Ultimate Guide For Making Your First Executive Hire

Executive recruitment is a high-stakes operation - but the right hire can lift a company into new dimensions of success. It all comes down to how, where, and why you hire executive leaders, as much as whom you’re bringing into the fold.

The consultants who work in leadership recruitment have to be fully cognizant of the personalities and leadership types that suit and fit their specific industry, and they have to know which networks to dip into to find those characters.  

But to create a meaningful strategy of executive-level hiring, you need to know that your consultant team is using their outreach in the right way, and engaging with senior candidates effectively. 

Standard recruitment practice - that of mass outreach, job board postings, and sourcing from traditional talent pools - should only be one element of a multi-part recruitment strategy that puts more emphasis on leadership networks and referral candidates. 

Executive-level candidates are few and far between; are more often than not in work; their employers will fight tooth and nail to keep hold of them, and you have to use every tool in your recruiting toolbox to turn their head - after all, whatever package you’re offering has to be not only better than what they’re on but better than any counteroffer they may (and more than likely will) receive from their existing employer. 

This is when great executive recruiters have to leverage a package that goes beyond remuneration or a job title - they have to offer a fully candidate-aligned cultural and behavioral position in word and deed. They need to embody the candidate’s desires, passions, and purpose, and be a vehicle for their continued success. 

Executive recruiters also need to be patient: executive recruitment parallels that of succession planning recruitment - the process can take a lot longer than traditional recruitment. It takes negotiation and a lot of perseverance. However, the pay-offs can be extraordinary - with the right hire, the parent company can be transformed. 

This is the essence of executive recruitment - a focus on quality over quantity; of matching brand power with employer power; of engaging the right sort of leader with exactly the right balance of leadership styles and passions to make the most impact.

Get your recruitment team together

Executive recruitment needs a steady hand. The culture of executive hiring - of long-term charm offenses; steady and well-positioned network leads, high remuneration packages, multiple interviews, and a high-pressure hiring culture - requires recruitment consultants who are firmly embedded in that environment. More often than not, effective executive recruiters have worked in senior roles before, and understand that unique balance of expectation and opportunity.

What makes an executive?

According to “Your guide to hiring an executive”, a special edition guidance piece on LinkedIn:

“An executive provides strategic oversight, helps the company evolve, and motivates your workforce to achieve key objectives. Some executives oversee a particular division—such as marketing, finance, or technology—and focus their strategic efforts in that area. In many organizations, executive-level employees represent the company, meaning they need to earn trust not only internally, but also externally”.

Where do you find executive-level candidates?

This is where the power of your network works wonders. According to GatedTalent, “more senior roles (26% of them, according to our research) are filled by retained executive search consultants than by any other formal hiring process”.

The focus on quality candidates over quantity means the general rule of thumb is this: turning away from a recruitment-by-numbers approach, and headhunting senior talent where they reside - LinkedIn, social media, and through referral networks using specialist recruitment agencies or consultants. 

Involving executive candidates in leadership meetings

As you tread the recruitment boards engaging your shortlisted executive talent, you will approach a crossroads - when to involve other senior stakeholders in the process. We urge you to do this as early as possible. 

Empower your candidates by giving them the full overview of your company leadership and the executive-level team as soon as possible. Build rapport as quickly as possible, and allow your candidate to ask questions, learn more about business decision making, and ingratiate with the wider senior team. The sooner you do this, the better. 

What’s their leadership style?

Certain leaders will naturally be predisposed to lead teams in certain ways. The 5 main leadership styles - authoritarian leadership, participative leadership, delegation leadership, transactional leadership, and transformational leadership - are a good basis on which to assess your executive candidate’s leadership style and understand who will be the right sort of fit for your company and the wider industry. 

Remuneration 

Remuneration is the final piece of the puzzle. Executive salary negotiation is part and parcel of the role, but the trick to snaring any candidate, let alone a senior one, is understanding how your candidate's purpose aligns with the opportunity you’re getting them. 

Remuneration has to have meaning. It has to inspire confidence in the brand and it has to align with your executive candidate’s expectations.

If The Great Resignation has taught us anything, it’s that candidates are not afraid of pulling the trigger on unforgiving, poorly run, badly paid or offer increasingly poor work/life balances. This is mirrored at the senior level.   

Make sure that your remuneration package is fit for our disrupted new normal. Consider the demographic pressures on leaderships - most, if not all, are parenting age and have had to juggle running companies with homeschooling for example. Every single one has felt the pandemic pinch: reduced salaries, no bonuses, no promotions, squeezed expectations, lost teams, closed departments, furlough, and being forced from office. Just like everyone else. 

So focus on positives, and focus on what work means to senior leaders now. If your remuneration package doesn’t take stock of changing expectations in regards to remote work, paid leave, insurance, relevant company “perks”, and an overall appreciation of why we work and what we work for, you will find your executive candidate pool very, very small.