The “good judgment” of seasoned senior financial executives is especially critical today as companies rush to weave artificial intelligence into key operations, BambooHR CFO Justin Judd said in an interview. 

However, as companies seek out more experienced leaders, they are also hiring fewer junior or entry-level staff, setting up a potential succession crisis. The succession pipeline for future seasoned professionals has narrowed, with hiring now at about a three to one “senior to entry level” ratio, according to a May 5 analysis published by the Draper, Utah-based HR platform.

The higher-level thinking and expertise senior staff brings to the table is “really critical, but if we don't bring junior level folks along, we’re going to quickly have a little bit of a talent crisis,” Judd said. Senior-level employees may “move into new roles, or they may find something different, and all of a sudden, we don't have anyone to replace them.”

Mismatched expectations                                                                                                                                        

Judd has served as CFO for BambooHR since October 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before joining the human resource services platform, he logged an 11-year career at Adobe, including three years as CFO of its digital experience business.

According to BambooHR’s analysis — based on six years of workforce data and a survey of about 1,200 full-time employees —  job postings for junior roles have declined.

From 2021 to 2025, postings for analyst roles fell by 21%, while postings for associate titles fell by 7%, BambooHR found. At the same time, postings for experienced finance professionals spiked: postings for controllers, for instance, rose by 62% during the four year period.

These trends aren’t too surprising for Judd: finance leaders have been juggling a dwindling pool of new accounting or finance talent for years. Also, a murky economic environment, plus artificial intelligence’s impacts, has put a premium on established financial experience.

But as CFOs eye a future where successors for senior roles will be in short supply, they face challenges retaining junior staff much beyond their hiring date, he said. One third of all new finance hires quit within their first year, according to the company, while same-month exit rates have doubled to 16% since 2020, according to BambooHR.

CFOs may be “entering a time where the expectations between a junior level hire, an entry level hire, and an organization might be more mismatched today than they've ever been,” Judd said.

Junior-level hires, for example, may take their jobs expecting that they will be assigned simple tasks and that they will have time to “ramp and grow” into more complex responsibilities, he said.

Meanwhile, company expectations may have shifted since recruitment began, with changing business needs or the integration of new tools reshaping the tasks they assign to new hires.

“I think that the challenge and the opportunity for us as an industry is we are going to need to get better and be more intentional about what roles do we expect our entry level talent to do,” he said. “We need to get better at defining, ‘here's actually what we think the career ladder looks like.’”

Experience and innovation

In an AI-first world, the skills CFOs are seeking from junior finance talent may also be changing.

Judd “would almost rather hire for someone who is incredibly analytically sound and technologically sound, and really tools-sound, then making sure they have absolute incredible depth” in how to build a capital budget or create financial statements, he said. “Because, in some ways, those are skills that can be taught more easily from our more senior professionals.”

It’s important for CFOs to bear the ultimate responsibility for setting those expectations and the game plan for entry-level hires. That plan not only needs to make space for newer, tech-savvy entrants, but it also needs to create much-needed support for overworked mid-level or senior level finance staff.

Making up 54% of the finance workforce, BambooHR data suggests experienced finance professionals, or those with more than three years of experience, are overburdened: 61% of experienced finance workers are actively job hunting, while 83% report at least a “slight desire” for a career change.

 Hiring within the finance function has stagnated, which is a factor behind retention of senior staff, as wella s the financial stability of thier roles, according to BambooHR data. However, a lack of growth opportunities (53%) and burnout (49%) are the top reasons many cite for moving on from those roles, BambooHR found.

“We're asking them to do more, and we're asking them to not only do more in in what their traditional job was, but learn new systems, readapt, relearn new skills, and then also figure out when the hype and the reality don't always match,” Judd said.