Introduction
The predominance of employer branding, social media hiring and automation within recruiting circles are well-established tools in the hunt for leadership-ready talent. But does merely using these methods ensure hiring success, and do the new, post-pandemic recruitment strategies formulated in the wake of COVID-19 and the great resignation actually work in attracting leadership candidates?
Or, should recruitment consultants be focused more on creating leadership-specific cultures of hiring? Should recruiters be utilizing certain approaches and adapting recruitment behaviors that engage leaders and senior staff, to better tap into the unique DNA of what makes a good leader for your company?
Here are the top 5 ways to source senior talent for your enterprise:
Be purpose-led, and recruit by leveraging your brand values.
The idea of recruitment strategy being “purpose-led” is nothing new. As Korn Ferry notes “Socially conscious organizations…are on the rise...driven by employees who attach more emphasis to their company’s purpose, social commitment, and sustainability efforts”.
However, in our post-pandemic new normal “purpose” has come to the fore as one of, if not the, most important factor in hiring senior talent and enterprise leaders. Purpose is the glue that holds a working culture together, and an increasingly important facet in business decision making - business leaders across multiple sectors are now investing in, pivoting businesses too, and hiring exclusively based on enterprise-wide purpose-led actions.
When hiring senior leaders and managers within your company it's wise to remember that “purpose” serves a dual role: it’s both something a senior hire will embody (they will literally be the walking, talking manifestation of your business's purpose), and it’s an attractive feature of a working environment (people want to work for companies that are purpose-led).
In fact, as PwC notes in their study Putting Purpose to Work: A study of purpose in the workplace, “Employees see purpose as a way to bring meaning to their work and understand the contributions they are making to the company, as well as society…employees need to find this meaning in their daily work in order to be fully engaged”.
Hyper-personalize your application process.
Successful modern recruitment hinges as much on the behaviors and strategies of the recruiter themselves, as much as an HR team working to wider industry trends or hitting KPIs.
One of the most effective methods of hiring any staff, not just senior leaders, is through personalisation of recruitment services - that comes directly from the recruitment team and recruiting leadership.
There are many traditional iterations of “personalized” recruitment planning and strategy, including:
Allowing senior candidates to create their own job titles and responsibilities: at certain senior levels, giving the candidate a chance to impress their own skill set, vision and experience on a role engages them better, and makes use of their skill more effectively. Plus, by opening up the role to personalization of job title, you can attract more senior talent.
Candidates can choose their recruiter: in some agencies or HR teams recruitment is improved by allowing the candidate to meet and engage with the full team of recruiters, who then chooses who best represents their needs.
Candidates choose their own time scales for getting hired: simply put, rather than hire a candidate by a certain date, the candidate is empowered to join a new team at a reasonable date of their choosing.
Candidates determine their own remote/hybrid/in office set-up: again, this simply allows candidates to prioritize their working arrangement to suit their needs.
The above points put the onus on your senior hire to fit themselves into the leadership matrix of your company. While many of the above points won’t apply to every company, they are proven to engage senior candidates and give them a platform on which they can impart immediate leadership plans within your company.
But the most effective way to hyper-personalize recruitment is to simply humanize and personalize the job role to a specific person, utilizing head hunting tactics to create bespoke job offers and job descriptions that target and attract specific leadership talent.
Understand your candidate’s priorities.
Leadership recruitment and retention strategies need to have career development hard-coded into the very DNA of the role on offer. Although career development, in general, is a highly regarded recruitment priority for candidates, for senior staff especially there needs to be a clear career route planned.
Our advice is to make sure every touch point within your recruitment funnel - from the job description to screening, to interview and beyond - highlights and elevates career growth and leadership potential. Your people want to see their labor rewarded, and they want you, the employer, to embody long term, secure opportunity.
Build an ideal candidate profile…then ask a candidate to review it.
Most recruiters will build what they can a candidate profile - the ideal candidate “John Doe” who embodies the right balance of credentials, qualifications and personality traits that should make for the perfect hire.
Senior leaders in your industry more than likely already understand what makes a good leader. Now, as subjective as some leadership traits are, and while different industries require different sorts of leaders, having a senior candidate peer-review your ideal candidate profile would give them an objective view on what you need for the role, while simultaneously asking them to soft-sell their own credentials and what they see as vital leadership traits.
This exercise doubles as a quick personality test - does your candidate see themselves as a similar, or better, version of your ideal candidate, and if so, why? This self-analysis of skills, and their view of what skills will be needed to be a success in the role, will give you plenty of data to sift through in your quest to find the right person.
Utilize your leadership network.
Finally, the power of employer brand advocacy within leadership networks cannot be overstated.
Let’s revisit the concept of your leadership DNA again - your leadership network comprises your existing senior management team, your ex-management team, affiliated leadership figures in your customer or service user base and senior leaders in your wider brand “audience”. Lastly, it also contains the other leaders and senior members of staff in your industry who are working for other companies.
Which person or group of people in the above list already contain the leadership and business DNA required to be a success at your company? Reaching out into your network not only raises the chances of finding incredible senior talent, but it also shows your existing leaders and their peers outside of your company that you value their skills and input.
This sort of trust and leadership goodwill is essential in breaking down barriers for entry for new senior staff, and coupled with a relevant and targeted referral system can create an incredibly effective talent stream of new, senior staff into your company.
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References:
https://www.uncubedstudios.com/reel-talk-blog/13-great-examples-of-employer-branding
https://ideal.com/3-ways-recruitment-automation-will-change-recruiting-forever/
https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/purpose-driven-talent
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/purpose-workplace-study.html
https://www.hospitalrecruiting.com/blog/7967/career-development-recruit-retain-top-talent/
https://hrtrendinstitute.com/2019/06/17/personalisation-and-customisation-in-recruitment/