12 Reasons Why Companies Hire Executive Search Firms
Employers typically use an executive search firm when a top job opening is important enough, senior enough and when discretion is at a premium. These three factors warrant the investment of bringing in a search firm. And an investment it is. Retaining a recruiting firm will likely cost a minimum of $75,000, but that figure can rise dramatically with the seniority and pay level of the position. Once you start recruiting executives for your C-suite that cost can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Usually, the search firm will charge one third of the position’s compensation package. But everything is negotiable, especially if you’re asking the recruiter to search for multiple professionals simultaneously. If the cost of not filling the role with just the right candidate is significantly higher than the cost of the search, then you might be ready to consider investing in the services of an executive search firm like Kaye/Bassman’s Academic Medicine Recruiting Practice.
12 Ways to Recruit Top Performers
Recruiting top performers is an exacting science – it is labor intensive, complex, and requires a rare set of people skills and business expertise. This might be why tens of thousands of recruiters roam the earth – and why most of them are in hot demand today.
Here are a dozen reasons why you need to consider bringing in an executive recruiter — Kaye/Bassman International Corp. — for your next important hiring mandate.
1) Good is just not good enough. You require a senior executive candidate who is truly great.
If hiring top performing talent is important to your company, a search firm can help you do the rigorous work required to nab game-changing hires.
2) The search is incredibly important at the senior executive level.
Searches for C-level positions that report into the chief executive officer are just too important not to go out to an executive search firm. Executives within the C-suite often make or break a company.
3) You are seeking a candidate with a rare mix of skills.
If you have an important search in which you are seeking the proverbial needle in the haystack, a search firm can help you get it done. The better recruiting firms will deliver a slate of candidates with the right mix of knowledge, skills and abilities. But the very best ones will also advise on things like culture fit, ambition and emotional intelligence. Today, these sorts of things matter more than hard skill sets ever did.
4) You have a search for a senior executive position that you just created.
When an executive search falls outside your area of expertise, a recruiting firm can plug the knowledge gap with their domain know-how. This might be why specialist recruiters have grown in importance and prestige – and why these are some of the most sought after talent hounds in the field today.
5) You have to replace an under-performing executive while he is still in the role.
For companies that need to line up a replacement while a senior executive remains in the role, search firms offer a much-needed veil of secrecy.
6) You have to recruit from a target company with which your company has good relationships.
If you need to recruit top executive talent from partner companies with which your organization does business, or even from direct rivals which is often the case, the confidentiality that search firms offer helps avoid ruffling feathers.
7) Your senior leadership team lacks diversity.
Because not all backgrounds of candidates are well-represented at the senior executive levels, search firms can help level the playing field by conducting original research to ensure equal opportunity for all candidates.
8) You lack internal bench strength and have few successors to your senior executives.
If you sense a key executive might be on the verge of leaving or that you could benefit from top-grading, a succession bench might help you tee up executive hires in advance of need. Three quarters of HR leaders in a recent poll identified leadership succession as their primary internal challenge. And it is at the very top of companies where succession planning can, and often does, go lacking.
9) You do not have the time or the resources to take on an executive search.
If you already have too much to do and too little time, taking on an important executive level search can quickly become its own full time job. That is what search firms do, full time, day in and day out, all year long.
10) You have tapped out your personal and company networks for candidate referrals.
If you have exhausted your network of connections for possible referrals, it is time to access another network. Executive search consultants are among the most well networked people in the business.
11) You have an important executive search that is taking too long.
Whenever a search takes too long, it is time to call in the reinforcements to speed time-to-hire for challenging searches and those with compressed timelines.
12) You want to give your company a strategic advantage through better hires.
Executive search firms are in the business of delivering top performers – the 20 percent that are so effective and are responsible for 80 percent of the results. Any time you have a senior executive search, it is an opportunity to trade up to a top performer and to drive results.
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Source: Hunt Scanlon Media