Have Executive Positions to Fill? Now is the Time.

The COVID-19 pandemic means different things to different people. Individuals are learning how to work from home (or, in the case of essential workers, learning how to continue working in the face of a crisis). Some companies are thriving, others are taking a hard look at what it will take to pivot and weather the storm. And while hiring seems to be the opposite of what’s on so many minds these days, I’ve got a surprising connection between those at-home individuals and tenacious companies to share:

Candidate engagement numbers are higher than I’ve ever seen in my career conducting executive search.

When we send emails out to candidates we think may be a good fit for a position we’re helping to fill, we have historically good open and response rates. Part of this is because of Highline’s good reputation in the outdoor industry and part because of the industry itself; ours is a field that is driven by personal passion, and candidates tend to respond more favorably to positions they might have a personal affinity for. 

But over the past four weeks, we’ve seen open rates that are 50% higher than our historical figures, and response rates up to 70% higher. And that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? People who find themselves working at home suddenly have more privacy to take a call from a recruiter. They have more time to respond to emails, and maybe also a sense of anxiety about their own job in uncertain times. 

Okay, so what? To be clear, I’m not here to try and convince you to go out and engage with an executive search firm right now. I know that’s far from the top of any company’s budgetary priorities at the moment. But I do have a message for any hiring manager with confidence that they’d still like to fill a role that has been historically difficult to fill:

Now is the time.

If you have people on your HR team with extra time on their hands and you can task them with engaging candidates in a hiring process, you could be giving yourself a significant competitive advantage over other companies less willing to confidently connect with potential candidates. 

The key to really seizing this opportunity, however, is to remember our favorite hiring adage: “Time kills all deals.” Most states in the U.S. have stay-at-home orders in effect until at least May 1st, and those are likely to be extended. There’s no way to know if you’ll be able to bring a candidate May 1st or how many weeks later, so it’s critical that you space out your interview process to keep candidates engaged right up until the point when it’s safe to meet them in person.

For the time being, we’re recommending that you don’t plan on holding in-person interviews for the next six weeks. Pick a date roughly six weeks from now, and then work backwards from there to set up a series of interviews. And, just like everything else in this crisis, once you engage it’s going to be important to adjust your normal interview sequence and work with what you’ve got for now.

Case in point: The Zoom Interview. We’ve been using video conferencing for a decade now, and there may never be a better time to make it part of your process. But if a video conference is the closest you can get to an in-person interview, it’s a good idea to hold that option for later in the interview process. Start with a phone call between your candidates and the hiring manager. Then maybe a week later you move on to a phone call with another stakeholder, like someone in HR, who can lead a non-technical interview around cultural fit.

After the first few phone calls, when you invite a candidate to join you on a video call, they’ll see that as a milestone. That’s the kind of magic that keeps people fully engaged, intellectually as well as emotionally.

It all comes back to process, as it always does in executive search. Adjust your process for the current situation. Take advantage of an unusual opportunity to fill a difficult position. Engage your candidates, and let the process do its job. 

—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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