For the past 20+ years I’ve been privileged to help leaders navigate their career paths as a Partner/Senior Executive Search Recruiter in Investment Banking and Capital Markets.
The question I am asked most often by CEO’s, Managing Directors and Department Heads is: “How do we get them to join us?”
Followed almost immediately by: “How do we know they will remain with us?”
Here are the answers:
Let’s be clear: recruiting passive candidates who are firmly entrenched with large non-vested equity packages and non-compete agreements is not easy. Their current employers are wise enough to anticipate that their top talent will continually be poached by their competitors and do all they can to retain them. The reasons they do leave are always based on a combination of responsibility, visibility, compensation, and validation. Always.
As a recruiter, it takes investing time to properly build credibility, trust, and full-on honesty with candidates about their decision to remain with their current firm or to depart. Oftentimes they don’t understand why they aren’t fully engaged, particularly if they are being compensated to ignore the internal red flags. Talented leaders don’t have a history of quitting, and it goes against their DNA. They usually depart only when the “push” factors are either too strong to ignore, or the “pull” factors win out from the external firm.
Trust is the crux of most relationships: business or personal. Work often blurs the work/life boundaries and those who prioritize their careers grow accustomed to receiving validation from their managers and their teams. This responsibility can weigh on the shoulders of leaders to remain in place versus bailing out on their mission and burdening their team with an inordinate workload if they choose to depart. Most leaders would rather remain in place and feel fulfilled in their current work.
Trust is the ultimate trigger for the decision to depart.
Almost every leader I’ve recruited has decided to change paths based on trusting a new manager over their current manager or employer. Leaders leave their managers as much as they choose to leave their organizations. This speaks to both questions:
The driving force behind the decision to join a new organization stems directly from the candidate experience. Translation: trusting their new employer. Meaning from the first outreach to the final on boarding. Organizations who realize the importance of every single point of contact with candidates, are those who exemplify a high-quality candidate experience throughout the process. This directly translates to a higher rate of securing a successful close, and a decrease in reneging of offers. Candidates were building trust with their new organization from the outset, and that trust grew with each subsequent meeting.
Trust must also be maintained throughout the tenure of the career for leaders. Much like a marriage, if trust falters or is neglected over the course of the work experience, the result will be small tears in the fabric of the relationship. This leaves room for competitors to enter.
Retaining leaders takes work. But it’s rather simple. Keep your promises, particularly those made when initially recruiting your team. Communicate. Even more when challenges arise. Silence is a relationship killer. Be sure there are outlets to express feedback in an honest fashion, with no fear of repercussions. Most resignations bring information to the CEO’s they wish they had sooner, to be able to remediate. Toxic factors within an organization grow larger when they are ignored, but will recede into the background if courageous leaders are encouraged to speak their truths. Be sure to create the kind of work environment that encourages speaking about the challenges. Most organizations hire consultants simply to unearth the truths known by their own employees, who fear sharing it. The costs associated with replacing senior talent are exponential, not to mention the decline in morale.
Performance reviews don’t work. Honest conversations do work. Business leaders who probe for the truths, and welcome feedback from all levels are the leaders who are most apt to recruit successfully and retain their top talent, even in the face of the fiercest competition.
Julia Harris Wexler
President APA Search
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