As a leader, one of your most difficult tasks will be hiring truly great executives. This is not an easy task, and unfortunately, many companies hire the wrong people for leadership roles.
In fact, the failure rate of executives coming into new companies can range from 30%-40% after 18 months. And with this turnover comes wasted and duplicated recruiting efforts, low employee morale, and missed business objectives.
So how can you improve your hiring process and increase your chances of hiring the right executive the first time around? Discover 5 tips to help you boost your executive hiring process and find a top candidate to add to your leadership team.
Designate a Search Team
Recruiting a top executive is not something that can be put on the backburner or done in your spare time. Before you start recruiting, make sure to appoint a team that will lead and drive the search efforts needed for finding your ideal candidate.
Make sure the search team understands the job requirements and hiring deliverables to avoid any conflicts in the future. For example, does the candidate need to be local or will your company pay for relocation? It is not uncommon for executive candidates to reject offers after receiving varying information from the search team and interviewers. It’s a sign that your company lacks direction and strong communication.
Also, your search team doesn’t need to come from within. You can explore external options like a recruitment agency specializing in executive hiring.
Research Compensation
Before beginning the hiring process for your open leadership positions, you should first do some research on competitive market pricing for the position and figure out if this is in line with what you can afford to pay the candidate.
If you’re overcompensating the candidate, it can create overly high expectations and build up the risk of failure in terms of performance. On the other hand, if you’re not offering a compensation in line with industry standards, you risk losing out on a top candidate to a company offering a more attractive compensation package.
You want to make sure your organization is not overpaying or underpaying executives while still remaining competitive.
Look Beyond Web-based Tools and Job Boards
Oftentimes, the first place your team will search for top candidates is on the internet and on job boards. While this is not a bad tactic, it might take some more creativity to find a top leadership candidate.
Instead, try using social media to connect with passive candidates, look within your own team or social network for referrals, or attend various industry meet-ups or leadership specific organizations. Another option is to reach out to an executive search firm for assistance to really dive deep into their applicant tracking systems, network, and strategic recruiting methods.
Go Beyond Typical Interviews
It can be difficult to determine whether a candidate is a fit or not from a phone interview and one in-person interview, and it becomes even more difficult when filling an executive role. Adding more interviews to your hiring process is not always the solution, instead, mix up the type of interview. Since a leader has a lot of influence on company culture, you should get to know the candidate outside of work and how they deal with stressful situations. Here are some ideas for outside the box interviews and tasks:
- Dinner or lunch with candidate outside the office
- Events or outings with your leadership team and their families along with the candidate and their family
- Perform a mock presentation
- 30-60-90 day business plan
- Role Play with difficult candidate
Create a Team of Interviewers
Finally, it can be difficult for just one person to assess whether or not a leadership candidate is a fit. To hire the best, you need multiple people from your company to get involved.
Adding multiple interviewers to the mix help make sure you get an objective opinion and certain people can focus their interview questions on specific skills. Make sure to include your HR team and team leaders with experience in hiring. Remember, if you’re hiring for a more specific or technical position like a web developer, it’s important to include someone who has knowledge in this area.
Use these tips to help improve your hiring process and find your ideal leadership candidate. If you’re not able to follow these tips or commit to a search internally, consider reaching out to Naviga for assistance!
