RSM Resources

In high-stakes hiring, an interviewer’s first face-to-face encounter with a candidate typically lasts only an hour or so. Yet that meeting can form the basis not only for filling a key position but also for determining the course of the company.

Assessing C-suite candidates is never easy,especially with so many possible intangibles. The process should involve much more than standard application materials and hour-long interviews. Ideally,face-to-face interviews serve as final confirmation of who among the strongest candidates is most likely to lead the company to success.

Whether conducted in-house or through an executive search firm, an effective recruitment process pre screens candidates before the first interview. It also recognizes that executives succeed in new positions based on three primary factors:

• Experience and goals. Do the candidate’s professional accomplishments and personal aspirations align with your company’s immediate needs and long-term objectives?
• Culture and style. Does the candidate’s personality and professional approach match your company’s expectations and standards?
• Assimilation. Will your company provide ongoing support to ensure that the transition to new leadership goes smoothly?

A once and future exec?
Any recruitment process is only as successful as the preparation and follow-up that support it.

"It starts with the job description — usually they’ve got at least that much nailed down," says one executive recruiter,outlining where and when clients usually hit potholes in the recruitment process. But even a job description can raise questions, especially if it’s been around awhile:

• Should the company hire a new executive who has the same responsibilities and serves the same functions as his or her predecessor?
• Does the existing job description accurately reflect what previous executives did in this position?
• Will the existing job description yield a new hire who can meet the current and future needs of the company?

Writing a job description is just one of several first steps in selecting candidates for C-level positions. Other considerations include the following:

• Align job description with strategic plan. Your recruitment process should begin not only with a job description, but with your company’s strategic plan. Assess past executives’ strengths and weaknesses, define your ideal new hire based on the company’s objectives, and adjust your job descriptions and qualifications accordingly.
• Insider versus outsider? Once you have a job description that aligns with your company’s direction, start identifying a candidate pool. Decide whether to recruit industry insiders, outsiders or both. Insiders are generally easier to identify and recruit, can provide a sense of stability and normalcy, and may offer a depth of knowledge and competitive insight that candidates from outside the industry lack. On the flip side, outsiders often bring a fresh perspective as well as new and creative solutions to age-old problems. Determining which is best depends on the state of your company and anticipated challenges. Pulling from inside and outside the industry can give you the broadest possible pool of qualified candidates.
• First find, then filter. Once you’ve identified a strong pool of candidates, narrow that pool to the very best who meet your needs, whatever their background. Establish a screening process that may include preliminary calls to gauge interest, reviews of application materials, reference and background checks, phone interviews, and any required assessments, profiles or testing. And remember: Your company’s goals aren’t the only goals that matter. Look for patterns of behavior and indicators of candidates’ plans for the future. Are they change agents or long-term leaders? Are they looking for their next professional challenge or toward retirement? What will it take to hire them, and what will it take to keep them?

Substance with style
If the early stages of the recruitment process go well, you’ll have several qualified, high-performing candidates.Experience isn’t everything, however — a leader’s style has to fit with your corporate culture.

Clarifying culture. Corporate culture, of course, is one of those"touchy-feely" aspects of business that can be difficult to define and measure. Ask yourself a few questions about your company:

• How is success defined? How is performance measured — both at the C-level and in other positions?
• Is the workplace family-friendly and flexible? Cutthroat and competitive? How do people view your work environment?
• Who are your top performers? What sorts of people are they, and what makes them successful?
• Who in the organization is under performing? Where and why do they fall short?

The answers will help you define the culture of your company. Assessing how the candidates might adapt to your culture can be done in numerous ways — through a Chronological In-Depth Structured (CIDS) interview, for example, or one of many standardized assessments available to recruiters. It may even benefit the company to administer an assessment to high-achieving current employees to create a profile for prospective hires who are likely to succeed.

Growing your own. Using your high-achieving employees as a yardstick by which new leaders are measured might lead you to conclude that homegrown talent would yield the best executives. Indeed, some top companies subscribe to this philosophy. It makes sense: Retention and promotion are typically less costly and require fewer cultural adjustments than recruiting new talent. Plus,promoting from within maintains the company’s knowledge base and can boost morale.

On the other hand, homegrown talent can be trouble when it comes to making tough decisions.

"Someone from the outside won’t have emotional attachments to the organization and will be able to make some tough personnel decisions and changes to a company’s product or service line,"says Jay Conger, senior research scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California,in an article for HR Magazine. "But they also won’t know where the real information and talent resides in the organization. And they will have to adapt to the corporate culture, and that takes time."

Assimilation is key
The recruitment of executives should not end with the selection process. Its success hinges on effectively integrating new hires into your organization and retaining them for the long haul.

Typically, lower-level employees are required to attend some form of new-employee orientation when they join a company. Not necessarily so for a new executive. According to executive coach William G.Bliss, new C-level hires are often expected to make an impact with little or no time to acclimate.

The results can be disastrous, both for the executive and the company. In a white paper for the Society for Human Resource Management, Bliss writes:

"Research suggests that between 50 percent and 60 percent of executives fail to achieve desired results within the first12 to 18 months of their new assignment (Ciampa and Watkins, 1999, and Smart,1999). [A] newly hired executive with a $200,000 base salary who is not successful will cost the company over $1 million in replacement costs."

Bliss outlines steps for successful executive assimilation, which entail the newly hired executive undertaking many of the same steps critical to a successful search: learning the history of the position, the organization’s culture, the company’s goals and expectations, and so on. The result? A clear picture of what success looks like for the new executive and the company.

The newly hired executive isn’t the only one experiencing change. Direct reports and even entry-level employees may have concerns or issues resulting from a change in leadership. The bottom line, according to many executive recruiters, is to establish a single point of contact (generally in the human resources department), an open-door policy, and ongoing relationships with both the new executive and veteran employees. Change isn’t easy, but with continual reassessment and readjustment, you can manageleadership transitions to ensure a successful recruitment process.