Reasons to Hire an Executive Search Firm
Executive search differs from the recruitment of more junior talent. When recruiting for junior roles, organizations usually work on a contingency basis to find suitable candidates.
While contingency recruitment is effective for filling many roles in a company, your senior leadership team requires the best people, and the best people are rarely looking for a job. This is why Executive Search exists.
Reason 1: The significance of the role
Two influencing factors determine the significance of making the right hire and the capacity to adhere to company requirements.
- The significance of the position is established by the difference a better hire will make.
- The aptitude for filling the position is correctly determined by experience in that role.
It makes more sense to hire an executive recruiting firm if the position is crucial to the company’s operations and if the organization has little experience making similar hires. On the other hand, if the role is not critical to the company’s operations and the company has repeatedly made the same hire, it would be appropriate to use internal resources to make the hire.
Reason 2: The challenge of finding great candidates
If you have a critical search in which you are looking for an executive role, a qualified executive search firm can help make the impossible seem possible. Solid search firms will deliver a slate of candidates with the right knowledge, skills, and experience. However, the best search firms will also advise on cultural fit, ambition, and emotional intelligence to help their clients meet their most specialized leadership needs.
Executives are not the types of candidates that spend their time sifting through job boards or websites for open positions. More often than not, finding the right candidate for an executive position requires having the right network of qualified connections to attract top performers to the organization. Executive search firms focus on those specific areas, devoting time and resources to networking and marketing to build an extensive database of highly qualified executive candidates.
Reason 3: The importance of a trusted and effective search process
Due to the sensitive nature of executive positions and their impact on the organization, high-level hires frequently require a high level of confidentiality. There are several scenarios where you need a third party to facilitate an executive search:
- A company makes a strategic decision that it does not want competitors, suppliers, or partners to know about (e.g., entering a new territory, business, or vertically integrating).
- A company wants to make major changes in roles and manage communication with current employees.
- A company is replacing an underperforming executive without one‘s knowledge.
The executive recruiter can operate under its own name and mask the identity of the hiring company until absolutely necessary.
