For senior finance candidates
Structured spoken rehearsal of senior finance interview situations so candidates communicate more clearly and consistently under pressure.
Senior finance professionals preparing for a specific interview. The sessions are calibrated to four levels, because the pressure at each is different.
Preparing for a first Finance Director appointment, or building toward one.
Moving between FD roles, or stepping up from a controller-led remit.
A first CFO appointment, or a move between organisations at CFO level.
FP&A Manager, Head of FP&A, and Director or VP FP&A level.
This is not general interview coaching, and it is not a service for every profession. Outside senior finance it would not be calibrated to anything useful.
Capable finance people rarely lose senior interviews because they did not know the answer.
They lose ground because the pressure of a live conversation compresses years of judgement into something that sounds thinner than it was. The decision gets left out. The commercial consequence stays implied. A position held confidently in the first answer softens when it is challenged.
Rehearsing common questions does not fix that, because the difficulty lies in what happens to the answer under follow-up.
You set your current role, target role and company type before the session starts. That is what the scenarios and the challenge intensity are calibrated against.
Each scenario is an operational pressure moment with no single correct answer. You speak your response rather than typing it, and each answer is followed by a direct challenge on the point it left unresolved.
After feedback you can retry any scenario once. The retry pushes on the specific gap rather than repeating the question, so it is not an exercise in re-wording the same answer.
After the second and fourth scenarios: short sets of realistic trade-offs with no textbook answer. They test what you prioritise and why, and they give the spoken sections a deliberate break.
One specific, evidenced observation drawn from the whole session - the single communication pattern that would most change how the next interview goes. Not a report card.
Feedback comes immediately after each answer and is tied to specific moments in what you said, rather than to a general impression of how you came across. It is generated by an AI system working to PelicanCFO's defined feedback framework.
Senior finance interviews spend less time on whether you know the technical answer and more on what your answer communicates.
Whether the decision you made comes through, or only the situation you were in.
Whether the commercial or operational consequence gets named, or stays implied.
What happens to the answer when it is challenged, and whether the qualification that follows is real or defensive.
Whether the basis for a number or a view is stated, or left for the interviewer to guess at.
Enough shape that the answer lands, without the flatness that over-preparation produces.
What you choose to deal with first when the situation does not resolve neatly.
What the session does not do
It does not score you, rank you against anyone else, profile your personality, or predict what an interviewer will decide. It observes what your answers communicate, and nothing beyond that.
£79
per 45-minute session
One session buys the whole 45 minutes: five spoken scenarios with feedback after each, a retry available on any of them, both judgment question sets, and the closing observation at the end.
Sessions are bought one at a time. There are no packages, tiers or subscriptions.
Early access
Interview Rehearsal is available on an early-access basis. It is deliberately narrow - four senior finance levels, one session format - and access is arranged by email so the session can be calibrated to the role you are actually preparing for. Email hello@pelicancfo.com with your current role and what you are preparing for, or use the contact page.
Published writing on the senior finance interview situations these sessions rehearse.
By second round the experience is already established. What the conversation tests is reasoning and communication under challenge, and the candidates who handle it well have usually practised that specific pressure.
Tell us the role you are preparing for and we will confirm whether a session is calibrated to it.