Advanced Executive Recruiting & Hiring

When you create a business case for hiring, you begin your search on strong footing. It's not that difficult to accomplish, but is necessary in order to justify the hire, screen against appropriate criteria and attract candidates. You project stability, which will also help you address any concerns of your staff, if they arise.

Most people have heard of SMART objectives, but few use them as guidelines for hiring. Having a clear understanding of your objectives for the role you are hiring is the key to making successful hires. Hiring is about more that filling a seat or accomplishing a set of tasks, it's about addressing business problems. Those can be addressed most effectively if you describe the specifics before you begin.

Translating your business objectives and goals into specific responsibilities will help you communicate most effectively in a simple, clear and understandable way. Responsibilities should be reduced to the most critical to be powerful and these can then be used to easily communicate with candidates and other stakeholders.

A few key qualifications can typically summarize all that you need to hire the right person. Most position descriptions offer a long list of qualifications, which can confuse candidates and interviewers. They prevent you from seeing the forest for the trees because they make you focus too much on details and too little on the reason for hiring in the first place. Minimize the number of qualifications and make them as powerful as possible for success!

This worksheet describes a detailed process that you can use to launch your search effectively. It draws on the principles learned in this section and draws out your emotional responses and instinct as well as your logic, in order to lay the strongest possible foundation for your executive search.

Use the psychology of dreams to attract career driven professionals. You will recruit the best candidates if you use the principles found in this section. We will discuss the Career Case, your company's mission and how to use these throughout the hiring process to help candidates understand your vision and join your company with the right mindset.

You must create a Career Case before presenting your open position to any potential candidate. This means looking at the position from the candidate's point-of-view and asking the question, "Why would someone want to accept this position?" It incorporates your vision, mission and the job to create an attractive picture for the role. What's more? It helps you screen more effectively!

Translate your business case and vision into the Career Case using this method. The method sets the context for the message you wish to transmit to prospective hires.

This lesson covers a step-by-step method for creating the case using elements of the position that you already know well.

Once you have created a Career Case, you must use it well to have a maximum impact on candidates before and during the interview process. Focus on simplicity and distribute the information appropriately to have the greatest effect.

When you begin your conversations by talking about the job, you take the mystery out of the conversation. You may push the best candidates away without understanding why. Use this technique to capture your prospects' attention and imagination.

By describing the opportunity in the way we discuss here, you will attract candidates more effectively and give yourself the opportunity to screen more deeply.

This bonus lesson provides a more in-depth, sweeping view of the Career Case and how to use it. It is a good supplement to concepts learned in this section.

What do you really want to get out of a phone screen? Is it just about deciding whether there is a good fit, or is there something more...

You set the stage for a successful interview with a powerful introduction. Remember, you need to sell yourself and the opportunity before screening and a strong introduction makes that much easier.

Your introduction does not need to be long, in fact it shouldn't be. You just want to establish the credibility and interest required to fully engage your candidates.

Remember that the best candidate's have multiple career options, so recognize that fact and begin your phone screens with an attractive introduction.

Make more effective use of the time you spend with each candidate and prospect. Use this technique to set expectations in the call and get the following benefits:

1. Maximize the use of your time
2. Boost candidate confidence in you
3. Screen more effectively
4. Gain a better handle on their interest level, AND
5. Short circuit candidates that go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and so forth...

Salary negotiation arguably starts before you even get on the phone, and most certainly begins as you describe the position and get to know your candidate.

The most obvious demonstration comes when you ask for your candidate's current compensation or expectations in the future. Or when they ask you! Either way, addressing this issue early and effectively is key to a successful hire and ultimately, a happy employee.

Learn the Columbo method of negotiation in this video!

Your inbox is full, your hair is on fire, and now you have to respond to all these candidates that you will never need anyway. Or will you? 

When you recruit candidates for your company, you create multiple opportunities for yourself. The most obvious being to hire someone immediately to solve whatever business problem you are facing. But there are other benefits as well.

You may need to make another hire in the future, you may want a referral to someone other than your candidate, you may need a job at some point, and guess who the hiring manager turns out to be? A former candidate! And, of course you always want to leave a good impression to enhance your brand. 

Make it easy on yourself and set up an easy code for responding to candidates and reap the rewards of the strong relationships you build throughout your career

Just because you have a code doesn't mean it's easy to reject people. You must find the right words to preserve your most valuable potential relationships.

What are emotion, instinct and logic anyway?

Trying to keep a lid on things just isn't going to work. And, just because she's crazy doesn't mean she's not right. Stop trying to control them and use your emotions to your benefit.  This video covers the creation of an interview plan that tempers and leverages your emotional reactions during an interview

This video not only reveals the single most powerful interview question you can ask; it explains how to use it. We go through several possible example answers to show how to think about these responses. You will learn that how a candidate responds is often more important than what they actually accomplished.

This question taps into your candidates' imaginations. It has it's limits though because it does lead candidates to answer what they think you are looking for. If you listen closely, though, you will get a lot out of their answers. 

Although recruiting is an emotional and instinctual sport, logic holds its own in the arena.

It all comes down to instinct if you want to make the best hiring decisions. Combine your experience, emotions, logic to bring out your true gut feel.

This methodology will enable you to make the best hiring decisions by focusing on eight primary assessment areas. It allows you to implement what you now know about logic, instinct and emotion. This is your guide, your little black book, your Plato, your Tenzing Norgay.

Sustained energy is more important than short spurts. How do you evaluate that?

Have you heard the phrase, "past performance is the best indicator of future results?" It's important to work this into your evaluations without letting it dominate your thinking.

Accomplishments and performance are a little different. Here's what sets them apart.

Give experience it's due without relying on it as a primary indicator of success.

How your candidate thinks about a problem is critical to their being able to take on a leadership role within your organization.

Leadership has many definitions and the best organizations have many leaders. But, leader doesn't mean only the top executives, even the most junior people in your organization must demonstrate leadership in order for your company to function at its peak performance level.

Character provides a foundation for everything that an employee does. Make sure your candidate's character lines up with your organization's for best results.

Cultural fit is not just a feeling, but your emotional and instinctual reactions to a candidate provide an importantr basis for evaluation in this category.

Bring everything together to create a balanced view of every candidate. Be careful not to try to cover too much ground in an individual interview. Hiring is a process that unfolds over time and your evaluation should follow a reasonable pace. Bring others into the process for best results.

This template will help you evaluate all your candidates.

What to avoid in order to execute an effective negotiation.

We put together an entire booklet of class notes covering every lecture in the course. Sit back and enjoy the course and you'll have this as a reference guide. Download it at the start, if you like spoilers!