Paul McDonald

Paul McDonald

Paul McDonald is senior executive director with Robert Half, the world's first and largest specialized staffing firm. The company places professionals on a temporary, temporary-to-hire and full-time basis in the accounting and finance, technology, office administration, legal, and creative, marketing and design fields.

McDonald joined the company in 1984 as an accounting and finance recruiter in Boston. He later assumed roles in branch and regional management for upstate New York; Ontario, Canada; and New Jersey. In the 1990s, he relocated to California to become president of the western United States region of Robert Half. In this role, he directed company operations for all business lines and successfully launched new products and services under the Robert Half brand.

From 2000 to 2012, McDonald served as senior executive director of Robert Half Management Resources, a $650,000,000 division of Robert Half International. In addition to overseeing the global growth of this business unit, he led the legal, creative and technology staffing divisions during this time. McDonald took a prominent role in integrating Protiviti into the company when the subsidiary was formed in 2002. He was appointed to Robert Half's Executive Steering Committee in 2003 and continues to serve in that role.

In 2012, McDonald became senior executive director of Robert Half, focusing on strategic alliances and company-wide initiatives. He is active in a number of organizations, including Financial Executives International, The Institute of Internal Auditors, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting and Society for Human Resource Management. He is a professional partner of Beta Alpha Psi and the president of the Southern California Alumni chapter of Saint Bonaventure University.

A frequent author and speaker, McDonald regularly hosts webinars and video thought leadership, presents at industry conferences and writes articles on careers in accounting and finance. Most recently, he co-authored Benchmarking the Finance Function with Financial Executives International and Succeeding as a 21st Century Internal Auditor: 7 Attributes of Highly Effective Internal Auditors with The Institute of Internal Auditors.

McDonald has been quoted in a wide variety of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Money, MarketWatch, CFO, HR Magazine and Accounting Today, and he has contributed articles to Financial Executive and Internal Auditor.

Prior to joining Robert Half, McDonald worked for Price Waterhouse in Boston. He graduated with a degree in accounting from Saint Bonaventure University in New York.

Interviews with Paul McDonald»See allInterviews RSS Feed

Paul McDonald joins Jim Blasingame to discuss why the current generation of marketplace participants – at least four generations – are making the greatest technology leap in history and likely in the future. Blasingame calls them the “Quantum Leap Generation.
Paul McDonald joins Jim Blasingame to report on recent research that shows how businesses are actively retooling and upgrading the capability of their employees, including their hiring specifications, to meet new tech capability.
Paul McDonald joins Jim Blasingame to report on recent research showing almost half of office workers do not fear AI as a threat to their jobs, and only 12% did.