Aligning Stakeholder Expectations

How stakeholders can be aligned on a candidate requirements for a senior hire before the executive search process begins...

Companies are frequently in a position of having multiple decision makers involved in hiring for senior level appointments. In our experience, with us partnering International businesses, these decision makers are often split across several countries. Stakeholders bring with them differing views of what they want skills and experience they want candidates to have. This frequently leads to kicking off the recruitment process for a senior hire with a wish list, rather than a defined specification that everyone, including your recruitment partner, can objectively assess against.

Over the past month alone we have been witness to this. An Eastern European Building Materials manufacturer, part owned by a German parent business, with input from a sister British manufacturer, requested that we recruit a Managing Director for them. The initial call was very challenging. If we hadn’t have intervened, the likelihood of successfully appointing a Managing Director for their fledgling UK operation was remote (at best). Too many cooks were spoiling the soup!

A simple, yet often overlooked, way of avoiding too many personal requirements rather than a cohesive plan is to develop a skills matrix. It’s not rocket science but will avoid your specification becoming longer than your monthly “big supermarket shop”.

Here’s how it works:  

• List all the major skills, experience, and attributes perceived to be required. Provide each stakeholder with a copy and ask them to weight each point from 1-5. Collate the results and take out any points that score low. This avoids ambiguity when the assessment begins and ensures all stakeholders are aligned on the key requirements a candidate needs to have.
• Share the draft copy prior to briefing your executive search partner and before your own interview process begins. Again, weight prioritise 1-5 based against the collective scores obtained from stakeholders. This will lead to a collective agreement from all stakeholders on the top priorities and those that are superfluous.

It will allow you to provide a very clear briefing to your executive search partner and will also:

1. help to objectively score candidates when you’re interviewing
2. provide a more objective view from all interviewers on the interviewed candidates

However, one word of caution on this approach. Although you can score against leadership and cultural fit, these less tangible attributes are harder to score.  Especially true for senior recruitment processes, the individual’s ability to inspire and drive change through personality and other softer skills is harder to quantify.