Don't Chase Titles, Chase Experience | FP&A Career Advice from Nick Marocchini

On this episode of Building People, Companies and Careers, AccruePartners host Amy Pack sits down with Nick Marocchini, VP of FP&A at Amerit Fleet Solutions. Nick has built his finance career across both public and private equity-backed companies — with a clear preference for PE — and his path to Amerit Fleet started with a cold LinkedIn message and a 30-minute conversation with no job on the table. He shares how his hiring approach shifted from scanning resumes to reading people, what has to be true operationally for a PE-backed business to scale, and where AI is genuinely changing finance work versus where it's still noise.

• Networking works best before you need it. A 30-minute conversation with no agenda turned into a role four months later — and not everyone Nick reached out to responded.
• Finance isn't about the numbers; it's about decisions. The job is building enough trust with operations and sales that they act on your data.
• Hiring has shifted from "does the resume check the box?" to reading the whole person. Skills matter, but curiosity signals who will grow.
• A candidate's skill set doesn't need to match one-for-one. Coaching someone slightly below the bar is one of the real advantages of leadership.
• Systems don't fix broken processes — they scale whatever process you already have, good or bad. Get the process right first.
• Private equity offers empowerment that public companies often can't. Good ideas get implemented, and you can point at results two years later and say, "That was mine."
• AI is already compressing manual finance work. The emerging skill isn't using AI — it's knowing how to direct it.

Amy: Nick, I always like to start out with the typical interview question. Tell me about yourself.

Nick: Happy to. I'm Nick Marocchini, VP of FP&A at Amerit Fleet Solutions. I was born and raised in Connecticut, and I've lived in Charlotte for about eight years now with my wife and our two daughters — Olivia, who's two, and Gianna, who will be four months next week. From a career perspective, I moved down to Charlotte with United Technologies, which at the time was headquartered on Tyvola. I've worked in multiple roles since then, at both public and PE-backed companies. I have a preference — I like PE, and we can get to that later and why.

Amy: So you moved to Charlotte from Connecticut. Did you move here for that job, or did they move you here?

Nick: Great question. When I was working in Connecticut, I met one of my first mentors, Chuck. He was living in Charlotte at the time and was an executive at UTC. We had talked about career paths — where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do — and he flew me down to Charlotte. I was down for maybe 12 hours. I flew down in the morning, did a bunch of speed-dating interviews, met a bunch of people, flew out that night, and then had a few different opportunities I could choose from.

I ended up choosing one at Carrier, one of their portfolio companies up in Huntersville. So they relocated me down. The plan was to be here for one to two years, but we're rooted here now. I consider myself a Charlottean. It just goes to show how important it is to network — and have mentors, and really what they can do for you going forward.

Amy: Most people, once they get to the Queen City, they don't want to leave the Queen City.

Nick: Yeah, I'm one of them.

Amy: Tell me about your transition to Amerit Fleet.

Nick: I met Keith by messaging him on LinkedIn. This was back in August, and I wanted to just get to know him. I'm a big fan of networking, so I wanted to know some Charlotte leaders. We met for 30 minutes. It was a great conversation. Fast-forward four months later, he's moving over to Amerit Fleet as CFO. They gave me a call, and then I landed the job shortly after. So we joined in January, and it's been a great ride ever since.

Amy: Out of curiosity — most individuals looking for a job are a bit hesitant to directly reach out to someone and just take an opportunity to network and get to know them. I commend you for that, because I always tell people you should always work to network. Outside of the typical application process, it doesn't hurt to reach out and let someone know that you've applied to the job or you're in process. What was it that gave you the motivation to put yourself out there?

Nick: It's a priority of mine to meet new people in Charlotte, whether it's for career or personal. And I love meeting people who are well-respected leaders in the finance organization. So when I heard Keith's name, I heard a few others. I reached out to a few, by the way — not all responded, but Keith did.

It was really easy for me to want to follow a leader like that after our conversation. You could tell he's genuine. He invests in his team. He gives you the experience you need to grow. So for me, it was a really easy way to reach out and get to know him.

Amy: One of the things I wanted to touch on — obviously, the title of the podcast is Building People, Companies and Careers. We had the opportunity to place you with Keith, and lo and behold, we didn't know that you had actually already met each other. But you've been on both sides of the equation now.

Amy: You've been a candidate and gone through the process, and it was a pretty speedy process — it was like speed dating, if I recall. And now you've had the opportunity to work with AccruePartners as you've looked to build out your team. As we always say, a candidate's a client and a client's a candidate. You've come full circle with us. I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Nick: I've been on both sides of the equation, and I've learned tips and tricks — what to do and what not to do on both sides.

When I'm interviewing for an opportunity, I'm very curious to know what the company's priorities are, how they invest in the people, what the gaps and the challenges are that they're trying to solve. Does my skill set marry up to that, and can I help achieve those goals? I try to pair myself with something that's not going to be too strenuous, but something where I can stretch myself, learn, grow, and help the organization.

On the flip side of the table, when I'm interviewing someone, I'm always genuinely curious about what they know about their current organization. So I'll ask questions like, "What's your revenue size? How is your team structured?" They sound basic and trivial, but if people know the answers to those questions, it signals that they're curious individuals — they're asking the right questions, and they're probably a valued player on their team.

The other thing I look for is someone who's willing to roll up their sleeves. Get in the data. Dig in the trenches, find solutions. Financial reporting is more than just reporting the numbers — it's helping inform decisions, and there's a future outlook to it as well.

Amy: You've built your career in finance, in public and private. You're now with a PE-backed national operation. What are some of the defining moments that shaped how you operate as a finance leader today?

Nick: It's more of a culmination of events that I've experienced throughout my career, but there are a few that come to mind. I'll give you an example. One of my mentors down here in Charlotte was in the marketing department. We were sending out financial reports, and one of the things he said to me was, "Hey, this is a great model. It's a great report. It's formatted beautifully. It makes sense. But I don't know what the message is. What's the takeaway?"

It kind of flipped a switch for me, because what it taught me was that finance isn't just about speaking finance. You have to know your audience, and you have to flip hats. If you're sending a report to someone in finance, they might get it right away. But if you're sending it to someone in marketing or HR or sales, you need to put on that hat and communicate differently than you would to someone else.

Amy: Was there one defining moment there?

Nick: Maybe not a specific moment. Over my career, I've had the opportunity to work with some really great leaders who have taught me a lot of different things — Keith Weidman comes to mind, Keith Bull, Jeremy Russell. I learned different things from all these different people, so it's more of a combination of events that attributes where I am today.

Amy: Pulling different threads together.

Nick: Exactly.

Amy: You're now at a PE-backed company that sits close to the numbers that matter the most — the cash, capital allocation, margins. How do you define the role of FP&A in an organization like Amerit today, and how do you balance being a steward of numbers and a strategic partner to operations in the broader leadership team?

Nick: There's a common misconception that finance is about the numbers, but I believe finance is about decisions. When you think about partnering with other departments in the organization, be it operations or sales, you need to build that trust with them upfront so that when you bring data to them, when you bring a decision to them, they trust your data and they value your opinion. Then they can make an informed decision that'll hopefully impact the company going forward.

So to me, it's all about building trust, building relationships, and building a great team.

Amy: Speaking of building a great team — you've had to build a team. What is it that you look for in talent today? Accounting and finance talent is harder to find today than in the last 15 years, because there's a shortage. Enrollment rates in schools dropped in 2009 and 2010, and they didn't pick up until 2024. So we have roughly a 14-year gap. People are having to be a little more creative, think a little more outside the box. Obviously you have to have the technical skills. But what is it that you look for as you build out your team?

Nick: I'll tell you how it's changed over time. I remember one of my first interviews, when I was interviewing someone for my team, I would say I focused 100% on the resume. It's very important — I don't want to belittle it — but I was looking at the resume saying, "Does it check the box? Does it check the box?" Like, technical skills, is it matched?

Now, where I'm at when I interview people, the resume is very important. They need to have the skills. But now I'm looking for the connection. I'm looking for the person. Is this someone who is willing to roll up their sleeves? Is this person someone who's curious about the company? Are they curious about the strategic initiatives of the company? When you find someone and invest in them, and invested in the company, invested in their career, they're going to be invested in you. So it's shifted from just resume-based to a holistic approach.

Nick: I also would argue that when I look at candidates, their skill set doesn't need to match up one for one where I'm at. One of the great things about leadership is the ability to coach and grow people. So if I'm hiring for a candidate, I can find someone who's maybe right below where I'm looking for — but to me, I see it as a great opportunity to help grow that person. So those are the kinds of things I look for.

Amy: As organizations grow, especially in the PE-backed environment, we're seeing more and more PE-backed organizations in Charlotte. They all want talent with PE experience, which is becoming harder and harder, because you have to have more people grooming that talent. So we're at a bit of an inflection point.

Amy: From your perspective, what needs to be true from a financial and operational standpoint — data, systems, processes — to support that scale? And what needs to be true on the talent side to keep pace?

Nick: Process and people are key. Systems are as well, but systems don't fix broken processes. They will enable both good and bad ones, but they're not the fix.

To me, the most important thing, ground rooting, is building the processes and streamlining — especially in PE. If you think about their goal, it's to grow a business. So if you're growing a business, just like you're building a house, you have to have a sound foundation. Getting the processes corrected and fixed in the beginning so that you can use them to scale is really important.

Systems is another really important thing, and a lot of PE companies are dealing with this today. You're buying a mom-and-pop or a startup company, and they might not have invested heavily in software and systems, so I think that's important. There are a lot of tools out there — consolidation tools, BI, AI — that are important in growth.

But foundationally, the most important thing is the people. You get the right people in, they'll follow you, they'll follow the company, they get bought into the vision, bought into the strategy.

Amy: Early in the conversation, you said you really like the PE component. You have public, PE, then back to public, and now back to PE. So you've definitely got a draw there. What is that?

Nick: What draws me most to PE is just the amount of empowerment you have. Not to say you don't have it in public companies, but generally speaking, you're more in a swim lane. You might be more siloed. You can echo ideas, but they might die down.

When you're in PE, it's like everyone's hunting for the same thing. We're all trying to grow the business. We're all aligned to the strategy. You have a great idea, it can get implemented, and then when you look back in two, three years, you're like, "Wow, that was a great idea. It worked. That was mine." You see things come to fruition. So I think that's the most exciting part to me about PE. I'm not sure where I'll be in the future, but I think I tend to lean towards staying in PE for the rest of my time.

Amy: It gives you a little bit of an entrepreneurial flair — and some ownership.

Nick: A lot more ownership. Without a doubt.

Amy: As AI and technology become increasingly important in finance and across the enterprise, how do you think about leveraging those tools to drive better forecasting, decision-making, and efficiency? And are you doing any of this at Amerit currently?

Nick: Absolutely. And it's worth saying that the landscape today is going to change tomorrow.

When I think about the introduction of AI — which is already here — but how it infiltrates into the process, from a financial standpoint you think about collecting data, analyzing data, output, making decisions. I think where it's trickling in now, for the most part, is in the beginning. We're leveraging a lot of AI for data collection. It's taking us less time to pull things manually. We can systematize it. I think eventually it'll start trickling all the way down.

I still think you won't necessarily use AI to make every decision for you. There's always going to be the back and forth and the human involvement.

Amy: Human in the loop.

Nick: 100%. But the best case is, if there's a process that takes you 60 minutes and 15 minutes of that is data download, and you can automate that, you've just streamlined a large majority of that process.

Amy: Are you using any AI technology-enabled tools within the organization now?

Nick: We're starting to use Claude. We've got some guys on the team who are wizards with it. They're super sharp. We're already seeing the benefits — they're shaving things in half in terms of time and process and data collection. It's really cool. It's actually really fascinating.

Amy: And it shows up better than a spreadsheet.

Nick: 100%. I think it's here to stay, and I think the people who embrace it will outperform the people who choose to ignore it.

Nick: I think it'll evolve, but one of the things I think will be an emerging, interesting new opportunity is teaching people how to prompt it.

If there was a robot in the room with us right now and we said, "Get out to the car as fast as you can," it'll probably just run through the wall. But framing it up and building guidelines that say, "You have to use doors and stairwells" — it sounds trivial, but that's really important. So I think there'll be a huge opportunity in the future for classes and seminars, teaching people how to use it and how to prompt it properly.

Amy: As you look ahead, how do you see the FP&A function continuing to evolve, and what capabilities will define the next generation of finance leaders?

Nick: I think finance leaders will spend a lot less time analyzing and a lot more time decision-making. AI is a part of that. It's going to enable us to get to the answer quicker so that we can make decisions quicker. It'll be interesting to see where we go — that prediction could certainly change tomorrow. But I see it automating a lot of the more manual work that most finance professionals do today.

Amy: You know what's interesting about that? That manual work is entry-level work to some degree. And these college grads are having a really hard time. We're going to have to close this gap somewhere, because we need them to skill up and learn so that they can become the future middle managers, leaders, then C-suite. It's going to be interesting to see how that looks, because it's been a two- to three-year period that entry-level jobs have been hit pretty significantly.

Nick: I would agree.

Amy: I don't have the answer, but we'll figure it out — or somebody will.

Nick: Somebody will.

Amy: Any other advice you'd give to someone hiring finance professionals, or someone looking for a finance role?

Nick: I would say be curious. Learn the company vision. Learn where they invest in the people. Figure out what your strengths are and how they align with the role or the opportunity.

On the flip side, look for people who are genuinely curious. Look for people who are hungry. There are a lot of them coming out of school now. There are a bunch of go-getters out there — Charlotte's a great market, as you know.

Be curious, be courageous, take a risk. Don't be afraid to ask questions. That's how you learn. And just go for it.

Amy: There you go. Be positive

Amy: What was your first real career lesson?

Nick: Don't chase titles, chase experience. A lot of people are hungry to get to the next level — senior, analyst, manager, director, what have you. When I think about my career, I think about the end state: where do I want to be? So I think less of titles today and more of, what experience do I need between now and where I want to eventually be, and how do I get that experience?

Amy: One quote that you're known for, or saying?

Nick: I would say progress over perfection. Don't let the details get in the way of making progress. Remember the end goal.

Amy: From the analysts — don't get analysis paralysis.

Nick: Exactly.

Amy: Share with us a leadership trait that you value the most in others.

Nick: Curiosity. It keeps coming up. To me, it's really important and really telling of someone's ambition. Not that there's anything wrong with not being curious, but when someone is genuinely curious about the business or how things operate, and you can tell that through the questions they ask in interviews, it signals that's probably going to be a highly successful person. They're inquisitive. They want to know more. They want to learn. They want to take on more. So those are the types of people I look for. That's probably my favorite leadership trait.

Amy: They're interested. We have someone at AccruePartners who's always saying, "Be curious. Just double-click into that."

Nick: I love that phrase.

Amy: Your favorite spot in Charlotte for a great meal?

Nick: Got to be Alexander Michael's. The honey chicken pasta is to die for. Great atmosphere. Got to check it out if you haven't.

Amy: And where did you live that you were near Alexander Michael's?

Nick: I lived in Dilworth, and it was close enough where we would go there often for date night. Great spot.

Amy: It's an oldie but a goodie. Well, it was great having you on the show and learning more about you. We appreciate your time.

Nick: Thank you. I had a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.

What does FP&A do in a private equity-backed company? 

FP&A in a PE-backed business sits close to the metrics that drive value — cash, capital allocation, and margins. As Nick Marocchini puts it, the function isn't about producing numbers but about enabling decisions: building enough trust with operations and sales that those teams act on the data finance brings them.

Why is accounting and finance talent so hard to hire right now? 

Enrollment in accounting programs dropped around 2009 and 2010 and didn't recover until 2024, leaving roughly a 14-year gap in the talent pipeline. The shortage is compounded in Charlotte's growing PE-backed market, where nearly every company wants candidates who already have private equity experience.

What do finance leaders look for in candidates beyond the resume? 

Technical skills remain the entry requirement, but Nick's hiring approach has moved from "does the resume check the box?" to evaluating curiosity, willingness to get into the data, and knowledge of the candidate's current business. He also notes a skill set doesn't need to match one-for-one — coaching someone slightly below the bar is one of the real advantages of leadership.

How is AI changing finance and FP&A work? The clearest gains today are at the front of the process: data collection and preparation. Automating the manual pull inside a longer workflow compresses most of the time cost. Nick expects finance leaders to spend less time analyzing and more time deciding, with a human always in the loop — and he flags a second-order effect worth watching, since the manual work AI absorbs is often entry-level work.

Why choose a PE-backed company over a public company? 

Empowerment. In Nick's experience, public companies tend to keep people in a swim lane where good ideas can die out, while in PE everyone is aligned to the same growth strategy — so a good idea can actually get implemented, and you can point at the result two years later.

About the guest: 

Nick Marocchini is VP of FP&A at Amerit Fleet Solutions. Born and raised in Connecticut, he relocated to Charlotte with United Technologies and went on to hold finance roles at Carrier and other public and private equity-backed companies before joining Amerit Fleet in January. He lives in Charlotte with his wife and their two daughters.

About the podcast: 

Building People, Companies and Careers is brought to you by AccruePartners and hosted by Amy Pack and Patty Comer. For more than 20 years, AccruePartners has connected candidates, clients, consultants, and thought leaders across the Charlotte business community. Whether you're a client, a candidate, or a business influencer in the Queen City, this podcast is for you.

Hiring finance and accounting talent, or exploring your next role? 

Contact AccruePartners to start the conversation.