How Do the Top Executive Search Firms Find Candidates?
When it comes to employment, most eyes remain fixed on the labor shortage that’s impacting businesses of all stripes. Many of these jobs are held by unskilled labor, but not all of them, but most businesses aren’t in desperate search of executives.
That can give a false impression that those jobs don’t go unfilled. Worse, many businesses don’t plan around what they’ll do if a key executive leaves.
When faced with the expected departure of an executive, many businesses turn to top executive search firms for potential replacements. You might wonder how those firms find candidates.
Keep reading for a peek at the process.
Specialization
When looking at companies that help you with an executive job search, you quickly discover that many of them specialize. They often work in a fairly narrow range of industries.
For example, a headhunter from one company might focus their efforts on IT. Another company may focus on healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
That specialization lets a company build a working knowledge of the comparatively small number of executives you find in any given industry. That also lets them bill themselves as the best executive search firm for X, Y, or Z industry.
To a lesser extent, a company may specialize in a particular locale or region, where relationships or social expectations may play a more important role.
How Do Executive Search Firms Work?
In most cases, a business hires the search firm to find a candidate for the position. The business, rather than the executive, is the client.
Position Focus
The search typically begins with a deep dive into the needs of the position in that specific company. A senior VP position in one company will not necessarily sync up nicely in terms of responsibilities in another. The search firm assembles a very clear picture of what the company needs.
Candidate Matching
The company will then use a combination of insider knowledge, networks, and research to find candidates with the right experience and skills for that specific role.
Approach
After identifying good candidates, the search firm will approach the best candidate with a job offer. In many cases, the offer goes out to people who were not actively seeking other employment.
Benefits of Executive Search Firms
There are a couple of key benefits of using search firms. The big one is that you typically see candidates with excellent matching in terms of experience and skills. The other main benefit is that you get those candidates without soaking up valuable internal resources for the duration of the process.
Top Executive Search Firms and You
Top executive search firms can play a crucial role in filling a critical gap in your leadership. They make a point of understanding your needs. Then, they go out and do all the legwork of finding you superior matches for the position.
That leaves the rest of your executive team free to pick up the slack without burdening them with the candidate search.
Looking for more hiring tips? Check out the posts in our Business section.
