C-level recruitment comes with its own challenges. Oftentimes, they require a special hiring strategy. It doesn’t work like your average hiring process. As you set out to find the best executives for your company, you need a proper strategy and very nuanced know how.
You can learn here for top senior recruitment challenges and strategies to overcome them.
Who are C-Level Employees?
The first most basic question is, who are C-level employees?
C-level or C-suite is a corporate world jargon used to describe the top most executives in a company. The name C-level itself comes from the common annotation of “chief” in all the senior management positions, viz.
- Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Chief Operating Officer (COO)
- Chief Information Officer (CIO), etc.
The C-suite is the highest level of employees within a company. These highly skilled employees are the decision-makers. Climbing the corporate ladder and reaching this level takes years of experience and a plethora of skills that are constantly upgraded to meet market trends.
Challenges in hiring actually good C-level employees:
As stated earlier, best C-level recruitment come with their own set of challenges. Some of these are unique to the position, while some are amplified due to the importance of a C-level position.
- Competition : Of course this is the first one on the list of our challenges. You need to understand that like you, other companies are looking for the best as well. A good CEO or COO or whoever you’re looking for will always have competing offers. Hence, it becomes important that you as a company, stay on top of market trends and offer competitive C-level packages.
It is also equally important to be aware of the shifting power dynamics in the current market. Baby boomers are retiring and millennials are taking over. This brings a huge shift in the workflow.
Also as a company, it is imperative you create a work environment and even a brand so that it reflects your values and mottos. Then it becomes about asking will this make a healthy environment to work in?
- Changing leadership: this is genuinely a big challenge. Power dynamics are ever changing in the corporate world, but in recent years it’s changing so much faster. Your company needs to be prepared for this change. Gone are the days when boomers held positions of power, more and more millennials are taking over and they have a completely different style of work ethic.
The C-suite is seeing an uptick in the number of millennials and they are all about a collaborative and open work environment which is completely different to the rigid dynamics established by predecessors. Millennials are less about holding the power and more about creating a fluid and transparent work flow.
What this means for your company is that if you are ready to bring in a younger C-level employee, you should also be open to changes in the relationship between bosses and employees and even with other companies.
- Non-alignment on objectives: You found an amazing C-level employee, they match all of your professional requirements BUT they wouldn’t be a good fit for the office culture, would you still hire them?
Here is where you sit down with your current top level management and come up with clear objectives and description for your new recruit. It is imperative you get on the same page about what is more important, what are you looking for from the candidates and weigh your options.
If there is no clear communication on the job description, then it may so happen that you may miss out on the perfect candidate for you.
- Not having a strong employer brand: we very briefly touched on this earlier, but having a brand image is vital to today’s world which is ruled by public opinion and clicks. Do you have social media pages? How well are you promoting your brand on these pages? How much importance are you giving to marketing? Do you have a team of social media managers?
All of these things will be very important when a candidate is doing their research on you. If you’re not visible and if you’re not interacting with your audience, it will reflect poorly on the company and may, very well, be the difference between you losing your perfect candidate to a competitor.
- Not ensuring a good experience for the candidate: This works somewhat in tandem with our previous point. You have not yet hired the candidate but they’re in the office for an interview, it is your job to make them comfortable. This is about your candidate as much as it is about you.
You may lag a little when it comes to offering a competitive salary but you have a great and healthy work environment which will work as a motivator for even the best C-level employee to come work for you.
- Diversity: It’s the 21st century, what are you doing to diversify your company and its management? Oftentimes, biases are held by the recruiters because they find it easier to connect with employees that have the same race, skin color or experiences as them. Please avoid this at all costs.
Does your company have quotas for genders? What steps do you take to be inclusive? Does your marketing strategy reflect these measures? Show that you and your company have taken time to train and educate themselves to be less biased.
Be conscious of your bias and learn to avoid them when you’re looking for a C-level employee. You never know what kind of experiences and benefits an employee might bring to the table.
What can a company do to overcome these challenges?
The simplest answer is, find Executive Recruiters. As we have said throughout this article, recruiting C-level employees is no cake walk. Having to prepare a recruiting strategy, putting out feelers for candidates is a lot of precious time.
Having an executive recruiter find you candidates shaves off a lot of time from your hands. learn here for top senior executive recruitment Service.We’re going to tell you how an executive recruiter can help you overcome your challenges:
- They have an existing system of network which can save you a lot of man hours, they can use their existing database to find you a C-level candidate who matches the requirements. They are experts in screening and are trained to do just this. All for a small fee.
- Yes, you will have to pay a little but headhunters and executive recruiters give you their money’s worth. Instead of you having a screening process of your own, which, if it’s your first time will not be fool proof, you can hire the services of a headhunter and make the job easier for yourself. You’ll likely be seeing the ROI from the candidate sooner rather than later.
- Your biggest arsenal during a C-level hiring process is privacy. You do not want competitor’s catching wind of whatever you have going on within your company. An executive headhunter can maintain this privacy much more easily, as they’re not obligated to reveal anything about you until they are absolutely confident.
- Now this is what distinguishes a good executive recruiter and a great one, they know that the creme de la creme of the market are most likely employed and are happy with their positions. So their job goes beyond just posting a recruitment offering online. They know how to use their network and find you the right candidate and they will also give you insights on how you can retain said candidate in the easiest manner possible.
Conclusion
You can, of course, take a DIY approach to C-level hiring, you can train your HR team and recruiters to find you a candidate. And they will, most likely, find you that candidate, BUT the best C-level recruitment is done by Executive Recruiters and you cannot deny that.
Author Bio:
Sunny Chawla is a Managing Director at Alliance Recruitment Agency. He specializes in helping client for international recruiting, staffing, HR services and Careers advice service for overseas and international businesses.
