Recruiting a new member of staff is always a significant decision, but finding the right individual for a crucial role can be like solving a puzzle. It demands an understanding of your company culture, a discerning eye for detail, and an instinct for talent. That’s why more businesses are turning to executive search firms for help. These professional “detectives” possess the skills and expertise to uncover the best candidates for your company, and their methods are more efficient than a traditional job search.

One of the key advantages of using an executive search firm is their utilisation of assessments to guarantee the candidate’s suitability not just on paper, but also in practice. They employ a blend of behavioural assessments, critical thinking tests, and emotional intelligence evaluations to gain a comprehensive view of each candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential for success in the role. This allows them to present you with candidates who not only have the skills and experience you require, but also the personality and emotional intelligence to flourish in your company’s culture.

Another advantage of working with an executive search firm is its extensive network of contacts in the industry. They have cultivated relationships with key players in your field and know where to find the best talent. They also have access to databases of candidates who are not actively seeking a new role but would be receptive to a change if the right opportunity arose. In other words, they have the inside track on the top candidates, giving you a competitive edge in the recruitment process.

Furthermore, executive search firms have a tried-and-tested method for identifying and screening candidates. They carry out comprehensive background checks and reference checks to ensure the person you are considering is the ideal fit for your company. They also take the time to comprehend your company culture and the specific demands of the role, so they can provide you with a carefully selected list of the best candidates.

But why settle for merely the best when you can have the cream of the crop? Executive search firms also can attract top talent from their current positions with appealing packages and opportunities. They know how to promote your company to potential recruits and convince them that your organisation is the place they want to be.

Finally, hiring a detective can also save you time and reduce the stress often associated with a critical recruitment decision. You don’t have to spend hours trawling through CVs and conducting interviews; the executive search firm will take care of all of that for you. They will provide you with a shortlist of the best candidates, saving you time and hassle.

In conclusion, if you’re facing a critical recruitment decision, don’t rely solely on your own detective skills. Turn to the professionals and let an executive search firm help you solve the puzzle of finding the ideal candidate. With their expertise, assessments, and experience, they will assist you in making the right choice and unlocking the key to your company’s success.

Belfast-based consultancy firm, Corvus People, has launched a new HR for Growth service aimed at helping their clients harness the power of people to drive business growth. The focus of this service, along with others offered by Corvus People, is to support businesses to recruit, develop, and retain the market’s top talent. Northern Ireland has skilled talent across various industries, but businesses are finding it hard to engage and keep their teams. Corvus People believes that now, more than ever, business leaders need to take stock of what their top talent requires to thrive.

According to recent research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Northern Ireland workers are least likely to say that their job offers good opportunities to develop their skills (31% v 25% UK average) or would help develop their careers (46% v UK average of 41%). Today’s talent is looking for more than just a salary, and the company’s culture is becoming increasingly important, including its approach to professional development.

Announcing the new HR for Growth service, Ian Weatherup, MD of Corvus People, said, “Our approach, since we started in 2011, has always been about people – they are the greatest asset to any business. Placing people at the centre of any business strategy is not only essential to business growth but is key to their success. Our collaborative approach with our clients means we become their people strategy partners. We work alongside them to deliver solutions across the entire employee lifecycle to support their teams and help them thrive.”

Ian added, “This is an exciting time for Corvus People as we prepare to work with businesses as they take that next big step toward growth and success.”

The new offering, HR for Growth, bolsters Corvus People’s existing solutions, which provide 360 support and integrate seamlessly into their clients’ existing processes. It costs more to recruit than retain, with some studies, such as the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), predicting that it costs on average 6-9 months’ salary to replace a salaried employee, which is why all Corvus People services are geared toward long-term retention.

Corvus Assured, the Executive Search methodology launched at the beginning of the pandemic, uses market-leading behavioural analysis tools to assess cultural fit as well as the skills match. This service creates long-lasting retention, with 97% of candidates still in position after 12 months and is already achieving notable success for a range of Northern Ireland and international clients.

Corvus People has built its reputation on helping businesses to manage change, reduce risk and improve their people strategies, and this new offering is no different.

Corvus People has extensive experience in working with clients across a range of industries, including manufacturing, technology, construction, and financial services. The company is committed to helping businesses of all sizes to develop and grow, and the HR for Growth service is just one example of this.

Businesses looking to improve their people strategies and drive growth can benefit from Corvus People’s solutions. The service offering provides a comprehensive range of solutions to support businesses in recruiting, developing, and retaining top talent. With one of Northern Ireland’s most experienced team of consultants and a focus on long-term retention, Corvus People is the perfect partner for any business looking to take that next big step towards success.

On 1st December 2022, OpenAI (co-founded by Elon Musk and backed by Microsoft) launched ChatGPT, a general-purpose chatbot that creates AI-generated content in a human-like response.

It brings AI to the masses as it offers non-technical people direct access to AI as you simply type your question, and it will reply to you in a few seconds.  This is the major step forward – predecessors didn’t have a user-friendly interface which makes it accessible to virtually anyone. Unlike previous AI, ChatGPT will admit to its mistakes, understand context, ask follow-up questions, and correct your false assumptions. 

There are endless potential applications – students writing end-of-term papers and assignments (it has already been banned by the NY City Department of Education), poetry, emails, answering philosophical questions and even writing limericks.

Today ChatGPT has the potential to significantly change how companies recruit by automating and streamlining activities to include CV/Resume screening, conducting initial interviews, Candidate matching and HR assistance (answering candidate queries). 

In the future, it will be able to assess soft skills and ask behavioural interview questions, but these will require interpretation by a professional recruiter or hiring manager. 

Currently, ChatGPT cannot search and find job-specific candidates and it is not a replacement for human decision-making and judgement in the final hiring process. 

The launch of ChatGPT has been described as a watershed moment and poses more questions on the ethics of AI.  How should it be regulated and what barriers and restrictions will be applied to searches?

Some sectors, such as traditional search engines are likely to be disrupted and the stakes are high.  Google launched Bard, their AI enabled chatbot, but an error in its first answer cost $100bn being wiped off their share price.  Microsoft also announced in that they are enhancing their Bing search engine with similar technology that ChatGPT is built on, which led to a 4.2% increase in share value. 

Every industry should be keenly watching to see what impact, both positive and negative conversational AI solutions could have on them.  

Companies, Hiring Managers, and recruitment companies should have AI chatbots on their Threats and Opportunities radar for 2023 to consider how it can be used to automate certain tasks in the recruiting process such as initial candidate screening, answering frequently asked questions, and scheduling interviews.

Footnote – thus far I have written this blog myself.  Below is ChatGPT’s reply to my query “What is the future of recruitment and technology”.

The future of recruitment and technology is likely to be marked by continued automation and digitization of various aspects of the recruitment process, from sourcing and screening candidates to scheduling interviews and onboarding new hires. This will likely result in increased efficiency and speed, as well as data-driven insights into the talent acquisition process.

In addition, there may be increased use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies in the recruitment process to make it more personalized and effective. This could include personalized job recommendations, candidate sentiment analysis, and predictive hiring analytics.

There may also be a greater focus on virtual and remote hiring, driven in part by the ongoing pandemic and the increasing trend towards remote work. This could lead to the development of new virtual recruitment tools and technologies that enable employers to reach and engage with a wider pool of candidates from around the world.

Overall, the future of recruitment and technology is likely to be shaped by a combination of factors, including advances in technology, changing workforce demographics, and evolving employer and candidate expectations.

Written by Ian Weatherup

I don’t know what happened…one minute it was going fine, and then the next, they had gone!

If you are a manager or employer who has found yourself saying this, in all likelihood, it wasn’t all going fine for a while. But a critical member of your team has resigned, and you’re left wondering what happened – and even worse, you have to move fast to replace them and their expertise.

Wouldn’t it be easier to retain your talent in the first place?

According to Bonusly, “Employee engagement is already one of the most important differentiators for modern organisations, and it’s on the minds of nearly every organisational leader”.

So, what can you do to help keep your top talent?

Creating strong employee morale and job satisfaction is key to ensuring you remain competitive in the market. After all, your employees could be the ones who bring in business, deal with customers and add to brand value. Your employees allow your company to grow and are crucial to business success.

Richard Branson is quoted as saying: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients”.

Hopefully, the following points are useful in your pursuit of retention:

Make the employee feel special. Ensure that your employees feel they are contributing to the company’s success. If possible, involve them in decision-making, let them take ownership of their role, and trust them to do their job. Recognise and reward achievements and motivate them to seek opportunities to learn. Continuing professional development is a key tool in ensuring job satisfaction, so creating an environment where learning is central will help you keep employees engaged.

Make sure that the package on offer is competitive in your industry. Notice I say package and not just salary. Nonfinancial benefits can include bonuses, recognition, on-site opportunities, training, work-from-home options, vacations, company shares, involvement in decision-making etc. All of the above can have a major bearing on employee retention. Combine this with a fair and transparent policy on promotions and you’ll help encourage your team to stay around.

Be flexible. I suppose this is the new mantra of lots of organisations regardless of size or sector. Given the changes to the global job market over the last few years it’s for the most part now an expectation that companies offer opportunities for a better work-life balance.

According to Owl Labs, “Companies supporting work-from-home have 25% lower employee turnover than the organisations that don’t.”

Try to match headcount to workload. It makes more sense to grow your team rather than put undue pressure on existing employees. Not an easy task in the current climate I know, but it will help to ensure that your current team remain focused on their core activities. You should forecast your team size along with your planned growth. Not only will this make for smoother running of the business should you unexpectedly lose a team member, but it will allow you to take on more work as it arises.

Be supportive and empathetic. Never forget that your team are people and, as people, are unique. Each will have different aspirations, motivations, attitudes, challenges, distractions, and frustrations so it’s rarely a one size fits all approach which works. However, ensuring that you spot when someone needs support for whatever reason and then doing something about it can mean a lot in terms of continued motivation.

Have a clear vision or mission statement. For your organisation that your employees understand, believe, and are committed to. Having a clear vision or mission statement is important for aligning employees towards a common goal, increasing motivation and engagement, establishing the organisation’s brand identity, and providing a framework for decision-making.

Of course, having a good employee retention strategy requires an understanding of real-life statistics and data. It is through analysing the trends within your business that you can identify the areas where you can improve.

Retaining top talent is crucial for the success of any organisation. To achieve this, companies need to create a positive work environment that supports employee morale and job satisfaction. By following these steps, organisations can increase employee engagement and reduce turnover, ensuring long-term success.

At Corvus People, we have a clear purpose – we want to see people succeed. We offer support across the entire employee lifecycle, and our range of solutions fits seamlessly into your business. Please get in touch if you feel we can help.

Written by Myles McKeown

Natasha Agnew

 

 

Regardless of whether you invest any time into it or not, we all have a personal ‘brand’. Simply put, a personal brand is how you are perceived by the people you engage with. It comes through in your conversations, the stories told about you, and even what you wear, so anyone you interact with will have some opinion of who you are and what you stand for. Because you are curating this brand all the time, either consciously or unconsciously, it is worth taking a step back to ensure that how you present yourself is truly aligned with your values and beliefs – and a good place to start is where you work.

Any brand, personal or business, should be created from the inside out. It isn’t about having the best logo, or the biggest following on social media – it goes much deeper. Values and purpose should be the foundation of any strong brand and informs everything from how teams work together internally, right through to the external initiatives the business supports.

While this is easy (or at least easier) to do on a personal level, it’s much harder as a company, but why? Businesses are an accumulation of people, all with their own values and beliefs, and sometimes these are misaligned from the start. Values are set by the senior team and when there is little buy-in from the wider business, these are diluted over time. This impacts the organisation as a whole and could also lead to damage to the brand from an external perspective.

As an example, a business can say that ‘openness’ is a value. This will form part of their external messaging and be promoted in their marketing materials. However, if the staff in the business conceal information from clients or are known to tell half-truths, the brand will be perceived as the opposite. This is why the values in your business must be representative of the values you hold, as ultimately, it is the staff that showcase them to the market.

Having an alignment between your business and personal brand matters – you spend a lot of time there, and the association alone will have an impact on how you are perceived. Let’s say, for example, you are a long-serving senior manager in a business with a poor reputation. How does this look to the outside world? People may assume that you, at least to some degree, align with the brand of the business. You have been there a long time, you have led the team, and you have had significant input into the business itself. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words – and what you do, or in this case, where you work, will have an impact on your personal brand.

We have covered the bad, but what are the positives of having alignment between brands? As cliched as it is – synergy. Synergy is working together to create a combined effect that is greater than the sum of their separate effects. When you align with your workplace, you become an advocate for them. You fit into the organisation, you feel connected and engaged with the values, and you support them wholeheartedly in their purpose. You work to create success, and this is shared together. Your personal and business brands will complement one another, and you can start to leverage their content to promote your own brand. It increases the reach of the business and, if you work for a strong brand name, you have an opportunity to utilise its status to enhance your own visibility.

So, what can you do to align your brand with the brand of your business?

Firstly, you should try to work with a brand that you believe in. You should hold similar values and feel confident that the way you do business is the right way. Of course, this is no mean feat if you are already in an organisation that you don’t align with, but it is worth considering the longer-term impact of working for a brand that you don’t believe in. When looking for a new role, it’s important to ask questions about culture and values to ensure that it is a fit for you. You should do your research into the company, look at the initiatives they support, and the messaging that comes from senior leaders in the business. At the end of the day, you can’t align your brand to a business if you don’t agree with anything that they stand for.

Secondly, you should tailor your message to suit your businesses brand. It’s unlikely that you will be an identical match to where you work – even if your values are the same, your priorities will be different. However, they will be similar and easily adapted to your style and brand. You should keep to the business’s tone of voice while adding your personality and views. Because your personal brand is just that, personal, it should always feel authentic to you. If you move to a new role, you will carry this with you, so you don’t want to appear like a carbon copy of the company LinkedIn profile. This might seem challenging, but if you are bought in to the organisation’s values and purpose, it will happen almost naturally.

Finally, be an advocate for your business. When you are proud of where you work, it is much easier to shout about it. It makes up a huge part of our lives, so we should be glad to share this with others. You can be an advocate for people to join your team, or for customers to buy your product. Either way, when everyone is working together and toward the same goal, success will be shared with all. Opportunities will also arise within your business that will benefit you in the long run. It could be to create new content, be the face of a campaign, or maybe lead a project. Regardless of what these opportunities look like for you, they will help you advance your career and bolster your experience.

Having a strong personal brand has its benefits – it can help you develop your career, get in front of potential clients and customers, and will give you more control over how you are perceived in the market. When this aligns with your business and is utilised for shared success, it can open up even more opportunities – not just for you, but for the wider organisation as well. And remember, your brand already exists, so make sure it’s true to you.

Mark McBride

 

 

 

“How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything – for better or for worse.” – Simon Sinek

Having conducted a recent survey on why people leave, I found it interesting that culture was identified as the number one reason that people left their last role. With over 43% of respondents giving this as their rational for leaving, it is clear that company culture cannot be ignored.

The results of the survey pose a few interesting questions as a talent professional – What exactly is culture? How much does culture really matter and why? Is hiring a cultural fit the way forward? And if so, how can you measure and assess this?

So, what is culture and why does it matter?  

Firstly, culture is a loose term with hundreds of definitions – some see it as something vague which cannot be controlled, others see as something simple that can be managed. For me, it sits somewhere between the two.

In my opinion, McKinsey & Company sum this up well, defining culture as:

“As the common set of behaviours and underlying mindsets and beliefs that shape how people work and interact day to day”

Because culture is created by a “common set of behaviours and underlying mindsets and beliefs”, the people who lead your business, and those who sit under them, have a huge impact on the culture throughout the organisation. Essentially, if those running your team have some bad behaviours or beliefs, this will trickle down and have a knock-on effect across the board. A good and bad culture alike can have various effects on your business, some of these are:

• Correlation with high / low performance
• Impacts employee engagement
• Culture impacts agility
• Research shows impact on long-term financial performance
• Culture differentiates you from the competition
• Culture is difficult to replicate
• Strong Cultures attract the right people  

Finding a Cultural Fit

From a recruitment perspective cultural fit is often talked about – this is how someone fits into an organisations culture. Get it right and you can achieve remarkable things, get it wrong and the culture or subcultures can become toxic.

An article in the Harvard Journal describes Culture fit as “the glue that holds an organization together”. That is why it is a key trait to consider when recruiting. The result of poor culture fit due to turnover can cost an organization between 50-60% of the person’s annual salary, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Cultural fit is important in any recruitment process and is even more critical when making senior hires. Over the years, it is something I have heard clients ask for repeatedly when discussing assignments. When we ask clients how they assess cultural fit the answer is often “it’s down to gut feeling” or “we get the applicant to complete a psychometric test”. I would argue this is too simple a view, and to truly assess cultural fit it must be a two-sided process. The required behaviours needed for a role, and by the company, should be assessed by both the client and the candidate.  

So, how do we assess cultural fit?

At Corvus, our Executive Search methodology, Corvus Assured, makes this a little more scientific and is based on leading research into behavioural assessments. We use several behavioural tools that use AI to check for alignment between the clients needed and expected behaviours and that of the applicants. The process considers both sides – firstly the desired behaviours for a role, and then the actual behaviours of the person applying.

The starting point for this is to look at client expectations of the role, by having the key people involved in the recruitment process undertake an assessment that shows the key behaviours they want in a role. This is also an opportunity to check that they are aligned internally on what their expectations of the person are. Sometimes this gives interesting results, where clients expectations differ between people internally, and ultimately are misaligned. Clients often welcome this feedback, and it gives them a clearer picture of different perceptions and allows them to consider these in their decision making. Making sure the key stakeholders are aligned before starting the process is key to its success, after all, how can you find a fit if you all are looking for different things.

Some questions to help assess cultural fit

• What type of culture do they thrive in
• What type of values are important to them and why
• What do they know about our company culture
• What type of working environment do they enjoy

There is no simple, unified, way to assess cultural fit but there are tools to make the process more scientific and robust. 

So, in terms of the question, ‘does culture matter?’ I would say very much so – the Simon Senik quote at the start of this sums this up very eloquently.

If you would like to talk to us about a different approach to recruitment or some fresh thinking for your next hire. Please feel free to reach out. Corvus is a team of highly experienced and passionate consultants who deliver recruitment and HR related solutions to companies in NI, RoI, GB and internationally.

Helen Haughey

 

 

 

Finding and evaluating job applicants is often a time-consuming, multi-stage process. It takes time and effort, but did you know that hiring the right people, and fast, can save you money? Some of the costs to your business for not filling a vacant position quickly could include:

• Dip in productivity within your existing team
• Extra recruiting costs – for example, more time spent advertising means more costs incurred
• Lost sales as a direct result of the unfilled role – for example, due to a lack of resource,  
• The salary of hiring staff involved in the recruiting process, which would normally go toward other activities if the vacancy were filled
• Any overtime paid to current employees making up the work

These are some of the short-term costs, but there may also be customer frustrations because of insufficient staffing, leading to longer-term impacts across the business. And even worse, should you hire the wrong person, you could find yourself rushing to replace them, and that means spending additional money.

So how can you overcome this? Preparation is key and will help you manage your time. Here are my top tips to help you prepare before your role goes to market:

Align your team on who you are looking for

At the start of any hiring process, you should sit down with the hiring team and decide what skills, qualifications and behaviours are needed for the role. You should know exactly what you would like the person to bring to your company, what their key skills are, and what their experience looks like. Leaving this to luck can lead to disagreements on who is best suited for the role, or a hire that wasn’t a good fit – neither of which are ideal.

Creating an advert that stands out

You want to make sure your job advert is targeting and resonating with the right people. Your advert should not just be about the company, and it should cover why THEY would want to work with you and the impact the job will have on their lives. Will it pay them more? Perhaps they will develop faster, or maybe they will get to use new technology or tools. Either way, simply listing their duties won’t do much to excite and attract, so make sure you have them in mind when writing the advert. Check out our guide to writing job adverts for some more tips on this.

Assess the candidate with more than just their CV

Finding a cultural fit for your business is vital to making the hire a success. You should be looking at more than just skills and qualifications and should use various assessment methods or behaviour-based competency questions to get a better idea of their true fit.  Some useful questions can be found here – Behavioural Interviewing Techniques and Strategies (thebalancemoney.com)

Schedule time to make decisions

If you want to keep the process moving, this is essential. Calendars get busy, and fast – often, those involved in hiring decisions are doing so on top of their ‘day job’, so time must be carved out at the beginning of the process to ensure availability. Create a schedule for the entire process and block out time in advance if needed.

Keep in touch with your candidates

Once you have begun the hiring process, keeping in touch with your candidates will help build relationships and manage expectations.  It isn’t always possible to get back to everyone, but where a candidate has been interviewed, it is important to let them know rough timelines. If you don’t, you run the risk of your ideal candidate going elsewhere. Poor communication, at any stage of the recruitment process, can also impact your employer brand – potentially having a longer-lasting effect. Even once the offer has been made and accepted, you should aim to touch base a few times before they join – this is particularly important if they have a long notice period.

Act with urgency

As we all know, working with people can be volatile. If you have a role that is critical to the business, you should aim to act quickly to minimise disruption. Candidates who are active in the market could find another job before you have responded to their application. It is also important to keep in mind potential notice periods, which depending on the candidate, could be up to 6 months. Ensure you are setting realistic time frames for your own business and from the perspective of a candidate. Once you are past the interview stage, and sure of your candidate of choice, make the offer promptly and follow up with official documentation on the same day. It provides confidence to the candidate and allows them to make the necessary arrangements with their current employer.

Being prepared is key to keeping on top of the process, so implementing the above will make sure your search gets off to the best start. Hopefully, some of these tips help you with your next hire – maybe even saving you some time, money, and unnecessary headaches.

Ian Weatherup

 

 

 

Over the last two weeks, the team and I have been putting some focus on our Corvus Assured Executive Search methodology. We are all genuinely bought into the value of this service, but after some great chats, we identified an opportunity to develop our communication of this to clients.

The team volunteered, or rather voluntold, me to take the lead on the role plays, and after ten sessions (one person as the client and the other as a silent observer), we finished this round of the exercise.

This is the first time we have used role plays as a training technique. Initially, I was sceptical about the benefits.  I don’t have fond memories of my only other experience.  Many years ago, in a previous career, I had to make a pitch in front of 10 people who sat with their arms folded throughout. If this wasn’t bad enough, the whole thing was recorded. We watched the video back and the assembled group pointed out the positives and negatives. I still have flashbacks. 

Thankfully, this experience has been an infinitely more positive than the last. Not only did everyone stick brilliantly to their characters, but the learnings and takeaways from the experience have also been fantastic.  We have developed our listening skills, built confidence, and learnt about our communication styles. 

The sessions were enlightening and involving from both an emotional and a cognitive perspective, and the debriefings at the end always brought new insights and perspectives along with collaborative problem-solving. 

The reason I called it an exercise is due to the similarities between training and physical fitness. We do not stay fit automatically, we need to work at it.  The same goes for continually honing our communication and commercial skills. 

We are building role plays into our ongoing training and plan to bring external actors/friends of the business to give them an even greater ‘real life’ feeling.  

Learnings

Interested in including role plays in your learning and development strategy? Below are my top 5 tips to help you implement successful role plays with your team.

1. Frame it correctly. People need to have a genuine appetite to participate and understand the value of it for them. 
2. All participants should prepare beforehand and behave in the role play as if it was a real-life situation.
3. Be prepared to be uncomfortable.  We genuinely have a great bond in the team, but to get the most from it you must be prepared to commit to the exercise and expect the unexpected.
4. Make it a safe space for honest feedback and set out the rules for engagement before you begin. It should not be an opportunity for someone to settle a score or show off how smart they may think they are.  Thankfully we did not need a ‘safe word’! 
5. Having an observer makes the sessions much more valuable – they are not under pressure to be thinking about their next question or answer and can pick up on subtle nuances including tone of voice and body language.

When it comes to role plays, what you put in is what you will get out. Committing to the process will make the experience the most valuable for your business – and who knows, you might even enjoy it!

Michelle Kearns

 

 

 

I get asked about this a lot. Agency recruitment works – it is the recruitment model that many companies use, and successfully so. You have a Preferred Supplier Agreement (PSL) where you release roles to agencies, get CVs back, interview and hire.

It works, so why fix what isn’t broken?

Around 90% of your recruitment is filled using either Agency, internal referrals, or direct applicants. For the remaining 10%? They are a headache.

It could be because it requires a niche skillset, or it is a strategic hire for your business. In these cases, suitable candidates generally aren’t searching for new positions, making it difficult to reach them.

You have likely tried your PSL and direct advertising, and it just hasn’t worked. At this stage, a different approach should be adopted for a successful outcome.

When and why to use Executive Search?

When you have tried other avenues, and this has been unsuccessful. Or if the role is critical to the business, niche, or difficult – then you need someone who works with you to solve your specific problem.

What makes an Executive Search different from Agency recruitment? When chatting with clients who have gone through our Executive Search process (Corvus Assured), the same three areas keep coming up.

The first area is Alignment. Picture this – you have gone through the recruitment process – you’ve reviewed some CVs, interviewed a few people, and finally found someone you think is perfect for the role. You and your fellow stakeholders engage in a final interview, but at the end you find yourself confronted with opposing opinions from the group. It’s a nightmare.

Some companies go to market repeatedly, never hiring the right candidate – stuck in a cycle where they can’t please everyone. But how can you find the right candidate when there is no agreement on who the right candidate is?

This is where aligning the team is critical, and failure to do so could lead to the breakdown of the recruitment process – which would be an enormous waste of everyone’s time.

At the beginning of a Corvus Assured project, we work with the stakeholders to identify the requirements of the role, but this goes deeper than just the skills and qualifications. We use behavioural assessments to look at the ideal candidate from each of the stakeholder’s perspectives and work with them to align these views with their peers. This gives us the ability to find agreement on the desired candidate.

Once the assessments have been carried out internally, we use this profile as part of the recruitment process for candidates. This helps ensure that the cultural/behavioural fit is right. For one of our repeat Corvus Assured clients, this is their reason why. They opt for an Executive Search because they know that the stakeholders are all on the same page going into the process.

You have likely seen it before – hire for experience but fire for culture. You can teach some aspects of a role, but you can’t teach someone how they behave. In my experience, especially at a senior level, if you are aligned with your company, you will thrive. You feel connected to your peers, have the same ethics/viewpoint, and are easily bought into the company’s guiding principles. It’s easy because you know you are in the right company for you. That’s what aligning the team will deliver.

The second area is a robust recruitment and attraction process, tailored to the role and candidate profile. I once had a client who didn’t want to be involved in the long list, an initial list of candidates that are considered a fit for the role. Why would they waste their time when that’s what they pay us for? Here’s the thing – you know your business better than we ever will. You know your competitors and their reputation in the local marketplace. You know the companies you don’t want to recruit from. Years’, potentially decades, worth of knowledge that we just don’t have. Investing more time in the initial process will help us to attract the candidates you are looking for and produce a suitable, qualified shortlist.

To create these custom approaches, we work together with our clients to get a deeper understanding of their business. This requires an investment of time from both parties at the beginning of the process, but it ensures every stage, from the initial phone calls to the interview process, is bespoke to the role, the business, and the candidate, helping to secure success.

And finally, is partnership – not a transactional ‘send me some CV’s’ relationship. We problem solve and work together to find solutions. No recruitment process is without issues, because let’s face it, we are dealing with people. It’s working with someone with the experience and expertise to provide you with options and solutions that you potentially haven’t considered previously.

We have a depth of experience in recruitment, so we work together with our clients to decide how we deal with any situations that occur during the process. Salaries outside of the range, perceptions of your business, specific candidate requirements – there is a myriad of situations that I have seen arise. We deal with them together.

So, now you know when to choose Executive Search, but does this mean guaranteed success? In short, no.

If your role is impossible to fill from a skills, remuneration, or location standpoint, then we have no problem telling you – sometimes the person you are looking for simply does not exist. However, at that point, we will work with you to explore the options available, so that you can make an informed decision in terms of where you go from here. 

It has happened to me once in the past when we took on a Corvus Assured assignment and in the end, we did not fill the role. My client, an amazing local brand which had gone through explosive growth over the last number of years, pivoted mid-process and changed the entire focus of job role and job title.  High growth typically means a dynamic environment where change can come rapidly.

Was I still happy to take payment for the first stages of the process? Yes, because a great deal of time and effort was invested into the process. Did I shrug my shoulders and move on? Absolutely not. I have never felt so disappointed and deflated. I know it’s hard to believe, but when taking on a Corvus Assured assignment, we make a commitment to fill it – it’s personal. We trust our process and enjoy delivering unique and complex assignments. We are passionate about what we do. We care about our reputation and our relationships with clients and candidates. This applies to Agency and Executive Search, so you don’t have to choose. Your recruitment partner will guide you as to what works best for your business and the role. If you ever need some assistance, feel free to reach out. Our team of experts are always happy to help.