According to a recent Korn Ferry Briefings podcast (The Frenzy To Find Work), around 77% of job seekers were ‘ghosted’ (abruptly cutting off contact/all communication) by companies last year. Studies from the platform Indeed also indicate similar percentages in recent years.
According to a report from the hiring platform Greenhouse, around 45% of job candidates have been ghosted after an initial conversation with a recruiter. Researchers also found that candidates from historically underrepresented backgrounds are 62% more likely to be ghosted after a job interview. These studies may be U.S. focused but I’m guessing this aspect of India market is not different.
During recent years, we saw companies complaining about candidates doing the same. When the job markets are strong, the pendulum tends to shift.
All parties seem to be overly focused on the short term. The reasons for ‘ghosting’ on either side could be many. This leads to classic “Lose-Lose” situations.
How can we think “Win-Win”?
Companies need to figure out at a bare minimum, to use technology (most tools nowadays support this) effectively to at least inform/update the candidates on where they stand (even if it’s a short message). Behaviors/habits of recruiters/recruitment teams need to be aligned. In many cases, these teams are short staffed and therefore, recruiters tend to focus/prioritise completely on closing open roles. Companies need to ensure that their brand value and trust do not erode by ignoring this important aspect.
Similarly, candidates also have a responsibility to inform companies on where they stand in terms of their decision making.
Think long term, win-win. This builds engagement and effectiveness both ways.
During many discussions with leaders and connections including those seeking leadership roles, the thought of sharing my notes from executive search experiences came to mind. This was really interesting experience coming from the outside, as a practitioner with some experience in consulting. For most people outside, the executive search world tends to be inaccessible and bit mysterious. Therefore, for the benefit of many who wonder, I thought of sharing my following observations and perspectives. There may of course be other varying views and opinions.
The executive search area also seems to be an expanded arena nowadays with varying degrees of search agency brands, quality and approaches. The top players continue to focus on retained search. In retained search, consultants are paid a portion of the search fees by the customer in advance for their focused efforts to hire for the role, with a high degree of certainty to closure. This would be structured in different stages.
On the other side, the contingent search approach tends to focus on fees payment by the customer after closing a role. Many players in contingent search space over the years have progressed up the value chain by asking for a nominal advance fees to close senior roles and provide minimum timeframe guarantees as the higher end search agencies would do. They have slowly expanded their own business pie through existing customer relationships.
During recent times, due to the breadth of players/experienced independent consultants, price sensitivity and risk management from a talent acquisition perspective, contingent search players seem to have gained a larger pie of the leadership search business. For some organizations, this also becomes a lower risk alternative to explore a leadership role search with an existing partner who may be already working with them on other roles.
The leading executive search brands still try to differentiate by staying focused on the top roles, retained search approach and developing strong relationships with customers and senior leaders. At the same time, they also work to expand their leadership networks to offer additional leadership services like coaching, consulting or organization development related elements, mostly through trusted partners with core competencies in respective areas.
General structure within executive search firms
A typical executive search firm team tends to be small and highly focused. A normal high-level structure consists of a research team, consultants of varying experiences who focus on the ground work for successful delivery of search assignments and senior consultants or partners who mainly focus on developing the business, while also leading the relationships and engagements. There would also be a small marketing or editorial team, to help build visibility and collaboration in the market. For those who consider moving from the corporate side to consulting or search organizations at senior levels, sales and customer relationships become core part of the responsibilities and often the big challenges.
1. As a customer, how could I know the quality of a search firm?
An easy bet and approach for an assessing customer is to look for the top search firms that have a global brand and have been around for a while. In practice though, irrespective of the brand, it would be important to understand the quality, experiences of the consultant who would directly work on the assignment, strength of the research team, overall approaches, expectations alignment on both sides regarding the actual process, culture fit with the firm and consultant, and details on deliverables.
At the senior levels, the more well-known firms tend to get better responses and perceived more positively from experienced leaders in established organizations who are potential candidates. They also tend to adopt a proactive, focused sourcing approach for strong passive candidates and don’t post the roles. The networks do matter on all sides. There may also be differences in approaches for firms.
2. If someone from a headhunting firm reached out to me, what does that mean?
Not everyone who tries to connect results in an immediate role. Sometimes, it may be for networking, marketing, business opportunities, initiatives that are trying to be cultivated while at other times, as part of early pipeline for potential talent pool at the start of a search. These connections can be two-way bridges and provide opportunities to build relationships over the longer term, even if the conversation would not be about a specific job. Many times, being part of initiatives can also be a win-win in terms of visibility and branding for the larger market. Just being curious about varying perspectives may also result in valuable learning.
Consultants tend to speak with many leaders and may hold interesting points of view, intelligence about the market dynamics. We also live in a highly connected and symbiotic world, with multiple overlapping connections. How one responds or behaves, tends to leave lasting impressions. Personal leadership brands do matter. If the opportunity to connect feels uninteresting or sense of low value, it would also be okay to politely communicate and retreat. Many times, unprofessional behaviours lead to uncomfortable scenarios on both sides.
3. I am looking for a change. How do I go about it with an executive search firm? How much does it help?
In my observation, the possibility of finding a role through one’s own connections and networks would be much higher than through a search firm. Search firms tend to have few senior roles with very specific client requirements in terms of competencies and experiences. While this may work out at times, the probability of everything matching at the right time require a high degree of coincidences. If one ends up getting into a search process, it also becomes really important to manage oneself professionally.
There is no harm in networking with consultants proactively through shared connections, events or assignments beforehand. It may be a better strategy to be visible in the market before the need arises. Many leaders tend to become internally focused with little time to connect outside and only think about the outside world. Many candidates also won’t receive a response while trying to connect with head hunters for a job.
Candidate responses tend to fall low on the list, especially for senior members. This may mostly happen because there is no immediate, relevant role in pipeline, focus on new assignments/business development and ensuring successful delivery of existing assignments. With the smaller teams and limited bandwidth, responding to candidates tends to take a back seat. For candidates, it is also worth noting that the professional search firms or employers don’t charge fees from the candidates during any search assignments. Professional search firms only bill the companies or their customers they support.
4. I am looking to move internationally. Could a leadership search firm help?
From my observation in India, the majority of leadership searches seem to be local or country specific in nature. For the bigger firms, even within a country, there may be multiple offices with regional or local focus. There may be very small number of searches where candidates may be sourced from other countries or through collaborative search projects involving more than one country offices.
In selected cases, companies may be open to look at returning citizens and support relocation (e.g., from the US to India). In few other cases, companies in certain regions like the Middle East may be open to high quality talent from larger markets like India. These roles tend to be very few and highly specialised.
The probability of moving internationally seems to be higher for employees who explore internally within multinational organizations. Most other international movements in my known networks seem to have happened through either first or second degree connections, personal networks or country residency options. The probability of moving internationally through a search firm seems comparatively low.
As general disclaimer, it would be helpful to note that firms work in different ways and my experiences have been influenced by related environments.
2018 was quite an interesting stretch year for me working deep in APAC talent acquisition (TA) world, and I thought of putting down some reflections. Unlike my 2015 reflection, this post focuses on the core TA work mostly.
So, here we go:
Talent acquisition is very much a team sport. To close a strong new hire, having a great recruiter is just not sufficient. It is equally important to have a highly engaged hiring manager, aligned interview panel, recruiter and coordinator who work together in synch.
TA exists to deliver value for the business. When the focus moves heavily to costs and metrics, it is easy to lose sight of what the stakeholder values. Many times, working closely with a business stakeholder requires a deeper understanding of their context beyond the process/numbers, and flexibility to change views or approaches. Vice versa, it may also require the leaders/hiring managers to stay flexible to change past views.
From a process perspective, aligning an interview panel at the beginning of an interview process on key assessment areas, clarity on each member’s expected area(s) of assessment saves a lot of time in the end during the debrief to get to a hiring decision.
Stakeholders in general prefer transparency, proactive communication, sense of urgency, commitment to close roles and visibility on progress from TA.
Sometimes, activity on a requisition goes slow for a while and at other times, it picks up at short notice with high urgency, depending on stakeholder engagement or organizational dynamics. Candidates may notice this change in pace as well and it helps for TA partner to manage expectations on timeline proactively and continuously.
One of the key actions for a TA leader is to continuously influence key stakeholders to explore different approaches, ways of working and establish a constant, trusting feedback loop.
It is very difficult, almost impossible to keep all stakeholders happy always as the demand cycles, priorities and markets shift.
Internal and external networks of contacts are always very helpful, especially for sharing learning/experiences and, to connect with new candidates and partners. Internal referrals can make a big difference.
How a TA team or hiring panel interacts (or don’t) with candidates or external partners reflects the company’s true employer brand/culture and the individual brand as well.
Candidate drop offs after offer acceptance are part of TA partner’s life (bigger than initially expected) and therefore managing the risk also becomes relevant. It was surprising to note how some experienced candidates in India disappeared after accepting an offer and became unreachable afterwards. Shortsightedness is surprisingly common. Most criticisms on social media are about recruiters or companies but there is another side to the discussion with many unprofessional candidates.
It is always relevant to keep candidate pipelines active. Also from a candidate’s perspective, important for final round candidates to remember that the TA team can always reach out to them sooner than expected, when someone drops out or the same role may open up few months later.
Many candidates try to reach out/connect with recruiters on LinkedIn. For this approach to be more effective and workable (especially for an unknown connection), it would help the candidate to proactively do background research on open roles listed by the organization and specify interest and role.
While exploring partners or agencies, it’s not enough to see the big staffing brand, rather the experiences relevant to area of work and attitude to support. Great partners are flexible, exhibit strong ownership and partnering abilities on the requisitions they work on. They also respond well to improvement feedback and suggestions, thereby building trust.
Piloting a new approach is a great way to explore a new approach before institutionalizing. We piloted a new AI tool with a partner who was willing to flex outside their norm and we ended up extending the contract.
Workforce planning is not just about headcount and financial planning. If we lose the perspective on type of skills, criticality and labor market dynamics, it is equivalent to running half blind.
If there is no ongoing hiring/development program for young talent, it will be more expensive for an organization in the long run to pay premium for hiring lateral talent.
As with any other function, there are always different styles and preferences at play – within the team, outside with stakeholders and partners. One needs to continuously learn and adapt to the different styles at play to make the most and work through the difficult ones.
Team members tend to respond better if they feel their inputs are heard, trusted, supported and if they have autonomy, growth and learning.
When there is a mistake on your/team’s side, it helps to discuss with the team in a safe environment, own it and initiate corrective actions to avoid them in future (rather try to hide or mask it). There is something to improve continuously.
As operational as talent acquisition may seem to be, there is always a strategic perspective to ensuring a credible TA function.
Best wishes for a great 2019…
About Tojo Eapen
Leadership Coach, Consultant, HR Leader with diverse, global experiences (U.S.A, Europe, APAC).
Master of Human Resource Management from Rutgers University, New Jersey, U.S.A. Recipient of the U.S. Garden State Council SHRM HR Leadership Scholarship.
Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum, India.
Certifications: MBTI, Hogan, RBL Leadership Code, SHL 360, Team Management Profile, NeuroLeadership Results & Team Coaching.
Facilitated coaching sessions, workshops and programs for Nokia (Helsinki, London, Berlin, Global/Virtual), Rio Tinto (New Delhi), QuEST Global (Global/Virtual, Bangalore, Kerala), Matrix Partners India, Women Inclusive In Technology (India).
Mission: Enable healthy, purposeful, and impactful organizations, through leadership knowledge and wisdom.
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