Executive Recruiting For Dummies
Overview
Tips and strategies to fill executive-level positions
Recruiting for high-end executives requires a special skill-set, and Executive Recruiting For Dummies is here to help you add this niche talent to your arsenal. Whether you're an in-house human resources manager or a professional recruiter at a search firm, this friendly guide walks you through each step of filling that senior, executive, or other highly specialized position. This book covers the globalization of talent and the advantages of executive recruiting. It provides expert guidance on finding the right candidates, conducting hardy screening and interviewing processes, closing deals, and more.
There
are 10,000,000 businesses in America that hire at least one senior executive a year, and most turn to commissioning a third-party organization, such as an executive search firm. Rather than losing that next top-tier recruiting job, let Executive Recruiting For Dummies show you how to add this highly desirable and sought-after skill to your resume.
- Learn to recruit with precision
- Create a robust interview process
- Close the deal with a winning offer
- Find out how to work with professional recruiters
Discover how to find the best talent and retain and attract clients with the help of Executive Recruiting For Dummies.
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About The Author
David E. Perry has completed more than 1,000 searches on five continents negotiating over $300 million in salaries. His near perfect success rate is 300% better than the industry average— one reason why The Wall Street Journal dubbed him the "Rogue Recruiter."Mark J. Haluska works internationally to fill positions from upper- middle management to president and CEO -level positions. Mark is a self-taught recruiter and has packaged deals as high as $4.2M.
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executive recruiting for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
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.
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Human Resources
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.
Human Resources
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.
A successful executive search involves a ten-step process. Follow these ten steps to find the right executive for your company:
Assemble your team.
This will consist of the hiring manager, the ultimate hiring manager, a search committee, the search committee chair, an internal recruiter, a sourcer, a researcher, a marketing copywriter, and a coordinator.
Human Resources
When you're working with an external executive recruiter, you need to ensure that they have your companies' needs and wants in mind. Here are ten easy ways to build rapport with an external recruiter:
Convey to the recruiter your expectations and how you like to operate. The best recruiters are flexible and will work to match to your style.
Research shows that companies that are adept at recruiting deliver more than three times the revenue growth and twice the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) as those that miss the mark on recruiting. To be "adept at recruiting," you must identify the right person for the job — every time.
In the current economy, with a relatively new recruiting paradigm, any executive recruiting project boils down to three key steps: Figuring out what types of knowledge and personal qualities are most important for the role; figuring out how to find people with that knowledge and those qualities; and figuring out how to hire the person who best matches your needs.
What if you receive multiple resignations from the same team at once, or a resignation provides you with an opportunity to assemble a new team? In that case, you have two options:
Acqui-hire: An acqui-hire is when a big company buys a smaller company — usually an early-stage start-up — not to take over that business, but rather for the express purpose of acquiring its employees.
Human Resources
The term empty suit describes an executive who is incompetent. Whoever hired the executive based his decision on superficial evaluation factors. These include characteristics like the following:
Charm: You know who was charming? Ted Bundy, that's who. And you know who wasn't? Steve Jobs. The point is, a charming personality is never an accurate predictor of success in a role.
Human Resources
After you've laid out your basic recruitment plan and assembled your executive search team, job one is to perform a needs analysis. That means confirming the need for the new hire and consulting with the hiring manager to identify the precise requirements for the job.
Confirming the need
Why does the position exist?
Human Resources
Whether your new executive hire succeeds isn't just about his core characteristics. It's also about yours — or your company's, anyway — the environment and culture within your organization.Earlier, the role of management used to be to develop procedures for employees to follow to serve the machines that existed at the center of the typical organization.
You can use a confidential candidate brief (CCB) instead of a resume to quickly and unobtrusively obtain an accurate picture of a prospect's qualifications. Indeed, the CCB essentially acts as the first interview — only better. With the CCB, the prospect can take her time to answer your questions thoughtfully and with as much detail and color as she chooses.
In choosing an external recruiter, there are several key questions to ponder. You can pair these with a recruiter scorecard, using them in tandem to select the best recruiter for your firm.
Is the recruiter free to recruit from your direct competitors?
Does the recruiter understand the role you need to fill?
Human Resources
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.
Human Resources
Nine times out of ten, you need the candidate way more than the candidate needs you. After all, she probably already has a job — and one she likes. So you don't want to blow it by conducting poor interviews. That's why you write an interview guide: to usher you through the interview stage.Prospects form impressions of the company with each interaction — especially interviews.
Human Resources
A job order is a written record of an employer's need to fill a vacant position with a qualified worker. You write a job order at the outset of the search to clearly identify what the position is and what type of person should fill it. It's an internal document, which you'll use to compose the job description and other recruiting materials.
Human Resources
The job description for an open executive position for which you are recruiting explains what the position entails and what type of person would be a good fit. It's about what you need.No offense, but it's not all about you and your needs. You also have to consider what your potential candidates might want. Why?
To parcel out all the pieces of your executive hiring project, it helps to host a kickoff meeting with everyone involved — the hiring manager, search chair, search committee, and staff. This meeting will help you to align your people, processes, and project from the very start.
If people join in by teleconference, mute their line so they can't speak and you don't hear what may be going on in the background.
In addition to composing a detailed executive recruitment project plan, outlining each step of the hiring process, you also need a service-level agreement (SLA). The SLA spells out your expectations, as well as those of your client. It also defines success for the project.Lots of businesses rely on SLAs with their suppliers in order to run smoothly.
Human Resources
Yes, high-performing employees — in particular, high-performing leaders — have always been valuable. But these days, they're even more so. Here's why:
Globalization: It used to be that your business competed with organizations in your region or even in your country. Today? Not so much. Now, you're competing with companies all over the world.
Human Resources
During the first meeting of the executive search committee, you should appoint a chair. Who should you choose? To answer that, it helps to understand what the chair does. Here are a few of the chair's duties:
Building an emotional connection with the right candidate (this is crucial)
Working with the external recruiter to create and manage the timeline
Serving as the voice for the search committee
Driving the search process with the internal or external recruiter
Managing the flow of information between the search committee and the board
Helping the external recruiter gather data about recommended candidates from all board members and "friends" of the company
Evaluating and managing any internal candidates with the external recruiter
Checking references
Ensuring due diligence
Driving the creation, development, and presentation of the offer
Negotiating the offer
Playing "good cop" if the external recruiter needs to step aside during the negotiation phase
Closing the deal
The search chair is often in the best position to convince the candidate there is a fit; articulate why her background, skills, opportunities, and challenges align; and explain how there is wealth to be made.
Human Resources
You've built a list of potential executive hires. You've pared it down. All that remains is a select few finalists — no more than ten, tops. During this phase, you'll interview each of these remaining candidates to whittle down that list even further. When you're finished with this phase, you'll have identified your top candidate.
These days, top executive recruiting firms scour countless sources for outstanding candidates — both active and passive. To achieve this, many firms employ two types of investigators:
Researchers: These professionals focus on targeted industries, companies, and functional positions, compiling competitive intelligence from a multitude of sources.
Most external recruiters can be described as either niche recruiters or generalists. Niche recruiters specialize in just one type of function or industry. For example, a niche recruiter might focus on former military personnel, financial professionals, pharmacists, restaurant managers, or computer programmers.
What, pray tell, is a SWOT analysis? Simply put, it's a way to assess an organization's strengths and weaknesses (the internal factors that affect your business), as well as opportunities and threats (the external factors that play a role in your success or failure), and to compare them to those of their competitors.
Clearly, hiring the right people is critical from a business perspective — especially in leadership roles. And according to a 2014 study by the Conference Board, CEOs know this; the study cites "a clear recognition among CEOs that human capital is the engine of the enterprise."The organization's report on this study continues, "Human capital is, in essence, the thread that runs through the other top-ranked challenges — customer relationships, innovation, operational excellence, and corporate brand and reputation — and forms the basis of strategic action.
Human Resources
Making a project plan for your executive recruitment will help ensure you deliver your project on time and maybe even under budget by clearly outlining each process, phase, activity, and task required to complete it. The plan also details your projected time frame, including milestones, and any resources you require.
You can use the recruiter scorecard to assess prospective recruiters. Answer each question by choosing yes, no, or maybe. Each yes counts for 5 points. Each no is worth 0 points. And for each maybe, add 2-1/2 points.
The Recruiter Scorecard
Question
Yes
No
Maybe
Is the recruiter free to recruit from your direct competitors?
Human Resources
Tons of people claim to be experts in executive recruiting — but of course they're not. Really, there are only a few worth following. Here is a list of top people:
Peter Clayton: Peter is the award-winning founder, producer, and host of Total Picture Radio, the first podcast focused on HR, recruiting, leadership, innovation, and career management.
Human Resources
Some external recruiters are retained. Retained recruiters work exclusively on a single assignment until it's complete, and they're compensated for their expertise rather than for a successful hire.Typically, retained recruiters are paid one-third of their fee upfront. They receive the second third upon submission of a short list of candidates.
Human Resources
Your first search stop when recruiting executives — especially for a C-suite hire — is LinkedIn, a social network for professionals that boasts more than 480 million professional profiles, with more posted every second.Why LinkedIn? Simple. Unlike other social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on, LinkedIn is designed specifically for the sharing of professional information.
Your executive recruitment plan should be clever, results driven, marketing oriented, affordable, realistic, and targeted. But there's one thing it shouldn't be: a secret.After you hammer out your plan, share it with the hiring manager. Thoroughly explain exactly what is about to transpire — the complete sequence of events from start to finish.
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.
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.
Human Resources
Research is often laborious — even tedious. But it's through research — and only through research — that you can tightly target your prospects. Research lets you hone your message and deliver it to exactly the right person. And, thanks to research, you can speak knowledgeably about that person, his industries, and his challenges, enabling you to emphasize the positive aspects of your opportunity.
Executive recruiting is and has always been an intensive process. But given the rise of the knowledge economy, how you compete for talent has changed.In the old days, companies searched for talent by sending out requests for résumés. The candidates who submitted these résumés were then judged along two axes: price and performance.
As executive recruiters, there are some tools that we use every day. Some are websites geared toward connecting with professionals. Others are project-management tools. Some are for performing assessments. And some are to facilitate communication. Here's a quick rundown of our top tools:
ZoomInfo: ZoomInfo generates summaries of more than 140 million people from 12 million companies.
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.
Human Resources
If your hiring process takes too long, odds are your top candidate will no longer be available by the time you're ready to make an offer — which is bad. Whether HR, an internal recruiter, a contingency recruiter, or a retained recruiter is running the show, reasons for this problem (and suggested solutions) may include the following:
Top talent isn't inclined to wait months for an offer.
Human Resources
Often, you'll hear the hiring authority complain that she hasn't seen enough quality candidates. If the person in charge of the search is an internal recruiter or works in HR, there are several possible causes and solutions to this problem:
Online job postings aren't well targeted. Try using a job-posting service that specifically caters to the type of position you're trying to fill.
Under most circumstances, your client is the ultimate hiring authority, best defined as the person the new hire will report to. For example, if the position you seek to fill is a VP position that will report to the president, the president is your client. If it's a CEO position, your client is the chairman of the board.
Your executive search team is composed of three groups: the hiring team, the recruiting team, and the support team. So, what does each of these teams do? And who's on these teams?
Depending on certain variables — including the size of your organization and the sensitivity of the search project — some people on your executive search team might wind up wearing multiple hats.
Right when top talent has become a prerequisite to success, talented executives have become rare indeed. There are a few key reasons for this:
Demographics: A lower birth rate in North America combined with the aging of the Baby Boomer generation has resulted in a contraction of available executives. In other words, when an older executive retires, there are few younger workers who are qualified to fill their shoes.
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.
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