If you’re getting ready to fill a vacancy in your executive leadership, you’ve probably already discovered that an executive search isn’t like other candidate recruiting efforts. An executive has a much greater impact on your organization, so if you fumble the search, it will cost you a lot more in time and money.
The wrong executive hire can have other long term effects as well. If the executive you hire isn’t a good culture fit and they hire people with the wrong values, not only do you have to exit them, you also have to deal with the cultural impacts their hires bring to your company.
The magnitude of an executive search is hard to exaggerate. It’s important that you fully prepare ahead of time and think through every facet of the hiring process.
Let’s explore the best practices that we follow at Amy Cell Talent.
Related reading: Four critical things to do with your next executive director search
Preparing for an Executive Search
Before you do anything else, thoroughly define the role and make sure you understand your culture. If this is a new role, it’s important to be clear about what this person's lanes will be, and how they interact with other people's defined lanes.
Make sure job descriptions are up to date and that everybody understands the executive’s job description.
If you’re replacing an incumbent, do some work to understand what happened the first time around so that you don’t repeat any previous mistakes.
- Did you hire somebody who just wasn't a good fit, or had different long-term plans?
- Was the compensation not accurate?
- Was the role poorly defined?
- Was there internal team conflict?
Doing a post-mortem can give you a much better chance at hiring an all-star executive leader the second time around.
Related: Why you should be doing exit interviews.
Identify Your Immediate Leadership Needs
I have a client right now that's looking to bring on a sales leader. The client likes their existing sales team, but it needs a lot of coaching. So it’s a priority to make sure that we find a sales leader who likes coaching and developing people — as opposed to someone who takes a scorched earth philosophy and fires everybody and brings in new team members.
In another case, you might have an organization that’s a mess and you need to clean house. So you need to bring in an executive that's comfortable making tough decisions, who can quickly analyze and assess, and who has demonstrated expertise rebuilding.
Whatever your immediate situation is, it’s important to inventory the necessary leadership and supervisory skills that your executive will need to bring to the table. Be strategic about the qualities that you're looking for and how that works for your overall strategy and goals.
Identify Your Long Term Needs
Besides your immediate needs, you’ll need to hire an executive who can lead you into the future as well. Ask yourself, what are the key accomplishments that this person needs to achieve in the next two years?
Think about the key drivers in your business that this person will have an impact on. How will you make sure they have the skills or experiences to be able to do those things?
These considerations go far beyond a job description. You’re looking at the long-term goals and challenges to identify the leadership qualities you need.
Often, I will put together kind of a rubric around eight to ten qualities — the must-have ideal qualities this position requires most.
Recruit for the Executive Position
Not every recruiter posts executive positions on job boards, but I'm a big fan of doing a job post for everything. Here’s why.
There are a lot of executives out there who are actively looking for their next position, but most executive jobs aren't posted. So if you post your executive job opening, you're one of only a handful of positions that those executives will see. That means you’re more likely to get a lot of amazing candidates who will apply, simply because there are fewer openings to apply to.
At the same time, you should be intentional about pursuing passive candidates, especially if you are extremely targeted. For example, if you’re hiring for a sales leader and they need to have a book of business in a certain area, then you will probably want to target specific people. You can do that by using a headhunter.
I also recommend targeting people via LinkedIn or by circulating your needs through your network.
Assessing Executive Candidates
Interviewing and assessing executive candidates is different from other positions. Because the position is so critical to your organization, you need to be really thorough. Plan to have multiple rounds of in-person interviews.
Have the executive candidates meet with different leadership team members. I recommend asking them to lead a presentation on a strategic issue that you assign.
Reference checks should be more thorough as well. Talk to multiple people who used to work for the candidate.
Invest in a personality profile like Caliper or the Kolbe A Index, or one of the other ones out there that assess motivation, work style, intelligence, and other leadership aspects. These assessments provide great insights into the candidates’ leadership styles, and they’re well worth the investment.
The assessment process can take longer, because there are several more layers to an executive hire. This is exactly where you want to hire slow and fire fast, because the impact of an executive role is so high. You need great confidence that this person will be a great fit.
And because there are a lot more candidates out there than jobs, you won’t have executives that fall out of the process very easily. So you have more time to do a more thorough process.
Related: How to Find the Right Person When You Need to Hire Fast
Executive Search Options
While you can conduct an executive search yourself, it’s often best to hire an executive search firm. These companies conduct executive searches day in and day out, so hiring a retained search firm is a great investment. They will often have a strong network of existing contacts or they will do a lot of research and due diligence in networking to find the right candidates.
For high-end executive search services, you can expect to pay 30 to 40 percent of the first year’s salary. So if that's a $200,000 position, that could be an $80,000 search fee. Not every company can afford that kind of investment.
Amy Cell Talent provides executive recruiting services at a more affordable rate. We provide the guidance and administration your company needs to recruit an incredible pool of candidates. We offer four levels of search packages based on your budgetary needs and level of logistic support.
So we've successfully conducted over 100 C-level searches, including CEO searches, VPs, and other C-level executives. We pride ourselves on finding great candidates that fit your culture and values.
Ready to start your executive search? Talk with an advisor today!
