HIRING FOR A LEADERSHIP ROLE?

Why is hiring for a leadership role any different from hiring general employees?

The impact of bringing someone into a leadership role has a much higher impact on the rest of the executive team, maintaining the balance while adding skills and experience. The impact on the employees, and the company. Getting this right is difficult, it must be right, as mistakes can have a huge cost if you get it wrong. So, take your time, ensure everyone is happy with the person you are bringing in, happy with the process and those that will be involved.

In an ideal world we look for people with the right set of skills and experience, people that are going to have a positive impact, but their chemistry and behaviour must be right as well.  That’s why we take potential candidates on a journey, get to understand the back story, their motivations. We need a good brief to understand the core skills and experience you are looking for, the must haves and the nice to haves. A clear understanding of the type of behaviour you are looking for in this person, it’s no-good hiring a ‘shrinking violet’ if you’re looking for an extrovert, someone who will lift the tone and the culture.

Impact on the leadership team

With an existing team it’s about getting the balance right, the chemistry, you don’t need someone who will upset the balance of power, but someone who will add to what is already established.  The danger is always bias, hiring someone ‘like ourselves’.  If it’s a ‘hat’ or a role that someone else has been looking after, and you now need someone to take ownership fulltime of that hat, that is one scenario, or it may be replacing someone who is leaving or has left.  With leadership roles in a start-up, scaleup or even an established company, roles change over time, what you needed two years ago will be different from what is required today.  So, revisit exactly what is required from the new hire, skills, experience and behaviour as well as job function.

Impact on the culture

Bringing someone new into the team can have a huge impact on the general company culture, in both a negative and a positive way, no one wants to ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’ so, you need to decide and assess the impact of each potential candidate, no one wants a ‘mis or bad hire’.  Most of the time, this will be an exercise that needs to be conducted with a level of discretion as it can often be a sensitive hire, and no one needs to know what is happening until they need to know.

Putting the rigor in on potential candidates is a must, that’s why it’s worth engaging with an ‘executive search firm’.  It doesn’t have to be one of the big global firms, you can use a firm that works with the people you are looking for on a regular basis. Most ‘executive search firms’ specialize in some shape or form, William Howard Associates Ltd for instance specialize in back filling CXO roles within SaaS startups and scaleups. Others will deal with enterprise companies, potentially within specific vertical or technologies.

Rigor and process

Not many companies have the resources to do their own search, filtering, and screen lots of people, it’s beyond just posting an advert on LinkedIn that will only get you access to the general 16% - 20% of the available market. Even large enterprise clients cannot do this and use an external partner, an ‘executive search firm’. You can’t limit yourself by just looking across everyone’s ‘friends & family’ or general network, you need to deep dive and look at all the passive candidates as well as those on databases or networks.

Regardless of who you engage with or which external partner you engage with to help find your ideal person there are certain things you need from the ‘executive search firm’ you work with.

Ideally, they should…

·         Have a secure private candidate portal, that is available to all those that need access to candidates 24/7. It prevents CV’s flying backwards and forward across everyone’s Inbox’s. It allows all those involved to compare the shortlisted candidates and score them against each other.

·         Executive search firms typically work on a retained basis, basically you pay a third of the fee to engage them, a third on shortlist and the final third on hire. Typically, they don’t cost more than a contingency process, but you get their dedicated resources (full attention) and they will follow it through to full engagement, until you find a suitable candidate you are happy with and can hire.

·         They need a clear brief on the person that you are looking for (skills and experience), including job description as well as the behaviour you are looking for.

·         Ability to reach those currently needing a new role, as well as those that are open and will consider something that fits (passive candidates) – ideally a firm who has access to the whole of market reach.

·         Ability to ask standard questions of all candidates and get written responses on these. Plus, a short candidate video (60-90 seconds) so you get to see them before engaging and wasting time on those that don’t fit the brief.

·         Ideally a behavioral assessment on each candidate to ensure the behavioural fit and match to what you are looking for.

·         Ability to grade and benchmark candidates and share notes with the others that are involved in the process.

·         Ability to book initial interview calls and manage the process through to final hire & outcome.

When you are hiring for a leadership role, you must have a clear process and get it agreed up front, as well as timescale. Agree who will be involved in the process and ensure their availability (meeting & holidays) to ensure full engagement when its needed to ensure a smooth continuous process.  You need an executive search firm, a partner that will handhold you through the process and keep everything on track, ideally have a single point of contact for them and you.  No one wants to send the wrong or confusing signals to the candidates, or the people involved in the hiring process.

Using an executive search firm to search, find and identify people is only part of the process. The second part is engaging with the candidates, shortlist the shortlist and decide who you want to engage with. You may have five people in the initial short list but only three look right.

Start with an initial call and have a chat.

But starting with a shortlist of suitable people is the main hurdle, people with the right skills, experience, and behaviour. No one has the time to waste searching and filtering, looking at hundreds if not thousands of CV’s. That is the job your ‘Retained Search Firm’ will do for you to find your shortlist of suitable candidates, saving you and your team a huge amount of time and money allowing you to concentrate interviewing suitable candidates and finding one that you can TRUST.

                About the Author

Howard Longstaff has over 20 years of experience delivering people within the talent acquisition arena. Having worked extensively across the UK, Europe, USA, and Canada.

Over the years he has specialised in two fundamental areas, the first area he has a real passion for is ‘building Sales Teams’.  The second area he loves getting involved in, is the leadership team, the C-Suite, helping to get the balance right, covering the gaps in knowledge, and back filling these roles as companies grow.

‘Getting it right first time’ is never easy, Howard is one of the few, executive search consultants who is willing to guarantee the work he does, offering a 12 months free replacement.

‘No one is perfect, but a team can be’, working with SaaS startups, SEM’s and Mid-Market clients who are scaling up. In most cases we work in either an exclusive or retained basis and are typically engaged for a 3–5-year period, sometimes much longer.

Howard is someone that uses technology to enhance the hiring process, to save time, money and effort. Taking the pain out of the process, we operate a ‘Private Client Video Portal’ keeping everything together & secure, candidate videos, as well as the psychometric behavioural assessments on each candidate and executive profiles. He has repeatedly built teams across three continents, has a good breadth of knowledge across the talent acquisition arena.

howard@william-howard.com  +44 (0) 7710 907 988