Of all the steps your organization takes when hiring a C-suite executive, ensuring that the person it extends a job offer to is a good fit is most critical. Your company stands to lose tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention weeks or months of time, by not doing its due diligence when hiring a chief executive officer or other C-suite executive position.
How to Hire C Suite Executives 101: Start with Clear Expectations
Before you place an employment ad or notify your network that your company is looking for a new C-suite executive, human resources, department managers, and other C-suite executives should get together to define expectations for the position. Knowing the type of person your business needs, along with specific qualifications, will make the steps that come next go more smoothly. Don’t be afraid to include the values your organization prefers the new hire to have.
Know that Your Company’s Reputation Speaks for Itself
Every company, no matter how small, should have a clear sense of its mission and values. This is especially true in the life sciences industry, because the decisions that organizations make affect people’s health and quality of life. Keep in mind that applicants want to see demonstrated proof that your company acts on the mission and values it professes.
People notice when C-suite executive positions have a high turnover rate. Without inside knowledge about why executives are leaving their positions, they come to their own conclusions. The hiring committee to find the next C-suite executive position should understand that things look different to people outside the company, even if it can justify the turnover rate for certain executive positions.
Who Should Be Involved in the Hiring Process?
Involving several people who have different levels of responsibility can be an asset to the search if the group does not get so large that communication is no longer effective. If the person currently holding a C-suite executive position is retiring or leaving the company on good terms, their feedback may be the most valuable of all.
Not everyone on the hiring committee must remain involved with candidate screening, interviews, and employment offers. Determining who to involve at what stage should occur before the company officially announces the open position. Regardless of their position or how involved they will be in the process, each person should come prepared to ask questions and offer valuable insight, such as:
- The company is currently doing well.
- The company’s greatest concerns and challenges.
- Vision and goals for the future of the organization.
- How the new hire can help fulfill goals and visions, contribute to the company’s ongoing success, and help it overcome its current obstacles.
Besides clarifying the expectations of people applying for the executive position, going through these questions ahead of time allows the interview team to present a united front.
Create a Compelling and Professional Job Description
No matter how talented someone is or how much relevant experience they have, they are not going to apply for a poorly defined job that requires executive-level responsibilities. Below are several steps you can take to create a job description to attract top talent to your organization.
- Stick to job titles that candidates will recognize, such as Chief Marketing Officer or Chief Information Officer.
- Do not use abbreviations and acronyms that only people who already work for your company would know. Some other things to avoid include clichés, slang, overtly legal vocabulary, buzzwords, and jargon.
- Have someone who did not write the job posting proofread it for grammatical errors and typos.
- Check the job posting for unintentional bias, such as chairman or using the pronoun he when you are referring to all people.
- Sell your company’s culture and benefits to candidates the same way they sell their experiences and personality traits to you.
- Since more people access information on mobile devices than desktop ones, make sure the job posting is accessible to both categories of job seekers.
The good news about job postings is that you can tweak them if you end up getting disappointing results. However, that can also involve wasting time and money because it requires you to go back to the beginning of how to hire C suite executives.
Access Your Professional Network to Find High-Quality Candidates
People you went to school with, worked with in the past, and who are part of the same networking groups can all help you find your next C-suite executive. Be sure to use as many avenues as possible to get the word out that your company needs to fill a top-level position. Asking board members for recommendations and promoting from within are also ideal ways to find the next C-suite executive.
Interview Well and Often
Filling such a high-level position requires multiple first-round interviews to acquire a short list of probable candidates, along with several additional rounds of interviews with the people on that list. Asking the right questions at every interview is critical to hiring the best C-suite executive.
Ideally, every interview should include several behavioral questions that allow the job candidate to describe how they would act in certain scenarios based on past work experiences. The questions should be probing to give you a glimpse at how each candidate acts under pressure. Behavioral interview questions also allow you to see what you could expect from each candidate, since past performance is the greatest predictor of future performance.
Multiple assessments should be part of the interview process, as should determining a candidate’s emotional intelligence. The hiring team’s observations and the results of testing should give you a better idea of the maturity, self-awareness, social skills, and communication skills of each person the company is considering hiring.
Need Help with This Time-Consuming Process?
Hiring a C-suite executive can take months in the best of circumstances. You can save time and money by outsourcing some early steps to Cornerstone Search Group. We locate the best candidates and send them to your company for an interview. After that, we continue to work with you by vetting qualified candidates and supporting your organization through the job offer and onboarding process.
