It is very easy to conclude that your executive hunt is not going anywhere and there could be a number of reasons for this conclusion. Hiring a C-Suite level candidate is a skill altogether separate from filling a normal job vacancy. Working with top headhunting firms in Canada & USA is the right way to go about your executive search. These firms can help you find the right talent from the talent pool they have built over the years thus speeding up the overall hiring process.
But before you gain access to the number of executive search firms in Canada, it is important to understand a few fundamentals beforehand. Here are 4 things you should know before working with these expert firms: Make A Clear And Thorough List Of Your Interests An executive firm will be able to help you in the best possible way only when they are clear with the list of requirements you have. Listing down everything clearly would help the firm understand your expectations as well as the vision of the company. This in turn would help you find the right candidate in less time and with maximum efficiency. Set Out Your Priorities Beforehand Next step would be to set your priorities. This is important as it will help the firm chalk out a clear recruitment path for your company. They can reflect your priorities in the overall hiring process and would streamline it keeping in mind the comfort zones for the company. Another advantage to this is that it would help executive firms understand the company culture better and therefore work towards finding the right match with a lesser turnover rate in the longer run. Your Current And Future Job Requirements It is always good to have an idea about your current and job requirements before you start looking for an executive firm. This would make it clear to you which type of arrangement you want to have with your executive firm. In the longer run, usually a retained firm is a better option as it not only helps you hire the right talent but also helps you retain your current employees by better strategizing your talent management policy.
0 Comments
3 Signs It Is Time To Outsource Your Recruitment To One Of The Top Executive Search Firms In Canada5/19/2020 “Why would I want to outsource my entire executive search to an executive search firm in Canada when I have my own in-house staff to do the recruitment?” This is one of the most common questions we come across. Well, now would be a good time to answer this question. Here is a list of 3 signs that would indicate that it is time to outsource your executive recruitment to one of the top executive search firms in Canada.
Lack Of Experience In Your Recruiting Team Carrying out an executive search is a skill of another level, one that is very different from filing a normal job vacancy. The chances are that your company does not have the right amount of experience or the right expert to carry out an executive search. Many companies further justify in-house hiring by stating that they do not have enough best executive search firms in Canada requirements. But one thing that companies need to understand is that cost of hiring a bad candidate or rehiring is much more than outsourcing it in the first place. The skills needed to attract, and convert passive talent at the executive level are very important. The search firm helps you form a level of partnership with the candidate where both the parties are taken into considerations. Lack Of Quality Hires The second big sign is that you have already suffered from the quality of hires in your company. In such case, it is time to utilize an executive recruiter in numerous ways. The search firms can help you run an audit of your hiring process and help you identify the pitfalls in the whole process at the same time hiring the most suitable candidate for you. Not only this, but a lot of good candidates also go bad if their onboarding process is not handled properly. Having a firm can help ensure a smooth process from the beginning till the end thus increasing the chances of retention manifold. Too Much Turnover The key to good recruitment is retaining the candidate you have hired especially at crucial executive positions. Having frequent resignations for top posts can lead to higher overall turnover rate of your company as it is rightly said, “Employees do not leave the company. They leave managers.” Hiring a wrong candidate is worse than hiring no candidate at all. Engaging an external executive search partner can help you hire the right candidates in the first place. The executives whose goals coincide with the company’s goals would help achieve a lower turnover rate in the long run. Businesses have by now established how crucial it is for them to find one of the best executive search firms in Canada and work with them as a long term partner to ensure the company’s good health and growth over time. Search firms without a doubt can find you the very base you need to ensure success in your organization and that is the army of right and motivated people and an equally fit leader to lead them to success.
Everything said, finding a good firm out of the many executive search firms in Canada can be a daunting and overwhelming process, one if went south can be a recipe for a disaster for your company in the long run. So what should you do to ensure the firm that is just right for you? Here are a few tips to help you find the one search firm that can help you ensure success in your company: 1. Know Your Industry Well And Then Find The Firm Who Has Worked In A Similar Industry In The Past - This is crucial in many ways. Finding a firm that has worked in a similar industry should be much preferred over others due to the following reasons. A) These firms have an in-built talent pool of high-performing individuals working at some of your top competitors and can easily indulge them in taking up an opportunity with your company if and when the need arises. A benefit to you - It ensures your access to top talent in the industry without having to waste much time on rolling out job ads or screening hundreds of irrelevant applications. B) These firms have prior experience in working with the industry and therefore they can help you with a new role that you have no prior knowledge of. A benefit to you - You can save a lot of time trying to figure out a perfect job description and then screening individuals on them. The search firms can help you with the entire process and can provide you 2 or 3 best potential options to choose from. Economy v/s Quality - Many companies often commit a mistake of finding the cheapest firm and end up compromising on the quality whereas the hack should be finding a balance and look for the best quality at affordable prices. There is a lot to gain from hiring one of the top executive search firms in Canada. Here is a list of a few advantages that you can’t ignore at any cost:
Expertise An executive search firm has a well-established network of employed, passive, and busy leaders who are not accustomed to finding new job opportunities through open sources. They rely on their personal network, connections, and referrals. The firms are experts in helping you find the right candidate through this much richer talent pool. Save Time And Money Recruiting and reaching out to top candidates is a time-consuming and strategic effort, something that can be taken up by a search firm with much dexterity. They help streamline the entire search process right from the preparation of a job description and helps you find the right candidate. Only Interview The Best Of The Best Executive search firms take all of the legwork out of recruiting and instead of sorting through and interviewing dozens of candidates, they narrow the candidate pool down to a more manageable number. This includes the best of the best talent thus helping in streamlining the interview process and save time. Quickly Fill Difficult Roles Today’s leadership roles are often tricky to fill as they require a professional with a unique mix of skills. Finding a professional who possesses all of the skills needed for the job and at the same time is a match for company culture is like looking for a needle in the haystack. Executive search firms have the resources and processes in place to find the right potential candidates to fill difficult roles. In the present competitive and dynamic talent market, talent issues are business issues. The race to hire qualified executive leadership is fierce and those who do not move fast tend to lag behind in their business. Amidst all the uncertainty and growing complexity, the need for an executive search firm in Canada goes without saying. And it can be overwhelming to find one of the best executive search firms in Canada that caters to your needs and work as a partner in your company helping it find the top talent available in the market.
Choosing the right executive search firm is a critical business decision, the one that can have a long-term impact on the growth of your organization. To help you navigate the top executive search firms, we’ve come up with a Guide to Choosing a Firm. Solutions Available To Your Top Business Challenges - The foremost question you need to ask while skimming through your options for the search firms is whether the firm in question is able to provide solutions to your top business challenges. Always go for a firm that has worked in a similar industry as yours. This would ensure that they have a talent pool of qualified candidates relevant to your industry and thus would speed up the overall search process thus saving you a lot of money in the whole recruitment process. Talent Acquisition Models - Ask for their talent acquisition models. This helps you understand the overall hiring process followed by the search firm. You can actually calibrate on the fact whether a particular firm would be able to blend well with your style of working. This is important from the long term perspective. In-depth Understanding Of Executive Search - Ask a lot of questions and try to understand if the firm in question has an in-depth understanding of executive search. What kind of screening process is followed? What kind of network they have in the market? Would they help you in the onboarding process or not? And so on. All these questions would help you have a deeper understanding of whether the firm is the right fit for your company or not. Point Of Contact - Once you are convinced about a few potential firms, it is now time to dig deeper and identify the people you will be in contact with that is who is going to work with you round the clock in the whole hiring process. Have a chat with a team involved and get to know the people you will be working with. Try to judge if you think they would be able to do justice to your requirements or not before finalizing the firm. The first and the foremost purpose of a job description is to outline what exactly the concerned job entails. This is required in order to ensure that only the people with right and required set of skills and experience apply for the job. The best Executive Search Firms in Canada are elaborating the job descriptions in order to highlight the culture of the company. This won't deter the culturally unfit people from applying from the job, but will attract the culturally fit people to apply more. Here are the ways the top Executive Search Firms in Canada are including details in the various components of a job description. This way the executive recruiter firms give the next employee a glimpse of what cultural values the company holds:
This section brings clarity on what is expected from the potential employee and what cumulative effect the efforts put in by the prospective employee should result in. To add a cultural perspective, aspects such as the goals of the organisation can be included and how this particular job position supports the achievement of those goals. The long term mission of the company and its impact on the society at large can also be shared in this section.
Penning down the required work experience is also a must in the job description. This is required to attract only the ideal and suitable candidates. Here the recruitment firms give the candidates a fair idea of the career strides the candidates can put their hopes on and how the company ensures the career development of the employees.
Apart from the standard job role responsibilities which include the specific tasks the employee will be expected to carry out. This section is expanded to include what a typical workday would be like. The prospective employees are informed well in advance whom they will work with and what will be the collaborative activities. This gives a sense of workplace culture to the employees.
The employee benefits which the company will be offering to the next employee are often included by recruiters in the job description. Benefits such as insurance and retirement savings remain same for every company, it is the unique benefits which only the company in question offers can steal the show. The perks which the company will be offering including stock options or flexible working hours may be included. The act of adding the company's culture in a job description is quite simple, but it ends up catching the eye of the next great employee you can have on board. The first and foremost job of any of the leading executive search firms in Canada is to shortlist candidates put together which are considered to be an optimal fit and goes in line with the needs of the company. The job of the best executive search firms in Canada becomes a lot more difficult when it is about finding a leader for the client organization. Indeed, the question of defining a good leader is not an easy one considering the different types of variables required to act as a leader. That being said, there still exists a few behaviors of the leaders which are unequivocally detrimental and can’t be expected in a leader.
We list few such leadership behaviors which are totally a turn off for the top executive search firms in Canada: Poor Communication This is the worst behavior being displayed by any leader. Such leaders instruct their subordinates to make a particular task their highest priority and later on themselves ask the team to scrap the task completely, just when the team is about to come out with the final outcome of the priority task. Candidates with such behavioral instincts are often avoided by management at the time of shortlisting candidates. Indeed leaders tend to act scattered because their plate is always full with something or the other, but, they should avoid giving conflicting instructions and remain clear in terms of communication. Lack Of Knowledge Sharing Many times leaders are unwilling to share knowledge with the employees for the fear of being sidelined. This leads to knowledge hoarding and also create havoc in employee engagement and performance. The leaders need to understand the fact that they are never in competition with their own employees or team members. Alternatively, pooling of information, resources, insights and experience between the leaders and the employees allow the company as a whole to perform in a better manner. Empowering the staff members with knowledge can help in boosting innovation and decreasing employee absenteeism and turnover. Not Sharing Responsibilities Leaders are required to handle a number of tasks often making then lack the adequate time required for engaging with subordinates and colleagues. Thus shutting others out and overseeing every process personally leads to curtailing of employee’s growth. The leaders should reassign some of their responsibilities to subordinates in relation to the expertise available with the employee or the colleague. Thus sharing the responsibilities with the team not only reduces the workload of the leader but also make the employees learn about working of different modules. Working Hard Vs Working Smart There are certain leaders who believe in working for longer duration and even pass this notion to the employees. Long working hours negatively impacts the employee performance and their attitude towards work and the company as a whole. Leaders need to realize that working hard is not necessarily linked with being productive and successful. Talent issues are business issues. The real way to remain competitive in the market is to have qualified executive leadership that is fierce, broad-minded and is ready to take risks to help grow your company in leaps and bounds. In today’s complexity, business leaders need a trusted team of advisors in order to make decisions with minimum risk and maximum outcome.
In order for you to make your dream time, you can not always rely on the talent from withing and thus have to start looking at the outside sources as well. The best candidates could be across town or across the globe for all you know and a good executive search firm in Canada knows the talent business and their clients’ business well enough to be able to find them the right candidate in less time with minimum risk. And it’s a bonus if you go for one of the top headhunting firms in Canada that is an AESC member in Vancouver. Here is a list of reasons why: High-Quality Firms - One of the advantages of going for an AESC member is that it saves you the overwhelming process of picking a good executive search firm. AESC membership is a mark of a high-quality firm that can deliver the right candidates in less time and minimum risk. These executive firms have an army of experienced professionals working in the related industry and have a well-established network of active and passive candidates. This can help speed up the overall hiring process for you and can play an important role in the screening and negotiating stage. Global Network Of Candidates - AESC members have global platforms and the best candidate you are looking for might be across the globe just waiting for the right opportunity. Having an AESC member to help you with your executive search can open up so many relevant options for you to choose and pick from decreasing the time wasted on screening of the non-relevant profile. The search through a firm becomes more directed and hence would help you find the most relevant candidate in less time. Expertise In The Industry - The executive search team provides the clients with an in-depth expert understanding of executive search that is the services they need, method of operation, streamlining the process, limitations that could affect the search process, who would handle the assignment, and other expectations. In short, you will have access to quality, reputation, and professionalism. These firms play an important role especially when you are looking to fill a new position in the company. The challenge with new positions is that you don’t know what exactly to look for, an area a search firm can help you in with their years of experience in the field and having to fill hundred different vacancies with similar roles and responsibilities. With the demand for top talent, especially for C-suite positions, constantly increasing, the means to find the relevant top talent is getting more and more difficult. As a result, the way companies hire their top talent needs a total revisit in their strategy. One of the biggest mistakes many companies are committing while doing their best executive search firms In Canada search is chasing after the active candidates that is the one who is actively looking for a change in job, thus skewing their options and hence their chances of finding the right fit for their company.
The stakes, in case of an executive position, are even higher as the wrong hire can cost you more than just money putting a dent to your overall brand and increasing the overall turnover rate in your company. Many big companies have been going for the top executive search firms in Canada to carry out their executive search but the fact that the middle age startups and growing companies now need these firms more than ever can’t be ignored at any cost. So a few key takeaways that need to be considered in your talent strategy are as follows: Quality Of Candidates - The quality of candidates that you are interviewing needs to be high and this can’t be compromised on at any cost. The reason behind this is simple. The interviewing process needs time, money and resources and it is always better to identify three good potential candidates and interview them rather than interviewing 15 bad ones and then manage to find the two good ones. The screening needs to be more prudent and the search technique needs a revisit and be more directive. According to surveys, the quality of the candidates is always high from direct sourcing and referrals. Direct Sourcing Works Best - This is where hiring one of the executive search firms in Canada can be of big help as these firms have both experience as well as a well-established network to tap into whenever there is a vacancy comes up. This way, you get more options and with a careful search on the basis of requirements, the potential candidates are easy to find and can be direct contacts rather than them applying for the position. The Interview Process - The whole interview process need to be rethought and restructured. The interview process is a weak link to a lot of companies. A common myth around interviews is that harder the questions, the better the interview. But this is a huge mistake as it can tick your candidates off. Companies need to understand that you need the candidate as much as the candidate needs you. Rather you need the candidate more than he needs you as he has plenty of other options to go to. The interview process needs to be a friendly discussion and a two-way communication wherein you try to strike an understanding with the candidate and see if he/she would be the right fit for the company or not. Making a bad hire is always bad for business but having a bad hire in your C-suite can have disastrous consequences for your organization. It can do irreparable damage and can lead to a huge wastage of time and resources, can adversely impact the overall productivity of the company, and can impact the overall retention rate of the company leading to total chaos in the functioning of the company. Finding a top-performing, qualified, executive is an art, one that needs a lot of expertise, patience and a well-sorted network of individuals, something you can’t afford to have in-house.
When there are such high stakes involved, low-cost alternatives are simply not an option. Hiring one of the best executive search firms in Canada is totally worth the investment especially with the most senior positions in your company. Here is a list of reasons why hiring one of the top executive search firms in Canada is important for you: 1) Access To A High-Quality Network Of Top-Talent If you are not able to find the ideal candidate in your list of referrals and your own personal network, it is time to go for a professional firm that carries the expertise in the industry of your interest. Many search firms have a global network expanding across a variety of industries. In other words, these firms have constant access to a much larger pool of candidates and hence would much likely be able to find the right candidates for your company. 2) Some Positions Are Too Important This for us is one of the most important reasons to invest in a search firm. As discussed in the beginning the consequences of having a bad hire in senior positions could cost you much more than money and therefore it is too important to not risk it by keeping it in-house and trying to have the perfect candidate with limited resources in hand. The top search firms are experts in understanding the rare skills mix that is much-needed for a C-suite position and hence can understand the right fit better and would get you limited options to choose from all of which would be good for your company in the long run. 3) Fill The Knowledge Gap And Gain Better Diversity Things get even more tricky when you don’t have any prior shoe to fill that is the position is newly created and you have expectations from the role but don’t know what exactly to look for in the candidate. A search firm with their knowledge of years in recruitment can not only help you find the right candidate but can also help you bridge the knowledge gap and help you from the start in building the job description, screening the various candidates and helping in making the right hire by keeping a few things in mind. |
Cornerstone VancouverOur Vancouver, Canada office is a boutique office located in Richmond BC serving clients in the western region of Canada and also Washington State of the United States of America. Archives
August 2022
Categories
All
|