5 Behaviors for Landing Top Outdoor and Active Lifestyle Industry Talent

Behavior matters. Just as good parenting demands that we set clear expectations, establish guardrails, and maintain consistency to ensure that our children understand what is expected of them, attracting and retaining elite outdoor and active lifestyle industry talent requires adopting certain behaviors within a structured recruitment and hiring process. For more information on this, please see our previous post Spinning Your Tires with Executive Hires? Get A Proven Process.

Within that structured process, the following five behaviors can make a significant impact on your success in hiring and retaining the top talent from within and outside the sporting goods, active lifestyle, and outdoor industries.

1. Set Clear Expectations

When recruiting top talent, letting candidates know what the interviewing, decision-making, and hiring process is — and what their role is in that process — sets clear expectations that enable you and your candidates to operate within established guardrails. Keep in mind that, most likely, this isn’t the candidate’s first rodeo. Because of the profile you’re attracting and positions for which you’re hiring, chances are good these executive-level candidates have either been down this road before or have played a central role in it in a current or previous outdoor industry job. So, there’s no need to speak with them in a tone that’s unreflective of their prior exposure to process.

Be clear about your expectations while being sensitive to those of candidates. Here are a few suggestions for clearly modeling and communicating expectations:

• Meet deadlines for scheduled calls and interviews.
• Encourage candidates to communicate their expectations — be it salary, relocation requirements, paid time off (PTO), signing bonuses, and anything else that’s important to them.
• Ask candidates to be honest with their motivations for making a career move.
• Urge candidates to present a thoughtful response when asked questions like What are your career aspirations? and Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?
• Require that candidates provide references in a timely manner.

2. Maintain Consistency in Communications

During your initial contact with candidates, be specific about how communication is to be handled — by phone, email, or in person only, for example. And suggest that it’s best to stick to that mode of communication. Deviation suggests to the candidate that you don’t have your act together. Similarly, part of your evaluation process may hinge on the candidate’s ability and willingness to follow your lead in how and when they communicate. If they’re unwilling to play by your rules, that may be a red flag or something you’ll want to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand.

3. Prepare Everyone on Your Team

As we covered in Avoid Scope Creep in Your Search for the Perfect Exec, numerous stakeholders may be involved in the executive search and recruitment and hiring process, and everyone on that team needs to be on the same page.

Make a list of all the stakeholders and be sure they have received and understand the following details:

• A description of the role the person will play in your organization
• A statement of this person’s mission in your organization
• The job description the candidate received
• The company profile communicated to the prospective candidate
• Anything else that the candidate has been provided about the company

Anyone in your company who participates in any phone, video, or in-person interview needs to be doing so with the same understanding about the position and company. Nothing’s worse — especially in a candidate-driven market — than interviewers who don’t understand the position, the company’s stated goals and objectives, or other information that’s been shared with the candidate.

4. Provide Feedback

Feedback keeps candidates actively engaged and interested, builds trust, and helps to alleviate the stress associated with the uncertainty inherent in application and hiring process. Here are a few opportunities for providing feedback:

• Upon receipt of an application, cover letter, resume, or other digital or paper document from the candidate
• When scheduling an interview or other event
• When following up after an interview
• When requesting additional input, information, or documentation
• Anytime — to let the candidate know the important role they’re playing in the process

Feedback enables candidates to remain connected to the process and understand, in part, how they — and the process — are faring.

5. Be Prepared to Woo

Keep in mind that in candidate-driven markets, some hopefuls will want to be wooed. Making a good first impression by setting clear expectations for both sides — yours and theirs — is part of the wooing process. It shows the candidate you’re serious and offers a glimpse into the company culture they’d be joining if they were to be extended an offer to work for your sporting goods, active lifestyle, or outdoor industry company or brand.

Remember, your behavior during the hiring process matters just as much as your leading candidates’ does during the hiring process.