Executive Search Nightmare: How Did I Miss That One?
Ever had a situation where a candidate you passed over turns out to have been the better choice?
If you are in a competitive bid, a competitor may win out with the candidate you put aside. Or, over time as you keep track of your hires and your strong possibles, you realize that Candidate B would probably have been a better choice for a tricky position than the Candidate A you put forward.
Since high level executive search still relies heavily on personal experience and human evaluation — big data notwithstanding — this is a situation which can be troubling. We’re all fallible, but since clients are paying for our skills and interpretative abilities, even one miss is a cause for serious reflection and self-analysis.
There may be very good reasons why matters developed as they did, but you need to get to the bottom of it.
Will Thomson runs an agency that focuses on recruiting top tier sales individuals. He had this experience recently with a software company in Texas. In a blog post carried in ere.net, he reviews the processes he went through.
It includes some interesting caveats. One reason he has used to demote a strong contender to the “maybe” bucket is finding that the resume includes time at a company not considered particularly admirable. But people make mistakes; they join not-so-great companies for a number of reasons. So holding that against a candidate is only compounding the mistake.
Take a look at Thomson’s selection criteria and then come back and leave a comment here.
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