This is how companies should hire leaders
Published on Dec 4, 2017
"My job as a leader is to make sure that everybody in the company has great opportunities and they feel they are having meaningful impact to the good of society." -- Larry Page, Google. A most crucial, yet powerful saying that emphasises the very importance of good leadership in a company.
Leaders are always held in high esteem for their integrity, calibre and managerial skills. It is said a good leader does not boss but guides their colleagues to success. Every company strives to acquire and showcase a good leader to the world outside, as they are capable of attracting goodwill and other recognitions that might sustain business in the long-run. Leaders are the face of any company and hence, it is highly essential that a company makes the right choice in selecting its leader.
In this era of intense competition, recruiters are basically undergoing exclusive training sessions and comprehensive programs to learn the art and science of recruiting leaders. Major corporates are investing huge sums into such training programs just to get themselves suitable leaders that will up their success factor. However, despite such training sessions, recruiters fail to understand the concept and hence, become demotivated and consider moving into other domains of recruitment.
For a matter of fact, a recruiter must understand that hiring leaders is a totally different ball game. As mentioned earlier, it is a science as well as an art. Leadership hiring is a science because it involves various principles, rules and technologies such as mapping, analytics and other tools to attract best leadership candidates. It is an art because dealing with leaders involves patience, creative job descriptions, convincing and a lot of communication. Besides, it is more of art than science due to its very volatile and flexible nature. Hence, a recruiter must be very skilled, proficient in what they execute and also exhibit maturity to attract leadership candidates.
Here are some valuable tips that come straight from Han Digital leadership hiring experts:
Profile development
When a recruiter manages to find a suitable profile, the first thing they do is to call the desired candidate. A recruiter must know that leadership hiring does not end by making calls and setting up interviews, there is, in fact, more to it. Besides, a recruiter must know that leadership candidates aren’t probably interested in regular calls pertaining to job opportunities.
Therefore, by enhancing an existing recruitment style can help recruiters get leadership candidates attracted to an offer. A recruiter could provide such candidates with additional services such advanced resume writing, building of portfolio, enhancing LinkedIn profile and cover letters. This can help candidates to not only ace the interview but also present themselves in the best possible way.
A recruiter should understand that resume presentation or profile building for start-ups and corporates vary. For example, if preparing resume fit for a start-up setting, a recruiter should make it more flexible, bring down technical jargon and eliminate any information which is incomprehensible. Similarly, for a corporate, the resumes should sport a more informative and technical outlook.
Talent mapping tools:
Hiring leaders without talent mapping tools and analytics is seemingly impossible these days. The advent of technology has intensified competition to such an extent that talent mapping tools and analytics have become the need of every organisation. However, given the paucity of time, corporates aren’t in a position to employ such tools for hiring leaders. Therefore, they get these services outsourced from recruitment firms such as Han Digital.
The talent mapping tool at Han Digital lets internal recruiters to map skills, talent and relevant information across various domains. Likewise, it also increases the chances of our recruiters to find the best leadership candidates for a client.
Leadership assessment tests:
Once a profile of a leadership candidate is scanned, it is essential that the candidate goes through a unique set of tests that will help recruiters to further determine their candidature and appropriateness towards the job. Tests vary depending on the skills of the candidates and hence, should be altered as per the preferences laid.
The test should run along the lines of the questions that will be asked during an interview while it should simultaneously generate results based on a candidate’s written skills, communication skills, critical thinking and aptitude.
Change of style:
Leadership recruitment is a highly critical skill that only few recruiters master. This is because it requires sourcing expertise, story-telling skills, brand endorsement skills and conviction. Thus, one might notice that a recruiter who qualifies as a ‘leadership recruiter’ has at least 7-8 years of relevant experience in the industry.
For a novice, leadership recruitment can come as a surprise because of its comprehensive and volatile nature. For acing in this domain, a recruiter must:
· Have a good understanding of the industry
· Should have experience in handling mid-level positions
· A good network of professionals and;
· Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
Very few recruiters choose leadership hiring as an option to follow due to its comprehensive, time-consuming and tedious nature. Nonetheless, leadership hiring can be interesting and a learning experience to novice recruiters as most of the offers are shared over lunch or coffee.
Leadership hiring requires skills, accuracy and expertise in the subject without which recruitment is incomplete. Since, Han Digital has been into leadership hiring for the last 15 years, we decided to share our valuable tips and suggestions to hire such candidates. Our team at Han Digital is an expert in hiring leaders, including diversity leaders for the top 10 MNCs across India.
Han Digital has a set of recruiters devoted to hiring leaders. For more information on our leadership hiring practices, log on to https://www.handigital.com/