In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi sits down with Mark Smith, Ph.D., organizational psychologist, author of A Better Choice: The Manager’s Guide to Skills-First Hiring, and founder of A Better Choice Hire, to talk about what construction companies keep getting wrong when hiring and promoting leaders.

Mark has spent more than 20 years helping construction and engineering companies improve leadership teams, and he has assessed nearly 1,000 candidates across all levels. In this conversation, he explains why impressive resumes, degrees, job titles, and years of experience often fail to predict real-world leadership success.

They discuss:

• why skills-first hiring matters in construction

• why soft skills like communication, adaptability, and influence are often more important than technical credentials

• how structured interviews outperform gut-feel hiring

• how role-play assessments reveal hard-to-fake leadership signals

• common leadership gaps in project managers, superintendents, and internal promotion candidates

• how small and mid-sized contractors can improve hiring without building a massive HR function

• where AI may change hiring and leadership development over the next 3–5 years

If you hire, coach, or promote leaders in construction, this episode is packed with practical insight.

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#FinanceAtTheJobsite #BeiingHuman #ConstructionLeadership #ConstructionHiring #SkillsFirstHiring #ProjectManagement #Superintendents #LeadershipDevelopment #ConstructionFinance #OrganizationalPsychology

What if the person with the best resume is actually the wrong leadership hire?

In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi talks with Mark Smith, Ph.D. — organizational psychologist, author, and founder of A Better Choice Hire — about why construction companies should rely less on degrees, titles, and gut feel, and more on skills-first hiring and realistic leadership assessments.

Mark shares lessons from assessing nearly 1,000 candidates and explains what actually predicts leadership success in construction: communication, adaptability, influence, and the ability to lead in real-world situations.

They cover hiring project managers and superintendents, internal promotions, leadership development, structured interviews, assessment design, and the future of AI in hiring.

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https://beiinghuman.com/newsletter-signup/

#Construction #ConstructionManagement #Hiring #Leadership #ConstructionOps #TalentAssessment #SkillsBasedHiring #FinanceAtTheJobsite #BeiingHuman

In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi sits down with Krystal Madonia, CFO of Haley Construction, to talk about her non-traditional path into accounting leadership, what she learned from construction audit work, and how finance leaders can better connect with field teams.

Krystal shares lessons from moving between public accounting and industry, stepping into the CFO seat at Haley Construction, and helping lead a growing contractor through process, systems, and operational change. The conversation also dives into ERP reality in construction: legacy systems, Procore integration, change orders, WIP discipline, and why ERP migrations are often more about people than software.

They also explore SOPs, institutional knowledge transfer, field-accounting communication, and the implementation mistakes that happen when office teams roll out tools without involving operations.

If you’re a construction CFO, controller, project executive, or operations leader thinking about systems, growth, and how to make finance more useful to the field, this episode is for you.

Topics covered:
#ConstructionAccounting #ConstructionCFO #ERP #ERPMigration #Procore #WIP #JobCosting #ConstructionFinance #CFMA #ConstructionOperations #SOPs #WorkInProgress #ProjectManagement #AccountingLeadership #FinanceAtTheJobsite

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What does “real CFO leadership” look like inside a 3rd-generation commercial GC doing 475 active jobs at once?

In this episode of Finance at the Jobsite, Rishi Srivastava sits down with Kim Beeler-Peterson, CFO + Owner at Beeler Construction (Wisconsin), to unpack how her role evolved from hands-on bookkeeping (back when everything was paper ledgers) into forward-looking financial leadership—built on WIP discipline, Power BI dashboards, KPI triggers, and PM financial training.

We cover:

• How Kim transitioned from “controller + everything else” to a true CFO mindset (and what she had to let go of)

• The real cause of “ping-pong” between accounting and PMs—and how to fix it with clearer ownership and better systems

• Why Beeler is layering Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) on top of Sage 100 Contractor to give PMs one dashboard instead of five ERP screens

• The most common PM financial mistakes: budgets missing, change orders lagging, and committed costs that don’t math

• Building a “PM finance boot camp” using Trainual + tests

• Running high-volume, small-dollar work and still forecasting cleanly using Power BI + mid-month PM reports

• Occupied healthcare + emergency work: what “good financial leadership” looks like during a crisis (including insurance-tracked costs and split scopes)

• Practical AI use cases in construction finance: contract comparisons, sales/use tax questions, state licensing research, Copilot searching your inbox, and even shareholder agreement summaries

If you’re a construction CFO/controller trying to modernize without breaking the business—this one is packed with specific systems, habits, and lessons learned.

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Hashtags

#FinanceAtTheJobsite #ConstructionFinance #ConstructionAccounting #CFMA #CFO #Controller #JobCosting #WIP #ProjectControls #Sage100Contractor #AutodeskConstructionCloud #PowerBI #ConstructionTechnology #ProjectManagement #AIinConstruction