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Leadership team changes occur surprisingly often in most corporations. We recently brought on several recent leaders to key leadership roles, including our revenue, finance, technology, and product team leaders.
Hiring a talented worker to lead a team is a pivotal moment in a company’s history and trajectory. It’s an necessary step that needs to be done right. As a leader, you wish to hire someone who is deeply connected to your mission and vision and aligns with your organization’s values. Misalignment of those key elements can damage company culture and retention in ways in which are hard to reverse.
We adopt a recruiting process that helps us find, vet and select the right leaders for BambooHR: at all times come back to the mission, take your time with the process and leverage the power of references. At the end of this process, I feel a true understanding of who our candidates are, what strengths they’ll bring to the role and how I will help them succeed. I really enjoy interviewing and hiring leaders.
Whether you would like to hire talent now or want to gather insights for the future, it’s necessary to be prepared for a key leadership gap. Here are three key concepts from our hiring framework that may make it easier to find your next leader.
Tell us about your mission
I start every executive interview by discussing our company’s mission, vision, and values. This is a great initial sorting mechanism because if they signal a lack of interest, I know instantly that they are not a good fit for our organization. The right candidate will respond to who we are and want to be a a part of it.
Leaders act as emissaries of your mission to their teams. As a company grows, the CEO’s ability to bring everyone together to share experiences decreases. A small startup can have a culture based on the energy of face-to-face interaction, but you just can’t do that with tons of or hundreds of individuals.
For higher or worse, the worker experience will inevitably grow to be department-specific, driven by leaders inside each group. If those leaders don’t carry the culture and mission, your people’s experience can suffer as a result.
While a leader with a B-minus could also be ok to pass, he or she is not ok to advance. Businesses cannot advance with mediocre management. Only rising candidates who reveal interest and energy in your mission, vision, and values will provide you with opportunities to raise the bar.
Make a good decision, not a quick decision
Business leaders often face circumstances in which they need to act quickly. For example, if there are known issues with your products or challenges in your sales funnel, you would like to address those issues immediately.
But hiring the right executive is definitely not a “quick fix” situation. I rely on the “slow to fast” approach to finding the right leaders. The cost of waiting for the right person is much lower than hiring the unsuitable person.
It’s at all times tempting to hire the first one who makes a good impression, especially when you’re filling a key, influential position. But consciously pacing your process gives you time to really get to know people and find someone who will supercharge their teams.
The slow approach doesn’t at all times work for everyone, and sometimes a candidate tells me they’re considering other offers. I at all times suggest they take this feature if their time requires it, because I’m not willing to short-circuit our process.
It’s price taking the time to get to know candidates and find the leaders your organization needs. You can’t do that in a compressed timeline and it’s not price jeopardizing your culture.
Use the power of references
Finding a leader normally starts the same way: You start with a list of high-caliber candidates. But the way you vet those candidates and understand how they work can make all the difference in making offers.
In my experience, personal contact with references is a miracle.
The candidate will normally provide references, but this step is so necessary that it’s best to also check for additional references and backchannel connections. Your team members probably know a few people, and finding a few more in the industry is normally easy.
Then, call your contacts yourself and ask meaningful questions. One of the best questions I ask is, “How can I help this candidate be the best they can be and have a huge impact here?” That changes the conversation to how I will help them, not disqualify them. You’ll learn most of what you would like to know from their answers. What I actually need to understand is how they present themselves as leaders, what to expect from them, how they operate, and how they perform under pressure or when things go unsuitable.
If I’m hiring for a high-profile position and outsource those interviews, I’m missing a huge opportunity to gain insight into the person. As the person responsible for the decision, I won’t make an offer to someone without spending hours on personal references.
Few things are as necessary to the management team as ensuring that employees have a positive experience and the opportunity to bring their best selves to work every day. As corporations grow, organizational leaders grow to be responsible for maintaining this positive environment.
Hiring the best candidates for leadership positions is critical to your success. By establishing the values of your mission from the outset, digging deep to understand your candidates, and taking the time needed to make the right decision, you possibly can make sure that you hire the right leaders who will speed up your mission and success.