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IRES Retained Insurance Recruiter
As the talent pool tightens along with a strengthening economy the questions we receive each week during client consultation conferences all have a common underlying factor: Positions they have tried to fill internally and used to be routine are now going unfilled for months and even beyond a year.
They want to know Why?
Why would a challenging, professional, mid-management position that seems to compensate well (emphasis on seems) remain vacant a year or more?
First there’s the obvious: We are well out of the recession which is long behind us and all the easy pickings between Peter and Paul have been snatched up between 2010-2013 … the first years of relatively easy hiring post-recession.
There are other reasons but a few crop up consistently and during our 24 years of placing hundreds of millions in salaries through recruiting globally we find these are the most common of all. They tend to apply regardless of where we are in the economic growth curve.
Company Name, Brand & Ethics/Culture
Let’s start with the first: Is the company recognizable? If not does the product or service it provides hold a value proposition over its competitors? It’s not enough to boast that your company has been around “…fifty years…”. The new generation of professionals want to know “Fine but what does that do for me?”
Once you have addressed the first two of this four-part equation, the next items involve ethics and culture. These go hand-in-hand with the name and the brand it conveys.
To borrow a phrase from the late comedienne Joan Rivers, Can we talk? If we are really being honest with one another we all know that many companies talk the talk but return to status quo in their day in and day out routines. The “brand” they promote … whether it be during an interview at a conference table, via its sales reps or business development managers, is not often aligned with reality. And that’s a problem millennials and generation X’ers are especially keen to be focus on. Any crack in the mission, public relations statements, or recruiting pitch is likely to be viewed as bigger problems lurking behind the curtain.
One high-ranking company executive confided in me recently that at every corporate meeting they discuss “career development” of their junior executives and “succession planning” for their aging execs (most of which are in their early to mid-sixties). But he was disgusted with top leadership talking a great talk, but never following up, implementing, or ensuring anything gets done. While junior executives hired, trained and promoted for the purpose of succession planning were all quitting in droves nationally after they read the same hand-writing on the wall after 2-3 years with the company. They were bleeding at multiple wounds and doing nothing to place a tourniquet on the blood flow!
This Forbes article discusses how company culture must align with what is discussed and described during interviews or individuals are likely to develop mistrust.
To read the full LinkedIn article CLICK HERE
If you would like a complimentary audit of your senior professional, managerial, or executive-tier recruiting project …whether your position is in Hong Kong, Zurich, Frankfurt, London or Chicago … call us for a complimentary, discreet, respectful analysis of your search and its prospects of being successfully fulfilled:
Chicago & Western U.S. – (312) 725-3391
Northeastern U.S. – (973) 300-1010
Southern – (704) 243-2110
