Books and Articles by Mark J. Haluska

These days, strong leadership is more important than ever. Companies with great leaders significantly outperform their peers. At the same time, globalization, attrition, and changing demographics have led to a scarcity of executive talent. As a result, the competition for top leadership talent is fierce. If you want to ensure your company's survival by hiring great leaders, you'll need some effective way to find them, hire them, and ensure they stick around.

Hiring the wrong executive will cost you, it really will cost you! For example, in the six months after Marissa Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo!, the company's market value increased $17 billion. Around the same time, JCPenney, guided by new CEO Ron Johnson, saw sales decline by $4.3 billion.Regardless of what comes next for either Mayer or Johnson, there's never been a clearer example of getting an executive hire right versus getting it wrong.

One way to source candidates is to place job ads on your company intranet, on online job boards, and in print publications. But if that ad is lousy, it could do your search more harm than good. A-players respond to challenges — the opportunity to have an impact — not the typical laundry lists of "desired skills and responsibilities," which appear all too frequently in job ads.

Executive recruiting is a complex process, but a few key principles apply across the board. Keeping these points in mind will help you land the right person for the right job, every time. Remember it's always a seller's market The best executives — the ones you're looking to hire — already have jobs. Good ones.

If human capital is the most essential factor in organizational success, then the executive search committee, guided by its chair, plays a pivotal role in the future of any organization. This article fills you in on ten cost-free ways to ensure that the search committee closes on everyone's first-choice candidate.

Your ability to quickly hire top talent to capitalize on market changes allows for value creation on a startling level — and professional recruiters help to enhance that ability. Professional recruiters spend all day, every day finding the specialized candidates you need. They're attuned to you and your competitors, as well as industry and market trends.

Executive recruiting is the act of locating, evaluating, assessing, and attracting a top-performing executive to an organization or company. Executive recruiting applies when The search for a new executive hire must remain confidential. The search is for an executive who will serve on the board or sit in the C-suite.

According to a study by BTS Group and the Economist Intelligence Unit called "Cracking the Code: The Secrets of Successful Strategy Execution," companies with great leaders significantly outperform their peers. Great leadership is also a prerequisite for strong employee engagement. That's a big deal, say David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, authors of a report called "Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement.

Executive recruiting is a specialized branch of management consulting. The mission of an executive recruiter is to bring your opportunity to a candidate's attention and assess his fit. That means reaching out to anyone the recruiter feels fits your needs — regardless of his current "availability."Back in the mid-1980s, the profession was still in its infancy.