People aren’t the only solution of course, you still need a robust operating and accountability system in place (see our recent blog on Navigating your business through the COVID-19 pandemic), but A-Grade talent will drive and maximise the outputs of your execution model better than average talent. Statistically it’s impossible for everyone to be ‘above average’ (despite what many performance reviews seem to suggest!), so now is a great time to ask yourself if you have the right people on the bus to deal with your new reality?

In his current Harvard Business Review article ‘Now is an Unprecedented Opportunity to Hire Great Talent’, Claudio Fernandez Araoz points out that the best companies heed their own learnings from previous crisis events and focus on investing on the right talent to pull through downturns in better shape. And the reality is that the availability of talent right now is approaching never seen before levels.

An analysis of over 4,700 companies across the last three recession showed 9% were able to come out much better positioned than when they entered because of their progressive mindset and focus.  Importantly, the critical difference lay in resizing and reshaping their talent (as opposed to simply downsizing) meaning successful firms continued making important investment decisions during these downturns.  As we know, making the right executive hire at the right time can make a massive difference – in fact it’s been shown that A Grade talent can be up to 400% more productive than average talent.

Most of you won’t have high level executive Talent and Search teams in-house like Fortune 100 companies, but that’s where you can leverage consultants to help you ‘upgrade’ your talent at an opportune time

To read the HBR article, click here.

To ensure you have the right talent to drive performance in your business, give us a call to discuss further or alternatively, book a meeting with an advisor here.

The post Do you have the right talent to execute your post pandemic recovery plans? appeared first on Checkside.

The best executives ask the same types of questions, so a lot of your appeal to them will depend on how succinctly you can respond to their enquiries – and the more ‘candidate-ready’ you are, the more they will buy into your story. Ideally this is captured in a clear IM (information memorandum) and Performance Profile to show you are serious about making the right decision and well-prepared to do so.

Our 20 question eBook (see link at end of this blog) has a more fulsome list of things you need to consider before you hire.

Here’s the top 5 questions we consistently get from the best candidates we see (the best candidates ask the best questions):

1. What is the challenge or problem you are trying to solve by hiring for this role?
Candidates want to know whether they are walking into a new role, replacement or change of direction. No smart executive expects to walk into a perfect world – and they also tend to like solving problems, so you need to be clear on the challenges of the role and any internal or external roadblocks that need to be overcome. Sugar-coating is not going to go down well with the real A-Graders and they may use this question as a gateway to asking more about your business strategy.

2. What is your positioning and key points of difference?
The best talent will always be thinking ‘compared to what’. They will have multiple employment options and want to know how you are different in a way that matters to customers (and your strategy to exploit this). Maybe positioning is a challenge for your business, so be up-front if that is one of the problems you would like them to help you solve, because A-Graders will always ask you the question. It’s when the response doesn’t add up that they start to ‘mark you down’ as a prospective employer

3. How will you measure and know that I have done a great job for you?
Too often we see companies go to market with a list of functions and tasks that they want a new executive to take on without clarifying the specific outcomes they are trying to achieve. It seems so obvious (and a Performance Profile will help you do this), but if a candidate does not ask you this question, they’re unlikely to have the performance focus that you need to take your business forward.

4. How will you reward me if and when I achieve the outcomes you are after, or outperform your expectations?
This is a likely follow on to the measurement question from an A-Grader. And it’s one you want to hear in that sequence, rather than the ‘How much does the position pay’ question that inferior candidates might ask? It highlights how important it is for you to have a clear remuneration and incentive plan before you go to market. It may be ok to tweak this in negotiations, but you should have done the work heading into the recruitment process and having no position or saying ‘we will work it out later’ will disadvantage you against the competition in the race for the right talent.

5. How do you see this role fitting into your structure and with the other key people in your team?
Whether a new or replacement role, great executives want to understand communication and reporting lines, including any prior gaps, duplication or handover points in terms of responsibilities and accountability. They will also want to understand the personalities and tendencies of the people they report directly to, especially if you are a business owner working in the business.

The key is to be prepared and ensure you have considered the information that A Grade executives typically seek out during a recruitment process.

To help with this, our A Grade recruitment process handbook to ensure you get the head start you need to stay ahead of the pack.

Download the A Grade recruitment process handbook

The post The Top 5 things an A grade executive needs to know before deciding to join your team in 2020 appeared first on Checkside.

To successfully achieve your strategy as a fast growth company you need to have the right structure, the right people, the right systems and a great culture in place.

As companies grow, they typically pass through a predictable set of stages which are directly related to number of people employed. Each stage has its own set of challenges when it comes to scaling your management and leadership team.

Optimising your management and leadership team to meet the challenges of your company’s stage of growth is critically important – and this requires you to reinvent your leadership teams as your company scales.

If your leadership teams don’t scale in lock step with its revenues and/or your customer base, things can quickly spiral out of control.

The people who are adept at launching a company aren’t necessarily going to be the right people to scale it. Each major stage of growth represents a step change in the level of management and executive talent required.

So who do you need on your leadership team… and when?

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh provide an analogy that illuminates this scenario well in their latest book Blitzscaling: The lightning fast path to building massively valuable companies.

Here it is:

The marines take the beach. The army brings order. And the police enforce the laws.

So what does your current – and next – stage of business require?

Are you a start up or scale up in need of marines? The resourceful generalists who can bootstrap, work with ambiguity, solve tough problems and get things done?

Or, is your company in the professionalise stage and in need of army officers? The engineers of structure and process to set in place necessary infrastructure?

Or, is your company in the enterprise stage and in need of police? The specialists with deep functional knowledge that can maintain order and progress at scale?

The team that successfully launches a company isn’t necessarily going to be the right one to scale it. The team that helps you scale up isn’t necessarily going to be the right one to run it at scale. And the team that keeps order and control at scale aren’t necessarily going to be the ones to help you transition to the next ‘curve’.

(Side note: if you haven’t listened to Charles Handy narrating his audiobook The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society, you seriously need to give it a listen.)

Final thoughts

In summary, each major stage of business growth represents a new challenge. Very few individual contributors can scale to managers and then to executives at the same pace that a moderate to fast growth company requires. It might’ve worked that way in the Industrial Age – but today’s fast changing business environment is a whole new ball game.

Don’t let an executive team that can’t scale at the same pace as your business hold you back.

The post If your executive team can’t scale, neither will your business! appeared first on Checkside.

A Quality Executive Recruitment & Selection Process

Great candidates are more accessible than ever thanks to ever-present social technology. But as an employer you need to stand out from the pack. A quality recruitment and selection process has to start with a detailed scoping strategy and employer branding focus. In basic terms, you need to answer the question ‘how is our company, and the opportunity with us, truly different in a way that matters to the A-Grade people we want to attract?’

Read More: Getting The Recruitment Process Right

If your recruitment agents are not building a detailed Information Memorandum (IM) and Performance Profile before they go to market, they’re really not presenting you in the most positive manner – and you’re effectively gambling on a result. The right scoping process will make it much easier to target relevant talent pools and candidates.

When building an IM, the philosophy is not too different to what corporate advisers would do when raising funds from investors. Remember, A grade people will choose where they want to spend their time and energy carefully, so it’s important to be on the front foot to respond to all the questions they are likely to ask. Nothing will scare off a good candidate more than you making things up on the fly – and nothing gives away your control of the process more than the old paradigm of ‘I’ll build the role around the right person’ – you’ll just look disorganised.

Key IM Elements For Recruitment

A quality IM will include the following elements:

• A snapshot of your strategy (e.g. strategy on a page), purpose and values
• Your competitive advantage(s) – how you win versus your competitors
• Key challenges (no one expects to walk into a perfect world)
• Company history (how you got to here)
• Authority matrix and organisational structure
• Communication and feedback rhythms
• Your EVP (employer value proposition) and key points of difference
• Remuneration, incentives and benefits
• Performance objectives and measurable KPI’s (outlining what success in the role looks like)
• A detailed outline of the remaining steps in the recruitment and on-boarding process

Screening Technology For Executive Recruitment

Furthermore, you should expect your recruitment agents to provide transparent and consistent screening technology (digital platforms such as Hirevue) and quality interview, testing and checking advice to select the right people (tied back to a detailed performance profile).

Recruiting the wrong people, particularly at executive level, can literally cost you millions of dollars for just one bad call. Whilst the profit impact of recruiting the right person can be exceptional (for more information see this handy article here).

Recruitment is a critical business process, not a transaction – and you need advisers who truly understand business to challenge your thinking. The good news is that won’t cost you much more to get what you should expect, so there’s no need to settle for less.

Read More: Increase Your Recruitment Success Rate To 90%+ 

The post Why your recruitment agents should be doing a lot more for their money appeared first on Checkside.

And, unfortunately, most hiring managers and recruiters see recruitment as a transaction, rather than a business strategy. Their mindset is often about getting someone with the appropriate qualifications to ‘do the job’ rather than recruiting the top talent to help take the business forward. This means they tend to be inconsistent in their recruitment approach (including taking shortcuts) and as a result, are more likely to hire B and C players.

There is also a tendency for most hiring managers to think they are great at ‘reading’ people. But if you are not putting every candidate through the same objective interrogation, with the same KPI based questions and assessments, unconscious biases are likely to hijack your process. This leaves you open to being ‘gamed’ by interviewees, turning selection into a personality contest.

We have seen many ‘interesting’ approaches to recruiting talent, but the most common mistakes include:

1. Failure to do the groundwork of building a clear Performance Profile and Information Memorandum (IM)

A comprehensive recruitment strategy helps build a detailed information memorandum (IM) including a performance profile and assessment process that sets clients up for success.

Most job/position descriptions tend to be a laundry list of tasks and responsibilities, without clear and measurable KPIs (information that belongs in an operating manual, rather than in setting performance expectations). A Performance Profile is effectively a scorecard for a role that clearly explains what great performance looks like. It succinctly outlines the purpose, KPIs, core responsibilities and competencies required for success.

An Information Memorandum (IM) is a document designed to provide potential employees with a detailed summary of all the information relevant to your business and the role you are looking for them to play. The advantage of a great IM is that it sets your company apart from competitors who don’t provide the same level of information, hence helping you attract the best candidates.

This process is similar to the one corporate advisers would use when raising funds from investors. A-Grade candidates will choose carefully where they want to spend their time and energy, so it’s important to be on the front foot to respond to all the questions they are likely to ask.

2. Building a role around a person, rather than a strategy

Nothing gives away your control of the process more than the old paradigm of ‘I’ll build the role around the right person’.

As with most things ‘design casts the biggest shadow’ when it comes to recruitment. When recruitment is a business strategy, it is essential that you get the right person in line with the defined requirements for a particular role. It is critical to be able to measure candidates against a clear performance profile, and the cognitive and behavioural competencies that have the greatest effect on success in your company.

On the other hand, defining a role to meet a person’s strengths, that bears no relationship to your business strategy, is unlikely to have the impact you’re looking for.

3. Selections based on unstructured interviews

Relying on gut feel isn’t enough when selecting A Grade candidates. Selection through unstructured interviewing rarely delivers optimal results.

And nothing will scare off a good candidate more than an employer making things up on the fly. This will just make you look disorganised.

Having a structured and objective assessment method will reduce the likelihood of relying on ‘impressions’, unconscious biases and personality and greatly increase the probability of making a better decision.

4. Hypothetical rather than evidence-based questioning and assessments

Structured interviews should focus on evidence-based performance questions, not hypotheticals. Avoid ‘what would you do’ questions in favour of ‘show us how you did this and the measurable results you achieved’.

5. ‘Cover-ups’ and failure to disclose the full story about your business

No executive expects to walk into a perfect world, but they don’t like hidden ‘surprises’ either. You need to be able to present the full story of your business. For example are there any major challenges that exist in the organisation right now? And which of these are most relevant to the incoming person? Do you have a sustainable and attractive business, or is this a turnaround play? If you’re at start-up or pre-revenue, what does funding look like, including key milestones or gateways.

6. Over-reliance on referrals and reference checks

From a risk perspective, it is important to run background checks, which (depending on the role) may include police clearances, ASIC, eligibility, qualification and medical checks. Reference checks have a low predictive validity rating, however, these should also be undertaken with structured questions relative to the role.

That said, don’t let a good or bad reference be the be all and end all. Just because a candidate was successful at a previous company doesn’t guarantee they’ll excel in your business. And likewise, a less than stellar performance elsewhere doesn’t mean they’re not perfect for your role.

7. Over-reliance on personality or personality assessments

Personality testing has low predictive validity (these should be used more in management awareness). Instead, conduct cognitive and skills testing aligned to the role. For executive roles, cognitive ability is a strong predictor of successful job performance in most roles.

Getting executive recruitment right

So what’s the solution? The reality is that to recruit A-Grade talent you need an A-Grade recruitment process to maximise ROI and minimise risk.

By applying a management consulting mindset, we have developed a quality A-Grade Recruitment method. The complete A-Grade Recruitment process includes the following phases (including over 30 sub-steps) 1. Design and Scope 2. Search and Attract 3. Screen and Select 4. Onboard and Retain.

The method itself is not overly complicated, but execution by the right people is key. Managed well, the end-to-end process can take around 100 man-hours to execute for executive roles, but your recruitment efforts will drag on a lot longer (and probably end in tears) without the right strategy in place.

Watch this video blog to find out more about the A Grade recruitment process versus the typical recruitment process.

The post Why do smart people get executive recruitment wrong? appeared first on Checkside.

1. Design and Scope
2. Search and Attract
3. Screen and Select
4. Onboard and Retain

Laying the foundation for a successful executive search

This article focuses on the ‘search and attract’ stage of the overall process, which can only come after a rigorous design and scoping process.

The design and scope stage takes the guesswork out of the search process so you can focus on attracting talent that can meet the key outcomes and competencies that have been identified for the role.

At the conclusion of the design and scope phase, you will have a solid foundation for your executive search, comprising:

• Messaging for the search phase with the emphasis on: ‘how the organisation and the opportunity is different in a way that really matters to A-Grade talent’.
• A detailed summary of all the information relevant to your business and the role you are looking for the executive to play (a detailed Information Memorandum – IM).
• A scorecard for the role that clearly explains what great performance looks like – outlining the purpose, KPIs, core responsibilities and competencies required for success (a Performance Profile).

Search and attract

Finding A-Grade people is never easy, but it’s not impossible. You need to understand where A-Grade talent ‘lives’, what they are looking for and how to reach them.

Companies that are great at recruiting know how to build and manage talent pools that they can tap into at short notice, but this requires dedicated time and effort. And running alongside any recruitment process should be an employer branding strategy to position your company successfully to the talent you are after.

Technology plays its part in attracting talent, but this is just a piece of the puzzle and the following should be considered as part of your total search strategy:

1. Targeting

The importance of the passive market cannot be underestimated, neither can your headhunting strategy. It’s often your best play, but you need to be organised. Leveraging talent pools, creating a target list of potential candidates and agreeing on the messaging and approach strategy is critical. Any lags or drags will hurt you.

2. Digital messaging

A combination of tools can be considered when messaging people online or via social platforms. It’s important to remember that each platform is unique and a ‘one message for all’ approach is unlikely to be as effective as applying filters and personalisation where you can (it’s worth getting expert help here).

3. Leveraging internal networks

Ideally, your team (and board members) will become a search party when it comes to finding talent. With a clear view on what an A-Grader looks like, you may be surprised by the depth of relevant talent your company is already connected to. An internal candidate referral and reward program may also be a relevant strategy.

4. Leveraging external networks

Your external advisers and stakeholders will often have a vested interest in helping your business succeed. Your one-page summary and a succinct messaging strategy can help them help you.

5. Advertise on select job boards

Whilst this is unlikely to have as much impact as a good targeting strategy, job boards can sometimes add ‘unknown’ talent to the candidate pool. The danger is that you will fill your pipeline with B and C candidates who don’t fit. You need to be as specific as possible when going this path.

Final Thoughts

An employer branding strategy to position your company successfully to the talent you are after should run alongside any recruitment process. This should include how you are different in a way that matters to A-Grade talent (such as your underpinning archetype and your employee value proposition (EVP) – things you provide for employees that they really value and might not expect to get with other employers.)

The post 5 ways to search for and attract A-Grade executives appeared first on Checkside.

Are you looking to hire a new executive? Too many businesses fail to nail the scoping process or rush the selection phase and then can’t get the top talent.

In our latest video, we examine the failings of the typical process for executive recruitment and discuss how using the A-Grade recruitment process attracts high performing executives.

The A-Grade recruitment process involves compiling an accurate Performance Profile, a detailed Information Memorandum, using a scientific Selection Process and an efficient Onboarding Program. Find out more by watching the video.

The post The A-Grade recruitment process vs the typical recruitment process appeared first on Checkside.

Depending on their work history, for most leaders, HR has always been positioned as a support function to them – ‘the people who take care of the HR and recruitment stuff that managers don’t like’. And because it’s seen as a cost centre, business owners, directors and CEOs often under-invest in HR resourcing (and get what they pay for).

And HR people often exacerbate the problem by either blindly doing what they are told to do, or not clearly explaining and connecting their initiatives to financial impacts for the business.

All this creates a vicious circle because inevitably business performance has everything to do with people – and that’s where the finger-pointing starts in the first place.

So what’s the solution?

For HR people

Financial KPIs form the ultimate scorecard for any business, so you have to connect your initiatives to the business numbers. Understanding P&L’s, balance sheets, budgets, financial modelling, funding alternatives, cash flow impacts and key ratios are all critical to HR professionals having more meaningful conversations with Managers and executive teams.

More than that, HR people need to be able to connect employees with key financial drivers to be able to focus and drive their performance in line with business objectives. Put simply, to be a valued business partner you have to learn, absorb and communicate in financial terms.

For managers

Don’t step over the importance of recruiting, onboarding and retaining great people. At the end of the day, your responsibility is to build teams of A-Grade people who can deliver high performance. Research shows that A-Grade people are 400%¹ to 800%² more productive than average performers. Work with your HR team or advisers to give them the chance to understand your business drivers to help you attract, develop and retain the people you need.

For business owners and CEOs

A business strategy will go nowhere fast if you don’t have a sound resourcing strategy to back it up. Nothing will make or break a business like A-grade people.

To quote Steve Jobs:

“The only viable strategy is to recruit good people, develop them, and retain as many of the stars as you can….”

Final thought

Growth businesses need to outsmart their competition with better recruitment and HR strategies and identify the best people to help them do this (those that actually have the capability to understand the numbers). Investing in the wrong HR people will only frustrate your managers, which brings its own problems.

¹Herman Aguinis and Ernest O’Boyle Jr., “The best and the rest: Revisiting the norm of normality in individual performance,” Personal Psychology, Volume 65, Issue 1, Spring 2012, pp. 79–119, onlinelibrary.wiley.com.

²McKinsey Global Survey: War for talent, refreshed 2012.

The post Why managers & HR don’t work well together (and what to do about it) appeared first on Checkside.

Our latest video looks at what makes an A-Grade executive recruit, and the significant impact these high performers will have on your business. We also discuss where most search firms come unstuck in the executive recruitment process.

An A-Grade recruit is in the top 20% of people available for a particular role and has an 80%+ chance of achieving the performance outcomes set for the role.

Steve Jobs said:

“…the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that you’re well advised to go after the cream of the cream… A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.” 

Watch the video to find out more.

The post How recruiting an A-Grade executive benefits your business appeared first on Checkside.

Recruitment Planning

As any engineer will tell you, design casts the biggest shadow on any project. It just makes sense to flesh out an IM (information memorandum), performance profile and assessment process that will set you up for success.

If you don’t nail these elements from the outset, you are at risk of allowing the tail to wag the dog (candidates taking control of the process) and dramatically increasing your chances of recruitment error.

Read More: Your approach to recruitment is probably flawed

The Executive Recruiters Approach

A strong scoping approach should be led by a recruitment strategy canvas, that incorporates responses to more than 20 key questions to make sure you are in control of your recruiting process and can answer all the things that an A-Grade candidate will want to know.

In order to craft an effective recruitment strategy, here are 10 of those questions you should ask yourself before you hire another key resource:

1. Can we clearly communicate our company strategy (on a page) – and how this new resource fits into same?
2. What do we really stand for –  our ‘non negotiable’ purpose and core values, that need to be upheld?
3. How are we different from our competitors, or trying to be different, in a way that really matters to customers? And how does this manifest as a UVP (unique value proposition, see this handy article for help creating one)?
4. How are we different in a way that really matters to A-Grade talent? What is our EVP (employer value proposition)?
5. What are the key outcomes we expect from this executive in the next 6 months, 12 months – and the next 3 years? In other words – what does success really look like for this role?
6. What are the major challenges a new resource will experience and that we want them to tackle and/or solve for us? (Don’t sugar-coat, no-one expects to walk into a perfect world!)
7. What are our authority and autonomy limits for the incoming resource?
8. What are the realistic advancement and succession opportunities for this candidate if they do a great job (don’t over-promise here)?
9. What is our defendable remuneration, incentive and benefits strategy – and how does this impact on the business?
10. What assessment tasks and tests will be part of our process to provide objective analysis of the capability of candidates for this role?

If you can’t answer all of these questions (and more), you can’t build an IM and you’re not ready to recruit quality candidates.

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