Gift Yourself Your Top Candidate This Season

Hiring executive talent is a tremendous challenge any time of year, but it’s no secret that the holidays take things to a whole new level. Just last year we made the rather bold assertion that the holidays are where hiring deals go to die for so many reasons. Budgets are running out. Schedules are getting packed. Attentions are drifting away from the office and towards all the trappings of the season. Virtually every element of a successful hiring is working against you if you’re trying to make a deal happen by the end of the year—or so it would seem.

Bold statements aside, your big hiring deal doesn’t have to sit on ice waiting for everybody to come back down to planet Earth in January. If you’re in the middle of this notorious 40-day stretch between Thanksgiving and the new year with an open executive position that needs to be filled now—not in a month or two months or by the end of Q1—there are three steps you can take to make sure anyone you hire now will actually show up for work come January. 

1. Stick to Your Process

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Executive search is all about process. At Highline Outdoor Group, for example, we utilize tons of checklists and tools (like the one you can download at the end of this blog post) to make sure we’re properly evaluating candidates, keeping them engaged throughout the interview process, and making competitive offers so we can land our #1 choice at the end of an exhaustive search. 

During the holidays, it may be tempting to skip critical steps in your process. Maybe you’re under pressure to get a deal made as soon as possible, or key stakeholders aren’t as easy to get together for interviews. But the moment you rationalize away steps in your proven process is the moment that process starts to break down. An executive hire is a big job with long-lasting effects. Keep everybody involved in the process focused on the desired outcome so you can make sure those effects are a blessing and not a curse for your business.

2. Don’t Skimp on Candidate Experience

No matter the time of year, a major factor in actually attracting the executive talent you need is the experience you give them throughout the interview process. Employer brand was certainly a hot topic in 2019 as employers have struggled to compete in a tight labor market. That involves thinking critically about your candidates’ journeys with your brand and the messaging you put out there about your culture, but it also perhaps more simply comes down to showing your candidates the love, so to say.

Though your budgets might be getting tight with a new fiscal year just around the corner, focus on giving your candidates a fantastic experience when they come out to meet your team and interview with stakeholders. Fly them first class. Put them up in a nice hotel. Take them out for a good meal. These things all take money, and some of them take a real investment of time to make sure your candidates have a valuable and engaging experience with your team. Don’t let waning budgets and full holiday calendars get in the way of your best opportunity to leave a memorable impression.

3. Proactively Address Counteroffers

No employer is immune to counteroffers. We wrote earlier this year about the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding Josh McDaniels’ eventual rejection of the head coach job in Indianapolis in favor of his current position as offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. When a counteroffer can keep someone from taking a head coach position in the NFL, you know that means it can keep anyone from taking any position, no matter how good it looks on paper.

At the end of the day, it seems like a long-term contract that would keep McDaniels’ children in the same school until graduation is what kept him in New England. So often it’s not salary or a job description that keeps a great candidate from accepting a new position, but everything else in their life that will have to change. Taking a new executive job can mean uprooting an entire family. It can mean new schools, new communities, and great distances separating families from the ones they love. And while this is the case no matter the time of year, the holidays are an especially emotional time that may make candidates more susceptible to a counteroffer from their current employers and what it would mean for their personal lives. 

Download the resource at the bottom of this page for a comprehensive guide to proactively addressing counteroffers before they have a chance to ruin an important deal during the holiday season and beyond.

The Hidden Benefit of Holiday Hires

While I’ve written a lot about the unique challenges of the holiday season, I’d be remiss to not also mention that this season does bring one often overlooked advantage to a hiring manager. If you do everything right—follow your process, give your candidates a great experience, and work to combat counteroffers before they come—this is the absolute best time to get a candidate excited about joining your company. After all, what’s the first question your uncle always asks at your family Christmas party?

“What’s new?”

What better time for a candidate to share the exciting news of a new chapter in their lives? Focus on giving your ideal candidate some good news to share with their loved ones this season, and you just might find that hiring during the holidays doesn’t have to be as hard as you think.

—Tony O’Neill, President

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About the Author: Tony O’Neill is the Founder and President of Highline Outdoor Group — the purpose-driven executive search firm for forward- thinking outdoor industry and sporting goods companies and brands.

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