Our CEO`s best tips for hiring management professionals in Norway
Trends in the recruitment industry have indicated that hiring management professional`s costs more than hiring technical staff or talent for specialist positions within for example marketing and sales. There has also been a belief that it is more difficult to hire management professionals than for any other position. According to our CEO and Co-Founder, this shouldn’t be the case.
So, I took the opportunity and asked our CEO, Erik Falk Hansen, for his best recruitment tips to secure the best management professionals.
Right away Erik wanted to highlight that management professionals are often more open than others to embark on a new challenge once they have worked in the same company for 3-4 years. Additionally, many management consultants are motivated to move into management positions in-house for a company after their first 2-5 years in consulting. All this leads to more movement and a bigger turnover rate in management related positions.
So how can you as a company attract the best management professionals?
To make it more understandable and easier to follow, Erik has broken the topic down into three subcategories:
The process, information availability, and selling.
The process
A process in which all the talk is not just all about you as a company and what you need, but just as much focus on the candidate and the candidate’s needs, is a must. Additionally, it is highly critical that you have an agile mindset when recruiting management professionals and to ensure availability for conversations & interviews with candidates as they come along. The old way of doing things with long-lists, short-lists, and speaking to a group of candidates at the same time is long gone. A traditional process will often lead to you losing candidates to what can be your competitors.
So, meet candidates as and when they come along and ensure that they feel welcome when they meet you and inspired once you end an initial chat or an interview. The smoother the process, the more respect from the candidate will develop towards you as a company and with that more trust in the company, the board, and the position.
Information availability
Information is key! A poorly written job spec is just not good enough these days. Candidates expect more in depth information. The more information you can provide the bigger chance of you securing the best individuals.
Key information that should be available:
· Detailed prospect with in-depth information about the company, the role, and the people & culture (more than what is to be found on the company webpage)
· Full access & demonstration of documents used to sell your services or products
· Full access to business documents such as strategic documents, investor decks etc.
Selling
Yes, you need to sell the company and the position as much as the candidates need to sell themselves. The process and information mentioned above is already a part of selling, but you need to ensure that after every meeting a potential candidate leaves inspired and triggered. It is more than likely that a management professional, who is willing to move on to new challenges, is involved in other similar processes. So, it is up to you to sell the position as passionate as you sell your products or services to customers.
Our management recruitment record
Since we started in 2019, we have developed a specialism for recruiting management professionals. As per now 55% of our recruitment work is for management positions. Ranging from C-Level and VP-level positions to middle-management such as tech-leads, product managers, CSM and more.
Below you can find Erik’s contact information & a reference list of companies we have recruited and filled management positions for:
Airthings: CMO, Quality Manager, Digital Marketing Manager, Head of B2B, Supply Chain Manager, Engineering Manager Hardware, E-Commerce Manager, Customer Success Manager, Channel Marketing Manager
Skyfri Technologies: Chief Financial Officer, Head of People, Chief Operations Officer
Bookd: Chief Executive Officer
Kahoot: Head of Communications
PRA Group: Head of Analytics
PwC: Digital Finance Manager
Papirfly: VP Finance
Riftlabs: Chief Revenue Officer
Plateful: Chief Product Officer
Allente: Senior Sales Manager, Nordic Campaign Manager, Head of People,
Firi: Product Manager x 5
Argeo: VP Marketing, Tender Manager
Data Gumbo: Sales Director
Dignio: Head of UX
Gnist: Teknologiledere x 7
Green Cap Solutions: Chief Financial Officer
Huddly: IT Operations Manager
Minuendo: Executive Vice President Engineering
Miros: Marketing and Communications Manager, Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Technology Officer
Space Group: Chief Financial Officer
Wheel.me: Chief Product Officer
DoMoreDiagnostics: Chief Technology Officer
Erik FALK HANSEN: +47 40 43 54 93 | efh@avantgardesearch.no