3 More Questions You Must Ask Your Next Executive Search Firm
04.06.24

3 More Questions You Must Ask Your Next Executive Search Firm

Making a good business decision always boils down to having the most complete and accurate information, and that starts with asking the right questions. When your outdoor industry, active lifestyle, or sporting goods business is choosing an executive search firm to team up with, you need to know what separates the outstanding from the so-so. And to do that, you need to ask the right questions.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we revealed “4 Questions You Must Ask Your Next Executive Search Firm.” Here in Part 2, we share an additional 3 must-ask questions.

Question 5

Ask this: How do you measure success?

Listen for this: Quality executive recruitment firms use benchmarks to measure success and continually strive to improve. Second- and third-rate operations don’t. You want to know whether the firm has benchmarks and, specifically, what they are. Here are some key metrics/benchmarks you want to hear about:

  • Time to complete a search, often referred to as average time to fill: Because you control the interview process, time to fill is not entirely up to the executive search firm. However, a good search partner can help you compress your internal interview process by helping you to 1) identify the stakeholders, 2) coordinate their schedules, and 3) establish a consistent interview process before the first candidate is even identified.
  • Time to first interviews: When you can expect to begin interviewing the first candidates. This is a more relevant metric than time to fill, but it also involves factors outside the control of your search firm. Identifying and qualifying the best candidates while ensuring that they have a good experience can take some time. How many people reading this right now could take a call from a recruiter out of the blue today and agree to an interview in a day . . . a week . . . or even two weeks. Many of you might answer, sure I’ll take the interview but that’s not the point. The difference between “tire kickers” and the benchmark of “qualified, available, and interested” becomes clear only when candidates have the time to seriously consider everything that goes into making a career change. Being the fastest to interview isn’t as important as making sure that the people you do interview are qualified for the role, genuinely interested in your company, and available to accept the role if offered. In most cases, it’s reasonable to expect that you should have a group of candidates to interview at around three weeks after the search kickoff.
  • Report frequency: How often you can expect progress reports. Building a customized search strategy and identifying and qualifying passive candidates based on your preferred direction can take several weeks. However, after that initial period of strategy and recruiting, you want to have a standing meeting at least once a week to keep the process moving forward at a quick pace, so those passive candidates don’t lose interest or, worse, start to become more active and look at other opportunities.
  • The search firm’s retention rate (stick rate) during the first 12 months following placement: Your executive search partner should know the success rate of the candidates they’ve placed. If they don’t, they’re not prioritizing long-term relationships with their clients or candidates. You want to hear about the placements the firm has made over the past 2–3 years. Confidentiality may prevent an executive search firm from naming names, but except for rare circumstances you want to make sure that these placements are still in their roles, or even promoted at least 2–3 years after placement.

What you want to hear: First, you want to hear that the firm has metrics/benchmarks to measure success. If they don’t, that’s reason enough to scratch the firm off your list. Second, you want evidence of competence and success as reflected in those benchmarks:

  • If the firm promises a specific number of days to fill, dig deeper. Until a firm knows your internal process and has several successful placements, they can’t offer a carefully considered estimate.
  • If the firm claims that you’ll be interviewing candidates in “less than a week,” they’re either banking on luck or recycling candidates in a database. Databases are useful, but the best firms reach out to passive candidates as well, and this takes time. Ask about their research and outreach process.
  • When you ask about report frequency, if the response is something like “When we have candidates you will hear from us” or “We provide reports as needed” or “We’re unable to define a cadence,” dig deeper. At the very least, you should be having a weekly check-in meeting with your executive search partner after the search has commenced.
  • What’s most important about a search firm’s retention rate is that they know what it is, they track it, and they demonstrate an awareness of its importance. No firm/employer can prevent turnover, nor can they predict every placement with 100% accuracy. The most valuable resource on earth is also the most volatile — humans.

Question 6

Ask this: What type of communication will we have?

Listen for this: It’s imperative that you set the parameters for your expectations and the search firm’s services up front. As a client, nothing is worse than a recruiter who has gone radio silent for weeks on end. Equally frustrating is for a recruiter to have emails or voicemails from you waiting for them on a daily basis.

What you want to hear: You want to hear that the recruiter will keep you posted with regular, scheduled, written reports, typically on a weekly basis.

If a search firm enlists a team of recruiters to work on your contract, be sure to acquire the names of each person who will be involved. In addition, ask how the entire team will stay up to speed with the progress. You don’t want to call someone on the team only to discover they have no idea what stage the search is in.

Question 7

Ask this: What is the current search load of the firm’s consultants?

Listen for this: The top executive search firms do not overcommit — they do not take on more clients or engage in more searches than they can effectively handle. It is a rare recruiter who can work more than five searches at a given time without the quality of their work beginning to decline.

What you want to hear: Be sure that your consultant can give your search the time it requires. Bear in mind that this is impacted by the level of service you are buying. A retained search (payment up front) will be given a higher priority than a contingency search (payment upon the successful onboarding of a candidate).

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