7 Tips for Hiring the Best Leadership

Executive Recruitment

Over 95 percent of companies say that they regularly make mistakes when hiring talent for their business. Every time you hire someone new, it’s an investment in your employee’s skills, talent, and experience. When you make errors with your recruitment, this can cost your business a lot of money down the line.

Leadership is an important quality. It doesn’t come cheap either. You need to learn from the tips of top executive recruiters to discover how to hire better. Check out everything you need to know to improve your recruitment success rate in the blog post below. Let’s get started!

1. Take Advantage of Your Existing Network

Up to 80 percent of professionals say that networking is important to success. But, they usually mean getting a job. What about the advantages of using your network to recruit the top talent for your business. 

Instead of advertising a job post publically to any old stranger. You should reach out to your network for referrals.

Does a former colleague know a job seeker with real talent and a wealth of experience that could be perfect for your vacancy?

You never know who is already within your connections on LinkedIn. Just remember, talented and successful people know others like themselves.

2. Be on the Lookout for Talent Always

When you reach out to a buddy for help even though you haven’t spoken to each other for a while, it can appear a little transactional. 

Formal recruiting is important if you want to fill a position urgently. But, you need to be constantly on the lookout for prospective hires in your everyday life.

When you’re at a dinner party, you can always mention that you need a new professional IT guy. Next time you’re at a conference, talk about how you require an experienced project manager.

Speaking face-to-face with people is crucial if you want to ensure that you get the right talent for your opening.

3. Unearth Whether the Candidate is Curious

If you want the quality to separate the best leaders from the rest, don’t look beyond the characteristic of curiosity. Leaders need to be lifelong learners about the world, industry and themselves.

Some of the most successful people in business are especially curious. This usually makes them more creative and imaginative as well. How can you identify if someone’s a curious individual?

You could ask them what book they’re reading at the moment. Whatever the answer is, this will give you an insight into how much they think and reflect on the world around them. From Bill Gates to Warren Buffett, many of the most successful people read around one book per week.

You can also determine whether someone’s curious if they ask you any questions. This is a great signal that they want to know more.

4. Pay Attention to Their Body Language 

It takes around four minutes to make a first impression of the person in front of you. Just remember that over half of this is down to body language alone.

You may already be making judgments about how the other person holds themselves. But, when you’re interviewing the candidate, make sure that you consciously consider this too.

Watch whether they make eye contact with you. This shows they have the confidence that they are right for the job.

Are they sitting up straight and do they constantly move their hands making gestures? These are kinds of signs you need to be aware of when hiring people.

5. Discover If They Are a Team Player

Many people think leadership is about shouting out commands and giving other people orders.

But, you want to find a leader who also knows how to work as part of a team. Natural team players don’t always have to be in charge of everything.

This is a difficult quality to discover during an interview or from someone else’s resume alone. You need to set them a task with other people.

Any simple team-building task will help you discover whether they have the necessary skills to fulfill the role you’re looking for.

Do they insist on doing everything themselves? Are they more about bringing everyone together to collaborate?

6. Question What They’re Passionate About

Just 13 percent of American workers say that they’re passionate about their job. It’s almost impossible to be a great leader unless you are passionate about what you do.

But, just because a candidate isn’t already passionate about their job, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t become passionate.

You simply need to find out what they’re passionate about now. Make sure this relates effectively to the job you’re recruiting for.

They may say that they want to make your business more sustainable or encourage people to be kinder and work together. Whatever it is, this shows someone who has the potential to be a really effective leader.

​7. Focus on Evidence on Leadership

If you want to hire a leader, you’ll find that many people say that they are leadership material themselves.

The truth is that only around 10 percent of people have innate leadership qualities that you need to recruit for your business.

You need to find ways to determine who has leadership skills. Don’t just listen to what they say in the interview.

Always looking for evidence helps. Ask them to show you examples of when you showed leadership. This is always the best way to determine whether to hire someone.

Tips for Hiring Leaders From Executive Recruiters

Hiring for leadership roles isn’t easy. You could make a mistake and undermine your own business.

But, you shouldn’t simply go with your instinct on this one. You need to do your homework and learn from executive recruiters who have experience and knowledge to share.

Do you want to know more about how to recruit faster and hire better? Discover everything you need to know about recruitment on our website.