Finding and hiring the right executive for your private equity firm is key to success. TSG Search focuses on finding, screening, interviewing, and vetting candidates EVERY day for our clients. We have created a system that works for our clients.
Clients often ask us what they should do to get the best candidates. The first answer, of course, is to hire us. But here are a few additional tips to help you get the best candidate for your firm.
- ABS – Always Be Sourcing
The best candidates are usually the ones that are currently employed. This makes the act of sourcing even more powerful. Having a deep database of qualified candidates that you have a relationship with is key. Understanding their strengths as well as their goals will help you put the right people in the right places and create a successful match.
- Expand Your Searching Resources
As mentioned above, you should always be sourcing candidates. But sometimes the candidates are not in your database (because you’re not constantly sourcing!). You absolutely should use job boards. But that’s just the start. Consider contacting industry organizations, advertising in industry publications, and networking to get in front of the right people.
- Start with a Great Prescreen
Prescreening is crucial in order to make the experience for the firm and the candidate the best possible. Titles can be deceiving when it comes to executives. Knowing what the person’s duties were, what their accomplishments were, and how they handled situations is critical. This can’t be understood on a resume or in an online profile. It has to be a discussion with a recruiting professional that know what he/she is doing.
- Culture Fit
During the prescreen, you also need to be
looking at more than just the skill and accomplishments. The culture fit is
just as important to make sure the person you are hiring is set up for success.
How do you determine culture fit? Interviewing and screening is important. You
should also contact professional references, personal references, and organizations
that the executive participated in.
- Consistent Success
Some executives find success in one area but not another. Maybe they had a great team? Or maybe the company was already on a successful path? The key is to look at their path of success and confirm that it has a consistently successful leadership rise.
- Interview – Dive Deep
If you did a great job sourcing and prescreening, now it’s time for the in-person (or video) interview. This is the time to dive deep. Since you’ve already done your homework on the prescreen and done your research on the culture fit as well as the consistency of success, you can now go into more detail. Talk to the candidate about the decisions that they made. Ask them about specific times when they made the wrong decision and had to make corrections. Ask them about initiatives they backed and how that worked out.
- Knock It Out of the Park with Onboarding
You have sourced, screened, interview and now hired the best candidate for your firm. It’s not time to high five. It’s time to set this executive up for success.
Create a clear plan of action that gives measurable objectives with timelines, connects the executive with the right people, provides the right resources, sets the tone, and helps them build relationships for long term success that will ultimately lead to massive EBITDA multiple exits that you and your shareholders will celebrate together and come to expect.
Have any questions or need help with your recruiting? Contact us by calling 502-531-9890 or emailing us.
TSG is an executive search firm focused on recruiting the highest quality candidates for our private equity firms looking for top-level executives with proven track records of driving EBITDA, cash flow, ROI, and enterprise value?
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