Our best tips for hiring leaders in 2024
AvantGarde Search have had the opportunity to recruit senior leadership positions for some of Norway’s fastest growing technology companies. This includes C-suit / Director positions for companies such as Airthings, Xplora, Allente, Working Group Two (now Cisco), Kahoot, Skyfri Technologies, RiftLabs, Miros, No Isolation, Minuendo, Cognite, Stack.by.me, D-Fetch, Nofence, Plateful, DavidHorn, Skeiv Ungdom and many more.
During the last five years we have experienced significant changes in relation to how companies build leadership teams, and in particular the last couple of years, due to the down-turn in the market and re-focus within tech scale ups.
It is predominantly Erik Falk Hansen and Masa Mandic within AvantGarde Search who work with executive search, while Ann Hege Frøseth has this responsibility in Copenhagen.
Here is some of the best tips from Erik and Masa:
Building a strong candidate profile
Engage the senior management team and board in building a candidate profile.
Build your candidate profile based on five key areas:
Qualifications
Experience and key competence
Personal attributes
Cultural-fit
Motivation.
Ref. the experience and key competencies mentioned above, divide this further into 3-4 areas: 1. Delivering growth and profitability 2. Cultivating high performance teams 3. Prepare for the future / strategy and process improvement.
Use the skills and accomplishments of the person currently in the position and embrace what changes you need in the new person.
Focus on the journey ahead. What is needed to take the position and company to the next level?
Be open to different skills and experiences. Perhaps this person can bring in even more than what you would expect? An “outsider” candidate is often who a company ends up hiring.
Recruitment process
An agile process is key and to deal with candidates there and then, instead of using a long-list / short-list practise (the best people will often have other processes going on and you don’t want to lose them).
Respect the fact that potential candidates are likely to already be in work. Make it convenient for them to enter the process.
Make sure potential candidates get to meet the rest of the management team and ideally also the team he/she will be managing.
For the highest-level positions, make sure that the candidate will meet Chair of the Board and ideally some of the board members.
Remember, this is a two-way process. The better the candidate gets to learn about your company the more likely it is that you will make a successful hire.
Use NDA’s as and when applicable.
If you are using external recruiters, make sure you have at least two meetings with the candidate without them present. Chemistry is key and this is harder to check if you have external parties involved throughout the process.
Masa will share some more of her thoughts about leadership recruitment on LinkedIn during the week commencing 13th of May.
Written by Erik Falk Hansen, Masa Mandic and Ann Hege Frøseth.
If you would like to learn more about how we work and how we can support our business with recruitment, feel free to reach out to Erik on efh@avantgardesearch.no / +47 40 43 54 93. We have offices in both Oslo and Copenhagen.