George (name changed), the CEO of one of our clients, rang me and said “David, we’ve got a problem”.
Turns out that two of five direct reports to George were proving to be the wrong fit. They were causing disengagement of talent in their teams and weren’t collaborating with the other three peers, an essential requirement of a fully aligned leadership team.
These two people had been recruited by an executive hire firm with a long connection to my client. They excel at relationship management.
I said “George, please don’t exercise your guarantee with the recruiter. Let me help you with this.”
George agreed and over the next three months we respectfully let the two misfits go and replaced them with superb talent who have gelled with the company and already returned the investment.
At our final debriefing session after on-boarding the replacements, George asked “What would you charge to do this whenever we need to recruit leadership?”
I checked back and asked “Did you like what we did to help you choose your shortlist?”
George said “Our HR team learned a lot from that experience. We feel confident now that we can ourselves gather the talent choices we need identify a shortlist. It’s what happens once we have a shortlist that I’m concerned about. That’s what I want you to take care of.”
I said “Are you happy with our fee for what we did this time?”
George paused for a moment then said “Actually David, it was much less than I expected so I want to check if that’s what it’ll be going forward, or would you impose the same fees the industry does?”
I said ‘No. For our clients we are disrupting the industry, not only in our fee structure, but also in what and how we deliver. The fees going forward will be what we’ve just settled on.”
George smiled, nodding.
Why We Can Disrupt
Because we provide executive coaching, leadership development, performance enhancement and retention services to our clients, we have a deep understanding of their leadership requirements, their culture, crucial areas and how they operate.
Because we are also experienced leaders, not academics turned consultants, with track record in strategy and operations, including selecting and developing elite operators and leaders from across the military, law-enforcement, intelligence and commerce, we know how to identify, recruit and embed the right talent.
We are adept at the science and art of talent identification, attraction, development, performance and retention.
We can also help our clients utilise technology that greatly assists in the long-listing to shortlist of potential candidates.
Saving Money and Building Internal Capability
We help empower our clients to search and gather attractive talent prospects for the role and from that choose a shortlist. They know better the broader spectrum of talent they wish to choose from.
That saves them money and builds their capability.
They no longer need the expensive traditional services of recruiters, who:
- promise much from a hard-flogged database,
- give comfort by a guarantee that too often must be used
- share blame because they (the recruiters) most often offer a choice, not a specific recommendation of order, based on hard evidence.
- fail to deliver effective onboarding assistance
- too often abandon the shortlisted candidates not chosen, damaging the client’s reputation as well as their own.
Because of the high rate of misfits (Gallup says 82% of management hires are the wrong fit) we wondered about traditional recruiters’:
- skill to do the deep research, measurement, interviews and stress test
- experience of being leaders themselves in both a strategic and operational sense
- ability to help the company onboard the executive, a common cause of executive failure in the first eighteen months (note: guarantees are often only for six months)
We do applaud them for their ability to build relationship loyalty based on the guarantee rather than performance.
Often, recruiters don’t challenge the client to keep the position open a bit longer to get the right fit. Are they too keen to fill the post and receive the fee?
The Greatest Disruption Activity Is Here
The shortlist:
- profiling and assessing behaviour, motivators, EQ, talent and acumen;
- deep interviewing based on their profile assessment; requirements of the role and the culture; stress testing in videoed realistic scenarios.
- We deliver a report recommending the order of preference from the shortlist, with reasons and evidence.
- We onboard the successful candidate for six months, ensuring success and a great return on investment for the client.
- We debrief the unsuccessful shortlisted candidates, helping them and protecting the reputation of our client and ourselves.
Why Are Our Fees So Much Lower?
- Executive hiring is not all we do. But we are deeply involved in the client company’s leadership coaching, development, performance and retention, which is a perfect background to enable very effective executive hiring.
- We empower our clients to gather the long list then create the shortlist. That capacity building is excellent development practice for the people and their systems.
- We don’t have to spend as much money on marketing and image and relationship protection that traditional recruiters need to.
- We don’t carry the fixed overheads of traditional recruiters.
- We operate in a niche space and choose our clients carefully.
Our Mission
Helping our clients select, develop, performance enhance and retain the right leadership talent, to underpin their sustainable success and prevent them from suffering Gallup’s horrible management misfit statistic.
Are You Interested?
If you wish to explore the possibilities, please contact David through our website contact page.
