Harvard Group International has been successfully helping clients fill critical and strategic hiring needs for three decades. As consultant in this field, HGI regularly provides analysis and advice to executives and professionals who seek the firm's assistance. The door is always open to employers and individuals for courtesy discussions.
Leadership success depends as much on the make-up of the team and its collective beneficial abilities as it does on the leader’s visionary, people and motivational skills. Common sense says that good and great leaders normally pick the best, most apparently likely-to-contribute team members, who can improve their team’s success rates… when and where such prospective team members are identified and more importantly available.
Few if any business topics have as much advice written about how a company’s leaders determine what constitutes the definition of “best prospective team member” and how to objectively assemble such criteria. This article glances across some of those prerequisites as it covers top considerations toward filling strategic additions to the team. Defining such is often easier than landing that right person. At the same time, a hiring manager’s career success depends on landing the talent, the need for which they have effectively ascertained. And further, the level of possible compromises considered along the way, regarding application of the qualifications, is affected by the means chosen to identify and hire the best - who are most likely to exceed expectations; maybe even impact the hiring manager’s own career.
Top Recruiters regularly deliver the level of talent that helps Hiring Managers’ careers.
Some tips follow here as to how best to enable such a search to succeed.
Achievement: More important than career stability
As an executive recruiting firm, HGI has had the privilege of regularly helping company leaders build teams that achieve, while also being of assistance to executives advancing to higher career levels. Over this period, HGI has seen the evolution in priorities commonly assigned to candidate-attribute categories from where Career Stability was at the top of the list, to where ACHIEVEMENT has become notably more often rated as the top qualification sought. In what discernable ways did a candidate under consideration impact their employer’s success? Not at all diminishing the value of considering a candidate’s employment history; however, just accepting the reality that those employees who clearly impact team and company achievement are more singled out and sought after in a business world of accelerating change.
While the majority of job descriptions still center around responsibilities, and probably for sound reasons related to organizational management, successfully advancing department, division, and company leaders stipulate specific qualification priorities that include evidence of how a candidate contributed to previous employers.
Absolutely there are a lot of needs in a company for “can do” team members. But business leaders, who have taken steps on their own or with the help of an advisor to more explicitly define the nature of person needed, more often come to HGI looking for WILL IMPACT candidates who can convincingly speak to their accomplishments; their contribution beyond just meeting job description criteria, as responsibility holders. It’s those specifics that define a candidate’s history of making a difference. It’s what one has done with the responsibilities assigned, and been recognized for such. And it is certain evident credentials that may well not be noted in the official job description administered by HR.
Key strategic hires are those expected to deliver critical “impact”.
After definition and decision comes finding
Definition, like distillation, by nature reduces quantity. So often HGI has employers seeking help at a point where hiring managers are ready to relax their key qualification priorities, having not uncovered the caliber of candidates from which they hope to choose. The best executive recruiters see the challenge as helping the hiring manager actually succeed as defined. That is, recruiting the talent for which they have been informed is needed, while along the way contributing in some small part to the hiring manager’s career advancement. So, when the likely available population of talent has been narrowed, the best source and means to find such candidates materially changes.
Top recruiting firms usually employ processes that dig out and recruit top talent, not just depending on sifting through the groups of those looking for new jobs. HGI recognizes the value the firm brings is related to being a key part of an overall good ROI hiring decision by the employer. The firm’s objective is to present the hiring manager with a decision between solid candidates who have clear evidence of delivering IMPACT on behalf of their team, their team leader and their employer.
Engage the best means and source to meet the specific defined need.
Land talent that helps the hiring manager’s success and career.
Harmonizing job description with accomplishment qualifications
As appropriate within the employer’s standard processes, the hiring manager seeking strategic team member additions needs to align their preferred strategic qualifications, including accomplishment history, with the position’s job description, as a search addendum if not directly incorporated. At the very least, the executive recruiter engaged needs to have the clearest possible understanding of “the target”. This understanding needs to be checked for “calibration” between the recruiter and the hiring manager while the search project gets underway, to include the relative priority of each of these key credentials. The hiring manager, HR and the executive recruiter need to be harmonized as to the “bull’s eye”.
Hiring manager, HR and Executive Recruiter all understanding such priority qualifications.
Facilitating the hiring managers leadership success.
Decisions and communications – Core to leadership
Engaging the best recruiting source adds significant assurance to achieving the hiring manager’s goals on behalf of their employer and ultimately on behalf of their own career advancement. As noted, the decision to establish key qualifications in filling a strategic need on the team goes no place without communicating the decided target qualifications sought, internally as well as to the executive recruiter engaged. Such defined distinction most often means that the available candidate pool may not be among those actively looking for a job. While the process of recruiting people of such distinct proven impact only begins with a clear definition of target, it need not begin with a “let’s see what we can turn up” approach. Rather, determine where such impact players likely exist and actually recruit to the distinct definition of the accomplished individual envisioned. While there are easier roads to fill open positions on a hiring manager’s team, they almost certainly will result in more compromises to the special qualifications sought than will defining a clear target in conjunction with picking the best HUNTER for the job.
Sound definition, clear communications and engage the best means.
Succeed in hiring, succeed in achieving goals, succeed in career advancement.
So, in conclusion – Success takes in the hiring manager’s career
Hiring managers who are incorporating special efforts to define the key qualifications sought in a new hire, beyond the standard job description, should see the recruiting source engaged as both hunter and advisor. This hiring manager should expect real target definition, real digging into source employers and real person-to-person recruiting efforts by the HUNTER chosen. Being a source of this type of value has been regular for HGI over the decades of helping business leaders build successful teams. Filling a key strategic hire always goes best when the definition has been well considered and set in place; when it has been communicated to all within the employer who need to be aware; and when it is fully and effectively shared and discussed openly with the executive recruiter.
Choosing between several top candidates is always better than “The Choice Between One”.
Read more from Harvard Group International
Harvard Group International, Executive & Professional Recruiters
Harvard Group International was founded in 1997 with a primary focus on automotive manufacturers and tier-one suppliers. From its beginning, the culture has been one of providing help and advisory services to clients and candidates alike. As the firm grew, the practice evolved more of a generalist focus, covering almost every industry segment across finance & investment, medical, technology, consumer, and more, to manufacturers and suppliers; US and International. With that history, HGI has helped many of the largest corporations in the world as well as private businesses and start-ups. The key to success is grounded in the firm's process of thoroughly understanding the clients' needs as well as hiring managers' preferences to enable effective 'digging' into likely sources; and identifying accomplished candidates that require actual recruiting before presentation to clients. Along the years, HGI has become known for professional courtesy, confidentiality, and focused urgency. The associates and directors of the firm have reviewed many thousands of resumes, placing thousands of candidates across a broad spectrum of titles, roles, and diversity.
