The Holidays Are Here. Is Your Hiring Deal Dead?

A few years ago, I was working with a major outdoor gear brand looking to hire a new vice president of brand. The first round of interviews was scheduled for the week before Thanksgiving, and we had an onsite panel interview set for mid-December. As can be expected this time of year, a critical flight was canceled due to weather, so the whole interview process had to be pushed back to the first week of January. Holiday schedules made it impossible to make everything work in December. The CEO got pneumonia over Christmas and ended up being out for two weeks. That pushed the interview back to the end of January—almost 10 weeks after the initial interview took place. In the meantime, the preferred candidate lost interest and withdrew from consideration.

This is a sad tale of schedules gone wrong, but it’s unfortunately a more common case than you might think. The reality is, if you’re in a situation like this and looking to close a new deal in the last month of the year, it’s simply not going to happen until the middle or end of January at the earliest. The holidays are where deals go to die, and that’s only because of one much bigger rule of the executive search industry: time kills all deals.

Let’s explore the many ways that extended timelines can be the death of executive hiring deals—all of which come to a head during the holidays—and the steps you can take to head these risks off.

1: Over time, schedules get harder to align.

Let me ask you a question: Can you give me two hours in your schedule tomorrow to talk about your business goals? With such short notice, chances are that’s a big, “No.” If you happen to be reading this during the holiday season it’s even less likely you have hours of time to take away from your most pressing year-end projects. Now multiply that by everybody who needs to be available for interviews during your search. At the end of the year, people are burning up their PTO. They’re going on vacation. They’re spending time with their families. And when someone checks out to spend time somewhere warm with the people they love, they aren’t coming back to the cold mountains for another interview. And as if all that wasn’t enough, the holidays present other challenges, too. Flights can get delayed due to weather, or overbooked with holiday travel. Accommodations might be tough to book. Cold weather can be a tougher sell in some parts of the country, too. All together, that just means it’s going to be tough to make the most of what little time you may have at the end of the year to make a deal happen.

The solution? Start blocking off schedules the moment you know you’re going to be taking on a search for a new executive. It doesn’t matter if it’s the holidays or the middle of spring; the longer you wait to align schedules, the harder it’s going to be to find a time that works for everybody. Keep in mind that this is also true for the candidates. The last thing you want to do is skip over someone who might be the best person for the job just because packed calendars get in the way of a meeting. Plan for up to 90 days to fit in the interviews and meetings necessary to complete a full search.

2: Over time, other opportunities arise.

Let’s say you started a search in October. By late November or early December, you’ve managed to engage with several qualified candidates—but now you’re at a standstill while you figure out how you’re going to get everybody together for interviews.

When you’re dealing with this level of talent, you have to understand that your position isn’t going to be the only option on the table. The longer a deal takes, the more time there is for a great candidate to get a promotion, or to see a leadership or circumstance change at their current job. To focus on their next big bonus. To become open to taking other recruiting calls once we activate them. And while it’s reasonable to expect that everybody is going to move a bit more slowly during the holidays, it’s not reasonable to expect a highly talented individual is going to wait for two months for an interview.

The solution? Get serious fast. When I start exploring a position with a candidate, I do take a little bit of time to get a feel for their personal and professional goals before getting serious and doing a deep dive into their life. But once that deep dive begins and I do introduce a candidate to a position and start facilitating discussions with a hiring manager, I do everything I can to keep the conversation going. If the candidate is seriously engaged, they may be in a position to take some extra time as you get your ducks in a row during the holidays. But if they’re not, a month of radio silence might be all it takes for them to seriously consider a promotion or another offer and slip through your fingers.

3: Over time, enthusiasm wanes.

I’ve been in the executive search business long enough to know that humans are the most valuable resources on the planet, but they’re also the most volatile. People are, well, people. That means we’re subject to our passions. We’re always looking for the next big focus for our time and talent. That means the longer a deal takes, the more of a chance there is that someone will just stop caring. As quaint as it may sound, that enthusiasm (or lack thereof) could be the difference between a deal that pops and one that fizzles.

The solution? Evaluate your candidates well before entering into formal conversations. Some candidates may be interested in hearing you out if you have a great position, but their interest may be passing at best. It’s important early on in the hiring process what motivations a candidate might have for meeting with you. If they don’t seem serious about making a big change in their career, you may end up with a candidate that goes dark halfway through the search process—or, even worse, you may end up with a mishire.

The secret to success: maintaining momentum.

The key to combating the effects of time is to maintain momentum throughout the search process. It’s not like you have to get a search done in 30 days to make it work. Many searches take 90 days or more, because there are a lot of moving pieces when you’re trying to find the right professional, financial, and personal fit between a company looking to grow and a talented individual who can make that growth happen. If your search looks like it will bump up against the holidays, keep engaged even at a small level and start planning now—if you know people will be out around Christmas, plan interviews for the first week of January and don’t wait until after New Year’s to get those meetings on the calendar. What’s critical is that you don’t let the randomness of schedules or something as simple as a long radio silence get in the way of making that hire that’s going to take your business to the next level.

—Tony O’Neill, President

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