Interview with Brin McCagg, Co-Founder of OneWire.com, a unique finance employer/candidate matching service

I sat down with Brin the other day, to explore how he developed this job search site, what made it unique and what tips he might have for those searching for a finance position.

What is your background?

I started off in investment banking. Shortly after business school at Wharton, I started an environmental services company that we grew into an industry leader and sold out in 1997. I then formed an internet-based asset management company backed by GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and others. That company was sold in 2002. Next, I worked as a senior executive on the turnaround of two private equity backed companies. Two years ago I co-founded OneWire.com.

How was your background helpful, in creating this business?

20 years of experience in developing an early stage company has been very helpful. I also was taught at a very young age to work hard and stay focused – both essential skills in business.

• Tell me about OneWire.com. How did the idea come about?

My partner ran a headhunting firm and had the initial idea. At first, I thought we were late to the market, but after meeting with a number of top investment banks I concluded we had an enormous opportunity. Two years ago he and I dropped everything and started OneWire.com.

• Briefly, how did you get the business off the ground, financially?

Initially, we covered the costs and were uncompensated. However, we fairly quickly needed to raise what amounted to a considerable amount of funding as a seed round.

• What is your vision?

To be the dominant platform where individuals manage their careers and stay connected with highly relevant opportunities.

• What’s unique about OneWire.com?

While there is competition, there is no application comparable to OneWire. We utilize structured data for candidates to build their profiles, which results in precise matches against searches (All other sites use Boolean or fuzzy search logic). Candidates always control their confidentiality and reveal their profile details only when and to whom they want. Employers can manage all aspects and stages of recruiting, including sourcing, screening, communication, interview scheduling and on-boarding, in one seamless application. Campus recruiting is also an integral focus for us. We guarantee better candidate results and a reduction of recruiting time and expense of at least 75%.

• What has been your growth pattern?

We officially launched the site six months ago and 65 top firms are utilizing our service. We expect accelerating growth in both firms and candidates signing up.

• Where do you see the business in 5 years?

As the dominant platform where individuals manage their careers and stay connected with highly relevant opportunities

• What is your opinion of the ideal CFO candidate?

That depends on many factors including what stage the company is at. The right CFO for IBM is not the right CFO for a startup and vice versa. That said, a good CFO universally must have excellent accounting and math skills, have a conservative disposition and be highly organized.

• As someone in the job search industry, what would be some tips you would give job searchers?

• Build a detailed profile on OneWire.com immediately. If you’re out of work, you should try to get employed as soon as possible, even if the position is not optimal because times are tough, you need to stay engaged, and earning some compensation is better than none.

• Assess what you really want to do and where you have a reasonably good chance of success

• Focus is the key to success in everything and with search. Focus on exactly what you want and develop every channel to making it happen.

• Network to find people that can open doors

• Be able to pitch your qualification cold. Do not leave room for error by being unprepared.

Accountable Care Organizations & Collaboration

Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs, are an exciting component of health care reform. A study by The Commonwealth Fund, entitled The Vermont Accountable Care Organization Pilot: A Community Health System to Control Total Medical Costs and Improve Population Health, defines an ACO as  "a provider organization that takes on responsibility for meeting the health needs of a defined population, including the total cost of care and the quality and effectiveness of services."

As described in the report, the Vermont Health Care Reform Commission (HCRC) spearheaded a pilot ACO program. Their key findings were
a) The ACO cannot exist in a vacuum
b) The working design for an ACO pilot is built on three major principles:
     1) local accountability for a defined population of patients;
     2) payment reform based on shared savings; and
     3) performance measurement, including patient experience data,
         clinical process and outcome measures.
c) ACO pilots need to have threshold capabilities in five areas to get started.
For purposes of brevity here, refer to the Commonwealth Fund Report for further details.

According to an article, Lessons Learned from Vermont on Building Community ACOs,  published May 20th, in HealthLeaders Media, a working design was developed for each ACO pilot that was built on three major principles: Local accountability, payment reform and performance measurement.

In my view, perhaps not surprisingly, payment reform and aligned incentives will be the single crucial element if this model is to work. Getting primary care physicians, hospitals and other continuum of care providers to negotiate who will be the receiver of funds and how those funds will be shared - that's the biggest devil in the details. I believe it can be done, but the spirit of collaboration may need to be born, or re-born, to accomplish this mighty task.

Compliance - Corporate Culture Trumps Programs

Richard Brinsley, an Irish playwright and Whig statesman, wrote “Take care; you know I am compliance itself, when I am not thwarted! No one more easily led, when I have my own way; but don't put me in a frenzy.” These days, compliance is on the lips and minds of every CFO. Morality aside (just for the moment), the civil and criminal penalties companies and their officers are exposed to when fiduciary responsibility is breached is cause for frenzy. So forgive me if I preach to the choir.

By now, we all know it's desperately important to have a comprehensive compliance program. More important is the need to develop a corporate culture of trust. If employees believe "something smells in Denmark", but trust that senior management would deal with it if they were made aware, they are more likely to have the matter dealt with internally.

In a blog published May 13th in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "I Didn’t Want to Be Responsible for Somebody Dying’: Whistleblower" deals with the the impact of pharma-industry whistleblowers on that industry, which paid out more than $6 billion to settle whistleblower-initiated federal cases between Jan. 2001 and March 2009. Of 26 whistle-blowers interviewed for a New England Journal of Medicine story, all but four said that before going to authorities they first took their complaints to higher-ups.

So, the moral is: develop a culture of trust; pay attention to what's happening in your organization; pay attention to the merest whisper of wrong-doing; and deal with it before it evolves into a catastrophe.

CFOs - Moving From Technical Expert to Leader

As we progress in our healthcare finance careers, we develop new skill sets and don't always retain the old. I leave it to you to determine whether that's a good or a bad thing. In the beginning, perhaps we recorded accounting transactions, prepared financial statements and cost reports or created patient bills. We were technicians, and proud of it.

Assuming we worked for reasonably large organizations, as we moved up the ladder, we began to supervise others who accomplished those tasks. When we rose to CFO, we developed new skills - leadership, mentorship, team building, strategic vision, creativity, communication....I could go on.

I ran across a blog, The CFO Edge, by Jack Sweeney, where he posted a piece called Tapping the Right Side of the CFO Brain. His first paragraph reads "One of the ironies of being a top finance leader is that seldom if ever will you be heralded for your vast technical skills. Instead, you are more likely to be praised for having keen management skills or even imagination." I couldn't agree more.

The longer we've been in leadership roles, the more we've honed those new skills. But what of the technical skills we had in the early stages of our career? Under the theory of "use it or lose it", combined with advancements in technology, reimbursement changes and the other dynamics affecting change over time, most of us can no longer personally accomplish those technical tasks. Nor should we.

I have been a CFO for some time and as I search for a new career opportunity for myself, I understand the far greater importance of leadership skills, but I understand the importance of having had technical experience in the past. Unless you're in a small organization where you're the chief cook and bottle washer, you're supervising direct reports who in turn are supervising the technicians.

To be a "hands-on manager" doesn't mean you need to do the detail work. Rather, you're knowledgable enough to review, correct and advise others in their tasks. You can't do that from your office, and you can't do it if you don't understand the subject matter or the objectives of the work. Thankfully, our earlier technical grounding provides the foundation we need.

So, don't fret that you've forgotten the details of the task. Focus on leadership, vision, motivation and support. As the saying goes (and maybe this is a stretch), "make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, while the other is gold".