a view of the entire business ⁓ and you know everybody that’s working there and everyone’s super like motivated and driven. And it’s like,

by nature, the culture is very innovative because we’re building something that doesn’t exist before. ⁓ And so it’s like really exciting to be a part of that.

Meeyeon (23:57)
And what a time to be in e-learning, right? Like you were like, that was before e-learning really took off. Like, feel like e-learning became a really popular industry to be in maybe like four years ago, five years ago, like 2020. So we were early on.

Sharron Xiao (24:08)
It was so yeah, so I mean, was like Top Hat was,

it was quite like disruptive in terms of the product it was offering because so really the main competitor of Top Hat is like Pearson Education, for example, right? So they publish physical textbooks.

Whereas, like Top Hat, digitizes all of that so that university students can just show up with their phones or their laptop, and all of their content that they would ever need to learn is in Top Hat, like the software, right? So it’s like basically a teaching tool for professors to engage with their students. so everything just gets moved from physical textbooks.

and written notes and physical quizzes, all digital and virtual. that was kind of… And that wasn’t when I was… This was like… It was started right after we graduated from university around that time. So was a relatively young company when I had joined. And that was pretty revolutionary at the time because that didn’t exist before. And now, of course, it’s much more common

with everything going digital and virtual.

Meeyeon (25:25)
Okay, What am I gonna next?

Okay, so one of the things that I think that at least from my conversations with our member base at CFI, whether it’s going and attending office hours or being involved in the community, a lot of people think that finance, like getting a job in finance means that you work at a financial institution, whether you work at a bank or a finance function in a major corporation like Amazon, people think that there are 

limited scope of opportunities and I think it’s so great to see for example with your career how broad it can be. So for example you started in audit but guess what like if you have an interest in being at like the forefront of an industry that’s just starting up or really revolutionizing something like education for example all of these tools that you learn at like these like tools and skills that you’ve developed at PwC are extremely relevant to going into really any industry.

And then so at Top Hat, you were there, how many years were you there?

Sharron Xiao (26:34)
I was there for almost six years at Top Hat.

Meeyeon (26:36)
Okay, and then so after Top Hat, tell us where you’ve been since then, like fill in the gap to where you are today.

Sharron Xiao (26:44)
Yeah, yeah, so I think, you know, as we tend to build up our experiences.

You know, there’s like recruiters and companies that look for these skill sets. So sort of the more senior you become in your career, the more other people start to reach out to you versus you applying to jobs. And that’s what I sort of experience is because I had been a part of this startup growth journey, there’s like a demand for that skill set. And so the opportunities that I was getting were related to that. And so my next opportunity after Top Hat was actually a CFO

Meeyeon (27:03)
Mm-hmm.

Sharron Xiao (27:20)
role with a Canadian startup that had just been acquired by a strategic acquirer and so ⁓ I was hired to help scale the business in North America.

And so that was a step up for me, you know, just in terms of like leadership skills, because I had never been, you know, the head of finance person in any company, right? Because at Top Hat, was there was a CFO there already. So joining this new company, I was the CFO. And so I would be building out a team and I would be expected to lead the function as well as the business along with the CEO. And so that was

sort of my real like test and challenge to, terms of from a leadership perspective. so leadership skills aren’t skills that you can learn in school or just by reading a book. comes with like years of practice and experience and just like working with people like on your team, outside of your team. Really, it takes experience to build that up. And it’s like working with, you know, mentors and like

getting formal, some formal training, but most of it is you’re sort of learning through experience. And then so that was basically an opportunity that required me to exercise a muscle that I hadn’t really exercised before. So that for me was a big step up. And then that was probably like a huge challenge, like one of the biggest challenges for me in terms of a career move, because it wasn’t like, OK, my technical skills didn’t really

matter at that point. mean, it did. It’s like, it’s like, yeah, we know, you know, you’re talking to yourself, that’s not important, but we need to be able to see your leadership skills and the ability for you to make an impact on the company in that way.

Meeyeon (29:16)
And so something that I think is a lot of people certainly want recruiters to reach out to them. And it makes job searching a lot more, I think, enjoyable and passive in that you’re at a job, you enjoy what you do, but it’s always nice to be open to the idea to consider what’s out there. And it’s even better if it kind of comes to your doorstep.

For our members that are listening that don’t necessarily have people reach out and wish they could have recruiters reaching out to them, what are some things that you might give them as like encouraging words of advice? For example, do you always maintain your social profile and like LinkedIn? how can, how could you give advice to someone that maybe is hoping to develop their profile to a point where they’re being reached out to?

Sharron Xiao (29:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. yeah, maintaining your LinkedIn profile is really important. That’s like still where, you know, all the recruiting happens online. Like LinkedIn is like still the top platform where recruiters will reach out to you. And that’s where actually I got all of my job opportunities after PwC. But I also in terms of like my job search journey and the people that I talked to as I was making career transitions, it’s also through

networking so just making sure you stay in touch with your network what your friends like from school the people that you work with because they can often make introductions ⁓ to you for your future opportunities and sometimes you know they may go to a company that you’re interested in and so often it’s much easier to get your foot in the door get an interview at that company if you know somebody that works at that company like you can search your

LinkedIn networks and say, I’m this is a potential company that I want to work for and then look in your LinkedIn. Does anybody that you know work there? they make an introduction because I’ve actually done that for people in my network. They’ve come to me and said, hey, I’m really interested in this role. Can you refer me? And then usually if I’m referring them, they will get noticed in the pile of like hundreds or thousands of resumes that recruiting teams going through. So I think that’s really important. And then there’s, you know, sometimes there’s like industry events. Some of them are, are

better than others and so I think it’s just like going to a couple of them, expanding your network, trying to meet people. That’s what I did as well while I was at Top Hat and I was newer to the startup space is making connections to my peers so I can learn from them while I’m on the job but also later you know if I am looking to make a career transition I can reach out.

to these people and see where they’re at. So it’s really, I think, expanding your network and then maintaining your network, seeing, keeping your eye on, what are people up to these days as you’re sort of thinking about your next job. So I think that that would really, really help in sort of building out your network. Yeah, I hope that’s helpful.

Meeyeon (32:18)
Yeah, and don’t know if you’ve been involved in recruiting in your current role, but the importance of being able to maintain genuine, sincere connections with people, I think is so important these days. Because, for example, with chat GPT coming into play, one of the things that is my husband has said at the engineering firm that he’s at is all of a sudden, everyone seems so great. Like all of these resumes, if we have like

a senior developer role that we’re hiring for. Previously, we would go through like a resume pile of let’s say like 100 resumes. And we think like, you know, nine of them are like, very strong, have to meet this person. And they’re all very uniquely different in the way that they write and the way that they present themselves. They seem very much like an individual person that’s unique. But now, like fast forward, you know, a couple of years.

If you have a resume pile of a hundred people applying to like a senior developer role, like at least 50 of those sound great. And they have that same polish to their resume, their cover letter. They all sound very similar. And it’s because we have ChatGPT really making that an equal playing field. So I think now more than ever, it’s incredibly important to maintain that like human interaction touch with when it comes to networking, being genuine, being sincere and wanting to help others

and receive before receiving that help for yourself. Where are you at today? And what is your role like today?

Sharron Xiao (33:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Today, I am the CFO of a company called CommonSkute. And so we’re in sort of, it’s a software provider for the promotional products industry. vertical SaaS. And again, I did receive this role through LinkedIn Recruiter again.

Meeyeon (34:10)
My gosh, if someone at LinkedIn is listening, they’re gonna love you.

Sharron Xiao (34:13)
So, yeah, so I’ve been incredibly lucky and I think it’s about taking advantage of the opportunities and making sure that you’re ready to take on the opportunities because what I’ve noticed is that sometimes, you know, people do get LinkedIn reach outs but then they go through the interview actually and they’re not a fit. So it’s like just making sure you’re responding back to the right opportunities and then you’re also being picky if there’s a

of recruiters reaching out to you and then just making sure that the skills, skill set match, it is a match and then you actually want to work for that company and because otherwise there could be a disconnect. So just because you get the reach out doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get the job. So I think just being ready for the opportunity, like developing your skills. So, say like you know, in this case, if I knew I wanted to be the CF,O I made sure that I

worked on my leadership skills even in my previous role. So it’s like in my current role, how do I get experience with the skills that I need for my next role and then just making sure to call out those particular experiences and using those as examples as they’re interviewing you for your new role. I think that was particularly helpful for me in getting this next job because right now, this company is like PE-backed.

And my last company was PE-backed as well. So that experience was really valuable because they wanted somebody that had experience working with PE investors because there’s a certain level of rigor that’s required. Yes. Yeah, exactly. then ⁓ so just highlighting those skill sets and then just throughout the interview process showing them, OK, that I knew

Meeyeon (35:47)
In demand, that yeah, comes with that.

Sharron Xiao (36:01)
that I knew how to operate successfully in that context and just understanding kind of their perspective because it was really the PE investor that a few of them interviewed me to in that interview process. So at this level, you do go through multiple rounds of interviews. It’s like you talk to the company, like the CEO, of course, and then other management team members, but also the investor

does get involved. And so you have to consider all these different perspectives. It’s like, okay, what is this person looking for? And the CEO is looking for a business partner. The investor is looking for somebody that has had experience in this kind of environment that they can work well with, and that knows how to scale a company. I would say it’s like, it’s also really helpful to, to, you know, look on the job boards for the next role that you want to have and sort of reading them and seeing, okay, what are the specific

skill sets or experiences that they’re looking for and just making sure, okay, how do I get those skills and experiences in my current job ⁓ or in some other way for me to get that next job, which I think is important too.

Meeyeon (37:09)
And then so I want to, let’s try and I’m going to find, okay, wait. So there’s many people out there that have a goal, of course, of wanting to be a CFO and CFOs come from many different backgrounds and especially like in different industries, it’s very different. For example, if you’re going to be a CFO at a major investment bank, you’re probably going to have industry group experience, ⁓ maybe capital markets. But if you’re a CFO at let’s say a Verizon, a large

American telecom company or a place like Top Hat or Common Ski, there are very different profiles. But for the person that is generally aspiring and says, you know, just as the kid in university says, I’m going to be a lawyer one day, if someone is, you know, four years into their career and says, my goal is ultimately to be a CFO, what is a like a key nugget of advice that you would give that person?

Sharron Xiao (38:01)
I think you need a breadth of experience because all of us have to start from somewhere, right? So there’s some CFOs that start the accounting round and there’s others that actually start the investment banking. So those are two of the most common routes that I see in terms of CFOs, right? And of course, as you move higher up, the more that industry experience does become really important. So say, for example, in sort of the software space, it’s very unlikely that they would hire somebody with no software experience.

For the CFO of a software company. you need to So really you need to be able to have like choose an industry that you’re really interested in say, okay I eventually want to be the CFO of this industry and then there’s certain industries that are similar enough where you can cross And then sort of just understand that right and you can go and like now the internet is so available Information is so available to us. We can go and see okay, who is the

CFO at these companies that potentially I would like to be CFO at? What is their background and how did they get into this role and what kinds of like previous experiences or companies that they worked at? So that’s really to give you an idea of, okay, what sort of industry experience do I need? And then of course, the breadth of experience. So, say if you are purely in a reporting role on the accounting side, there is a big gap.

would be like the FP&A side because that’s a huge sort of part of the job. Like you need to be able to do the planning, the forecasting, like the budgeting, and also just in general being able to provide forward-looking insights that if you’re just purely in a reporting role, that’s just like a gap

that you won’t be able to fill in. So it’s very unlikely that you’ll get hired for a CFO role if you don’t have that breadth of experience. And how you can get that is, say if you are in a purely reporting role, you can ask for opportunities to participate in the budgeting and forecasting process or in the business partnering process where you can get that experience under your belt. Because I think the breadth becomes more important because you do…

You don’t have to, as you move higher up, there’s less sort of depth of experience that’s required in any area, but you do have to have breadth. And so just making sure that you do have the breadth of experience and noting where your gaps are, you just need to make sure you’re able to address those as you are sort of progressing in your career.

Meeyeon (40:44)
I wish I had this access to this type of podcast when we were in university or like earlier on. Like this has been such an informative discussion. And I think that for anyone that has aspirations to be a CFO, because I know so many people do, but not everyone gets to that stage. This is being an incredibly informative session so that you can plan. Like the idea is to be like really pragmatic, be really thoughtful about each career step that you take and active,

actively build out your skill set, like a briefcase, so to speak, of skills that you’re building. Know which ones that you want to put into your portfolio next. Know which industry you want to focus on. So if you’re becoming more and more ⁓ focused about the career path you want to take, the skills that you want to develop, it becomes much more realistic with a proper plan. And so that has been probably the most outcome-oriented podcast that we’ve had.

And so I hope for everyone that’s listening, if you have aspirations to be a CFO one day, that this has been really helpful for your career planning. until next time, I’ll see you all later. Yay. my gosh, Sharron, think that was, okay, you and Mimi have provided the most, I guess the only phrase I could think of is outcome-oriented podcasts. I think it’s super helpful. I do wish if I could have listened to this type of podcast when I was 21, it would be so helpful,

Sharron Xiao (41:52)
Thanks!

Meeyeon (42:11)
because you don’t really necessarily think about it, right?

Sharron Xiao (42:11)
Yeah, yeah, so it’s like, you, okay, you’re listening to, like, there’s like tips and actual practical things to do. Yeah, yeah.

Meeyeon (42:18)
Yeah, like the idea of like pick an industry that you like, right? Like that’s just general interest. Like you don’t need to say like, I want to have this job and then like go and try to find it in a random place. Like find an industry that you like. Okay, let’s say like you really like skiing. Maybe you could go to like a ski equipment manufacturing company or like an outdoors company, like a MEC or it’s another one, Arc’teryx, like all of these companies. And then you’d be surprised at how…

you can find opportunities that align with your skill set, with your interest and natural passion.

Sharron Xiao (42:53)
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. think industry is pretty important because I know I have talked to people that wanted to get into startups, but they were like kind of quite far into their career. So was like, okay, it’s hard. It’s really difficult for you to find, say if you’re like a director or like VP level, it’d be really hard for you to get that same job in like a software company. Like you would have to

go down, but then it’s like, but then you’d be overqualified. So it was just, it becomes much more difficult. And so it’s still possible of course, but then if you’re so far in your career and you may have to take a step back is what I’m saying is like some people, yeah.

Meeyeon (43:30)
I feel like you’re an Asian parent’s dream.

Like you’ve been so great at going like step by step to each one. And it’s been like such a cumulative journey, right?

Sharron Xiao (43:41)
It’s yeah, but honestly, it’s a lot of this is about luck to,o because sometimes it’s like timing and the opportunity just comes along and then you know.

Meeyeon (43:50)
Yeah, like hard work and I honestly think like being a good person, being someone that people enjoy, like that creates luck, I feel like that and just like putting yourself out there and making sure that in each interaction you have with anyone that you’re sincere, you’re honest, you’re helpful, you treat people as you would want to be treated yourself. I feel like that generates luck and it’s, and when you’re prepared for it at the right time, like things go really well together. But oftentimes like the mistake is like…

Sharron Xiao (43:53)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (44:19)
Don’t think that luck is a skill. Luck is not a skill. But yeah.

Sharron Xiao (44:23)
There’s only so much that you can control. So it’s just like focus on the things that you can control. You know, as the opportunities come up, then you can take advantage of them. And sometimes you could be really awesome, but just there’s no opportunity, right? So it’s like all about timing, too, and just being ready when the opportunity arises.