Hiring decisions for senior level positions can save — or ruin — businesses in any industry. The right person for the job will have a clear vision of the opportunities and challenges ahead, the maturity to make wise decisions, the drive to dig deeper when the going gets tough, and the leadership qualities that will bring together a hard-working team to push forward.
Businesses that have such people must make proactive efforts to keep them happy and committed to the company mission. Businesses without such high-quality talent in their upper echelons should make it a top priority to improve their recruitment efforts, as the introduction of stellar executives and team leaders will instantly raise the ceiling of their organisational potential.
Yet neither recruiting nor retaining high-quality leaders is as easy as it sounds. A generous salary and benefits package will always be important, but it typically isn’t the main reason for a highly capable leader to commit to a company. (And if it is the main reason, then it may turn out that getting paid is their overriding motivation.)
Companies should pay significant attention to culture, values, and character while recruiting and maintaining key talent. Do the person’s professional aspirations overlap with the direction of your company? Do they balance maturity with risk-taking at the same level you do? Would their leadership skills prove effective within the environment that your business is looking to establish? Do their personal habits and beliefs fit well within the set of values that your business tries to live by?
These questions will be hard to answer by looking through CVs alone. Yet they suggest the means for both selecting and attracting the right candidates, as well as the qualities to accentuate when looking to deepen your relationship with key talent you already have on staff. Learning to dig into such questions, and properly weigh the answers that present themselves, is a skill that many companies continue to struggle with, sometimes at great cost.
Pertinent Examples
Thai Airways has had a particularly difficult time retaining their top talent, with the resulting turnover costing the company a fortune in both direct (severance pay, recruitment costs, hiring bonuses) and indirect (team chemistry, staff morale, inexperience at the top) losses. The pandemic added to the company’s woes, but a rotating cast of executives complicated even that situation, since different leaders followed different recovery strategies — which tended to then fizzle out when they were replaced by other new hires with different ideas.
Similar issues plagued US-based internet search provider Yahoo!, whose failure to retain top talent led to inconsistencies in company vision as well as strategy. The company’s services soon became muddled and non-synergistic, a fatal combination in the fast-moving digital services industry. Both Thai Airways and Yahoo! eventually needed outside support to regain their footing; government bailouts for the former, and a buyout by Verizon for the latter.
A Car Is Only as Good as Its Driver
Just as top talent will never be interchangeable, neither will high-level recruiters. While skilled recruitment specialists can help your company find compatible experts within a complex talent landscape, and give them an ideal introduction to your company, recruiters with a less delicate approach may struggle at these tasks. The difference for your company may prove to be enormous.
Grant Thornton can help you find, and keep, the people who can push your company forward during this transformational period and beyond. This service may make the difference between building a foundation for future growth, and seeing your previous hard work crumble, as so many other companies have done in the past.
Note
This article is part of an ongoing series entitled 6 Ways Your Business Can Fail: A Guide to Recognising and Avoiding and Avoiding Critical Threats to Your Company's Success
To read the next article in the series, click here
To read the previous article in the series, click here
To download the full series as a report, click here
