HOW TO
HIRE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP FOR A WORLD CLASS ORGANIZATION

Don Andersson

Hiring the best executive leadership for your organization is a key objective of executive search. Unfortunately within eighteen to twenty four months forty percent of all newly hired executive leaders will either leave voluntarily, be terminated or receive an unsatisfactory performance review. With the best of intentions this collusion to fail occurs repeatedly - and, it can be avoided. This "How To" human resources executive leadership hiring tool taps into your expertise and experience as it points out precise steps you and your organization can take to minimize leadership miss hires by hiring an executive who has the inter personal and team - as well as the technical - skills to fit your organization's business culture. Remember, being a star in one organization is absolutely no guarantee the candidate of your choice will succeed in yours. You now have an opportunity to invest in a resource that will help your organization increase the success potential of its hiring practices by selecting executive leaders who fit your business culture. At the nominal cost of $15.00 you can learn how to make an effective leadership hire by: assessing the effectiveness of your organization's human resources executive leadership hiring process, determining the hidden costs of a leadership miss hire, identifying three faulty assumptions that undercut your ability to hire an executive leader who fits, identifying the marketplace culture in which your new executive leadership hire must be successful, describing and hiring an executive leader capable of working successfully within your organization's business culture, prioritizing expectations of your new executive leader hire, identifying the critical customers of your currently vacant leadership position, building a customer-responsive executive leadership position description.

HIRE FOR SUCCESS Hiring Executive Leadership That Fits Your Organization Business Culture

Hope abounds when a hiring decision is made. After the time consumption and inconvenience of being involved in a screening process, organizational leaders breathe a sign of relief. Now they can get back to their real work. When your decision has been based upon faulty assumptions, however, hope may quickly vanish, disgruntlements emerge, and the probability of a repeat search can surface.

"We thought we had made an excellent choice," said Paul Strickland, Chief Operating Officer of a consumer products business. "Our search firm presented us several candidates who matched our job description quite well. After what we considered to be careful interviewing we made our selection." "Our choice has been on board for three months and we're already thinking we made a wrong decision. She may have the technical skills to be an executive leader but she just doesn't seem to fit in our organization."

The opportunity for success and the risk of failure hovers over each individual hired for leadership in your organization. Her or his impact will be shaped by the abilities they bring and by the screening and hiring process you have used. Let's take a look at the typical leadership hiring process used in your organization.

Statement Yes No Customers for which our vacancy needs to be a resource are specifically identified. Our position description is shaped to address the current needs of its customers. The diverse expectations of position customers are identified and prioritized. Our leadership position description identifies specific results which our newly hired leader must obtain within the first twelve months. Our leadership position description reflects organization culture realities to which our new executive leader must be responsive. We identify individual technical, interpersonal and team skills our leadership candidate needs to be successful in the position. We use carefully designed interviewing and selection strategies. We develop a selection template which provides interviewers a way to screen and evaluate executive leadership candidates against an objective standard. We quip our interviewers to question potential leadership hires for qualitative as well as quantitative information.