During my over 25 years as an executive recruiter I have witnessed many companies that do not know how to hire appropriately. Instead of a systematic process of executive recruitment, they tend to haphazardly go about scientific recruitment, engineering recruitment or IT recruitment. For example, the first response from a recent, potential client was, “when will we see resumes?” This is a sign that this company’s management recruiters do not have a clue as to how to engage in the executive search process. Instead, we religiously follow a very systematic 3-step process to ensure that our client’s needs are met.

Our time proven 3-step process includes:

1. Meeting all representatives of the company’s executive recruitment team on location to develop a comprehensive needs analysis doctrine. This incorporates reviewing stated job descriptions and uncovering hidden employment necessities unique to that company’s corporate culture. This comprehensive consultative process comprises sharing additional parameters, that may not have been considered by the internal management recruiters, based upon the distinctiveness of the company’s work environment and limitations of the current talent pool. We spend unlimited time on this very important step before pursuing the remaining steps because it provides the roadmap of the executive search process and ensures that we surface only those candidates who truly meet our client’s unique needs!
2. Engaging in an exhaustive process of sourcing all viable candidates including: a) employing our 150,000 candidate internal database b) utilizing all relevant mass databases (e.g. LinkedIn or Monster) c) contacting all related industry associations and utilizing their internal databases and jobs posting sources and d) directly recruiting candidates from agreed upon competitors.
3. Applying thorough background investigations on all finalists including: a) employing our unique 12 Commandments of Recruiting techniques (Please go to http://www.strategicsearch.com/technical-recruiting-tips/ to learn more) to both further screen candidates and uncover other leads who may be better qualified b) meeting finalists face-to-face to uncover additional information c) checking references d) confirming educational credentials and e) applying our trademarked Accu-check™ criminal and civil investigation process. Please go to http://www.strategicsearch.com/accucheck.php for more information on this unique process. The key is we have a former FBI agent on retainer who utilizes the “trapline” network of retired FBI agents to comprehensively cross-examine all finalists for R&D, engineering, scientific, IT and technical positions (e.g. Chief Technology Officer or CTO) to uncover any “skeletons” in their past.

Following this 3-step process to technical recruiting will not ensure that you hire the optimum candidate, but not doing so will increase the probability of a hiring error. Remember that needs analysis (1st step) is probably the most important of all three steps. It is governed by the old computer adage, “garbage in garbage out.” This is the case because even if you do a very good job of sourcing (2nd step), but if you are sourcing in abundance the wrong types of candidates, then this is counterproductive for your organization. So it is very important to both: a) spend a lot of time on step #1 (needs analysis) before moving on to the other 2 steps and b) thoroughly engage in all 3 steps during technical recruiting. This will greatly increase the probability that you uncover a star R&D, scientific, engineering, IT or technical performer that makes major contributions to your company now and in the future.

What is your experience with technical recruiting?