14 Oct 4 Crucial Keys to Successful Executive Recruiting
Recruiting a key executive requires far more than reviewing a pile of résumés. Sifting through social media for that well-worded bio, carefully crafted to promote a seemingly “flawless” candidate, is sure to be a dead-end, too. These methods of recruiting talented executives are time-consuming, expensive, and rarely effective.
Most organizations don’t have the depth or expertise to conduct ongoing research necessary to attract top executive candidates. You will save time, money and effort if you retain a proven executive search firm that can identify and recruit a serious selection of highly qualified candidates who precisely match your needs.
Moving too quickly to fill a vacant executive position can be disastrous. Retaining a successful executive search firm with a proven track record will save money and ensure that you will be choosing from a properly vetted slate of candidates. Extensive research and expertise are the keys to filling key positions with talented executives whose capabilities most closely meet your needs.
1. Understanding Your Needs
A highly effective executive search firm’s role begins with a precise understanding of your organization. Successfully matching a candidate’s qualifications to your needs goes far beyond basic educational and experiential information.
Your search firm needs to understand the expectations you’ve set for your new executive, how those expectations may differ from the previous incumbent’s and why that’s important to you. It also needs a clear understanding of how you will assess the new executive’s performance over time.
In other words, your recruiter must understand:
- What the executive is expected to accomplish;
- By when it must be done;
- How the result will be assessed;
- How the executive will be rewarded for success.
Successful search firms recognize that an excellent candidate must have a compatible personality, a documented history of solving similar challenges, a matching management style and excellent communication skills. And these key characteristics must mesh stylistically with your culture or disaster might ensue.
2. Understanding Corporate Culture
From the outset, the effective executive recruiter uses research techniques to comprehend which type of executive will best fit your culture. By conducting in-depth interviews of management, colleagues, subordinates and other key constituencies, your recruiter learns what management behaviors and leadership traits are essential for success.
For example, some teams operate on a highly collegial basis, openly sharing information and crossing over formal organizational lines of authority. Other organizations are tightly structured, crossing lines of authority are frowned upon. A collegial style executive could very well find himself ostracized.
Having a clear understanding of the company culture including communications methods and styles, pace of activity and pressure the new hire will be facing are important in finding the best candidates.
If the position requires a candidate with more qualifications than has been in place to date, an experienced executive recruiter can help define the company’s needs going forward.
3. Searching for the Right Candidates
With a complete qualification profile in hand, the expert recruiter begins the search. Using extensive expertise and industry connections, the search executive begins to identify prospective candidates. Expertise in this phase of the search is a critical asset. Discreetly networking possibilities and approaching qualified candidates without compromising the candidates’ current positions is an essential talent. A focused search done in this manner is usually not something your HR staff is trained to handle appropriately.
Likewise, conducting the necessary research into a potential candidate’s background and current work performance must be handled delicately. A professional search firm utilizes its range of industry contacts and expertise to delve into performance issues without jeopardizing the prospective candidate’s situation or exposing the client unnecessarily.
4. Engaging Dise & Company Executive Search Experts
Hiring an experienced and effective executive search firm is the key to successfully filling essential positions in your organization. To better understand the value of extensive research in matching the right candidates with your executive opening, a more detailed look at the Dise Approach will explain why Dise & Company enjoys an outstanding record of recruiting success.
Follow the link to the Dise & Company Executive Search whitepaper to learn more about the benefits proven results and bona fide expertise can bring during the recruitment of top-quality candidates.