Say you're a human resources manager at a Texas firm looking to hire a bean counter.

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Using Zoom, that same search for a banking bean counter in Texas spits out just six results.

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Even the chief bean counter, COO and CFO Rose Marcario, seems spiritually fulfilled.

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Put another way, "What once was relegated to a bean counter is now being taken much more seriously in companies, " says Berman.

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Sorrell is a Cambridge and Harvard graduate from North London, a self-described "bean counter" who made his mark as the finance director of the ad gurus, Charles and Maurice Saatchi.

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Johnston is no mere bean counter.

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Later, as an official with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Williams worked to bring developers into struggling neighborhoods--neighborhoods sometimes suspicious of a bean counter wearing a bow tie. (Williams adopted the bow tie because he liked the look of a couple of Nation of Islam guys who worked in the office--though he says the choice was strictly sartorial, not religious.) Still later, when Williams worked at St.

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