Executive recruiting is a different game. What is a best practice for executive recruiting?
To help you adopt the best ways in recruiting executives, we asked experienced hiring managers and business leaders this question for their best insights. From starting with building a relationship to engaging a recruiting firm for help, there are several tips to follow as best practices for recruiting executives to your organization.
Here are 10 executive recruiting best practices:
- Start With Building a Relationship
- Communicate With Respect During The Process
- Stay in Touch Before The Start Date
- Make The Application Easy To Go Through
- Don’t Be Taken in by The Candidate’s Influential Status
- Be Specific With Your Executive Search
- Focus On Behavioral Interviewing
- Appeal To The Candidate’s Need for a Challenge
- Leverage Executive Referrals
- Engage a Recruiting Firm for Help
Start With Building a Relationship
Executive recruiting is a different game – it isn’t a quick recruit, it’s playing the long game. Executive level candidates need to understand your company culture, feel it aligns to their needs and goals. They are well-versed in compensation packages as they often manage these for their directors and teams.
Executives want to understand strategy and vision- not for today, but in the next few years. As an experienced leader, to make a move, it has to be right not just financially – but personally aligning to values and needs.
The first step to build the case for an executive hire is to build a relationship at the get-go-and that starts with the initial outreach from the recruiter.
Alexandra McGroarty, McGroarty & Co Consulting LLC
Communicate With Respect During The Process
While this is important to communicate respect in all hiring processes, you need to weigh on this factor more when recruiting for an executive-level position.
Executives candidates are industry leaders who have tons of knowledge, experience, and contacts to bring to the table, and they should be treated with mutual respect. One way to do this is to answer their emails, messages, and calls promptly and provide them with as much assistance as possible. Make sure to discuss the entire recruitment process beforehand and confirm their availability during the scheduled dates. The objective is to make them know their time is being valued during the entire process
Antreas Koutis, Financer
Stay in Touch Before The Start Date
Once you have made a hiring decision for an executive at your company, stay in touch with them until their start date. If they do not feel valued and appreciated right off the bat, they may not want to stay. Executives are integral to a business, so you must make them feel at home at your company.
Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency
Make The Application Easy To Go Through
Application abandonment is the most common hidden hole in the recruitment funnel, but surprisingly few businesses pay attention to it. When evaluating client data, desertion rates might reach as high as 95 percent.
The application should function as a vehicle rather than an impediment. It’s critical to determine where in the application process the abandonment occurred to prevent application drop-off.
Some applicant tracking systems have built-in application abandonment reports to assist organizations in identifying the problem, but specialist software such as HotJar allows businesses to track candidate experience. Once the problem has been identified, it’s critical to remove the stumbling block so that future candidates are not stymied.
Axel Hernborg, Tripplo.com
Don’t Be Taken in by The Candidate’s Influential Status
Don’t hire someone just on the basis of their reputation. You must be certain that the candidate in issue possesses the precise qualifications you need and is capable of filling the gap left by your organization. Candidates who are seen as superstars by others may begin to believe the same thing about themselves, which can lead to internal difficulties.
Ayman Zaidi, GreatPeopleSearch
Be Specific With Your Executive Search
Aligning your performance and decision and discussing your common vision of what your best candidate appears like is among the most crucial elements in the executive recruiting process. Be on the same page with your coworkers about the position and the effect you want your new recruit to have. What exactly would you like people to do in the first and beyond days? Describe the sorts of expertise you’re looking for in a new recruit, as well as the competence and character attributes you’re looking for. This is critical to the success of your early recruitment and procurement activities. Specificity is critical in every executive search.
robin Roy Krigslund-Hansen, Formula Swiss
Focus On Behavioral Interviewing
When hiring an executive for your company, it is vital to ensure that the candidate you pick has the best ideals that could help move your company forward. Using behavioral interviewing techniques will help you pick out the candidate’s mind and thus improve your judgment on whether this interviewee will bring the right ideologies to your company. Enforcing this interview technique ensures you can land the best candidate who positively influences your organization.
Ivy Bosibori, USBadCreditLoans
Appeal To The Candidate’s Need for a Challenge
Executives do find themselves uninspired in their roles after serving for a while. Such opportunities can be an advantage for your business if you offer them a challenge worth their experience and dedication. When recruiting executives, your value proposition should include how the new role you are offering them can tap into and expound on their experience while enabling career advancement. This type of offer appeals more to executives and can be crucial in helping you hire.
Mehtab Ahmed, LoansJury
Leverage Executive Referrals
When it comes to executive recruitment, it is often best to start by reaching out to your existing board, investors, advisors, as well as other stakeholders and asking them if you can mine their networks.
After all, executives tend to have the most extensive networks out of any employee group since they travel more frequently, attend industry events, take part in benchmark studies, and even assume leadership roles in community boards and professional associations.
As a result, they are also more likely to have good knowledge of “new and upcoming” talent within the industry. Plus, since they are already familiar with them, it allows you to more effectively gather detailed insights on who they are, what their capabilities are, their level of experience, past achievements, their character, what motivates them, and so much more, which can often help to smoothen discussions as you reach out.
Jory Hunga, iPaydayLoans
Engage a Recruiting Firm for Help
The best practice for executive recruiting is hiring a recruiting firm. Many companies fail to find the best candidates for executive jobs. Hiring and investing in an executive recruiting firm can lead to a successful search. The trained professional at these firms knows the company’s needs and how to find qualified candidates. Customize strategy and evaluate your current process with recruiting firms to fit your specific hiring needs. Be clear about your requirements and report to the hiring firm. Work with an executive recruiting firm or hiring team to make a clear recruitment strategy. It includes how your employees interact with the candidates to build a professional relationship with them and know whether they would be an asset to the company.
Shivanshi Srivastava, PaydayLoansUK
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