Still Struggling to Fill that Vacancy?

Firstly, three out of every four employers struggle to fill their vacancies. You’re far from alone. What’s more, executive recruiters will find it even harder. Even if you can find a candidate, are they really the one who will fuel business success? As executive search consultants, we understand the problems, and we have unique solutions.

The Problem with Executive Search

Shortly, we will come on to why it pays to call in a headhunter who specialises in executive search. First, let’s examine why you’ve got a problem in the first place. A number of different factors come in to play here:

• Transactional recruitment: If you view recruitment as simply getting someone signing on the dotted line of an employment contract, you’re entering into a transaction. You may, technically, fill the vacancy. However, attrition rates are high. There is a good chance that you’ll be looking again very soon.

Recruitment is expensive. An Oxford Economics report explains how, on average, it costs in excess of £5000 per vacancy in real terms.

Therefore, executive search should be more about identifying the unique candidate who is aligned with your organisational ethos. By bringing these individuals on board, you’ll get long-term buy-in.

• Looking in the wrong places: It’s tempting, when you have a vacancy, that you quickly pick up the phone and call a bunch of executive recruitment agencies. After all, do you have time for the laborious and time-consuming process of recruitment?

However, the best executives who will transform your business are not lolling about in executive recruitment agency databases. They are rarely active candidates.

Instead, the talent you need is already employed elsewhere. The top talent doesn’t listen to the call of traditional recruitment methods such as recruitment agencies, job adverts or job boards.

These individuals need seeking out carefully against the real criteria of your executive position.

• It’s lacking a personal approach: More and more individuals expect a personalised recruitment approach. They lose interest quickly if they believe they are on a conveyor belt whereby their own needs are firmly secondary to the needs of the organisation.

 It’s impossible to take an individualised approach to your vacancy when you take a one-size-fits-all approach, such as using executive recruitment agencies.

Conversely, an executive headhunter gets to understand your business and culture and ascertains what you really need. These executive search consultants are skilled at identifying that talent, in a personal way, and coaxing it into alignment with you.

• You’re not using specialists: Executive recruiters use specialist skills and attributes. You cannot attempt to identify talent without these skills. You may find someone, but you won’t find the person you really

To undertake executive search you need specialists who are dedicated to working for you, and filling your position alone. You want them to work diligently with your needs in mind. This level of service is only available from a specialist executive headhunter.

• You’ve got stuck with a tick list: Chances are you often turn to a job description and set out looking to tick off candidates’ skills against this. Get enough ticks and in they come.

However, this is a short-sighted approach to recruitment. Everyone takes time crafting a beautiful application and CV which is designed to tick those boxes.

Instead, you want to see evidence of an individual actually succeeding in the goals you’re focused on. You want to see how they are meeting objectives, elsewhere, even for competitors. This takes a completely different executive search approach. They may not tick all the boxes on the paper, but they have exactly what you need for business success.

How Executive Recruiters Take a Different Approach

Executive search consultants and headhunters take a radically different approach to recruiting at the executive level. They employ distinctly different methods and come out with long-term successful recruitment.

They do this in a number of different ways:

• They work for you: They aren’t splitting their efforts against other employers, or fitting your role to the candidates they happen to have on their books.

Instead, executive headhunters focus on your organisation and your goals. Through this they work with you to establish the real qualities and skills you need. They then go out and search to see where these qualities and skills are already being demonstrated in action.

In many ways, a true executive headhunter is the best salesperson you’ll have. They get to know your unique qualities so that they can sell the job to the most-suited individual who doesn’t even know they want to move.

• They use industry knowledge and expertise: Executive level recruitment differs substantially from recruitment at other levels. Executive headhunters understand this difference.

They work to understand not only your industry, but the executive levels within that industry. They work through a mapping approach to really identify talent.

• They network skilfully: Headhunters are perhaps the most skilled networkers you’ll ever meet. They work to build up contacts within your industry in order to position themselves in the right place, at the right time, for you.

In this way, they take an ‘ear to the ground’ approach whereby they hear industry news quickly, and hear recommendations and the like. This intense focus on your recruitment needs is impossible for executive recruitment agencies or standardised executive recruiters.

Don’t Keep Struggling to Fill that Vacancy

It’s time to stop hammering away at the same nail that’s not going anywhere. Instead, it’s time to transform your approach to executive search. Choose executive search consultants and you’ll realise that you can say goodbye to your recruitment struggles.

Instead, you’ll gain insight and talent which will propel your business from strength to strength.

To get Eagle Headhunters working on your hard-to-fill vacancies, give us a call on 0203 582 2663 or complete the form to the right of the page.