Making the right choice for Senior Hires: Plan to succeed

What are your hiring standards when looking for experienced senior hires? It has been well-documented that the failure rate of Senior Professionals coming in to new companies after just 18 months can be anywhere from 30-40%! The costs of this failure are ENORMOUS!  The process which is used to accurately identify the right talent for a business can have a dramatic effect on this.

Whilst it could take up to 6 months for an experienced hire to hit break even point, it has been cited that 89% of new senior hires feel that they do not have the optimum levels of skills or expertise to perform their job adequately. The costs of failure can be immeasurable – wasted or duplicated fess, missed business objectives, a demotivated distracted workforce can be an invisible drain on productivity. So, what can be done to help prevent this? Plan to succeed!

There have been dramatic shifts in the workplace over the last decade which all need to be taken in to account when finding the best experienced professionals:

Replacing a senior person can no longer be a “plug-and-play” strategy, where a talent can be taken from another organisation in a similar position and placed in to a new one.  After an initial honeymoon period a transplanted employee can find themselves experiencing a steep learning curve and a discovery that what worked at one organisation does not necessarily work in another!! All of this can be addressed during the search process to ensure that high-potential candidates have a deep understanding of the role, organisational culture and competencies required. The whole person approach needs to be implemented to ensure absolute suitability for the role.

Hiring senior people can place significant pressure on internal resources and just as the dynamics in the workplace have changed, so have the traditional models of collaborating with outside companies when searching for the best talent.  External expertise can act as an extension of an in-house team, bringing additional experience (both Domestic and International) and adding an objective focus to key strategic hires.  How has your model changed to help embrace the market?

Is it time to consider an alternative to the norm with innovative recruitment models? Would you like to increase the quality of experienced people you hire? Speed up the whole process? Get a better ROI with reduced costs and no retained fees? Recruit the business leaders of tomorrow on your terms and plan for success.

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