Talent Trade Tidbit - What Happens BEFORE a Search Goes to Market
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How does ThinkingAhead gather stakeholder input before launching a search?
Prior to taking a search to market, we conduct calls and surveys with stakeholders, board members, staff, important partners to the organization. And then we review a summary of all of that information with our hiring committee.
How do hiring committees use discovery summaries to define top candidate qualifications?
And that is to really determine as a group what the most important qualifications are that their new leader should bring to the organization. And that's soft skills and technical skills. And then we help them map back to that throughout the process and refer to it. And this helps us have a balanced evaluation of candidates, both subjectively and objectively, to help them make a very well-informed decision on who they want to hire to lead their organization.
During that discovery process, we're talking with stakeholders about strategy. We're talking with them about challenges.
How do you translate organizational strategy and challenges into competencies candidates need?
We're understanding what the organization is facing within the next two to three years and not just today. So surfacing also some misalignment if there is any early. It's good to catch it so that we don't have to recalibrate in the middle of the search. We translate a lot of those vague needs into real competencies and a job description can't necessarily capture what success looks like after a year. So we love to capture that as well to be very clear and transparent with candidates about what's expected. We spend a lot of time also talking through the challenges and asking them questions about their experience.
How does ThinkingAhead evaluate candidate experience to ensure they can hit the ground running?
It's really important for us to understand what they've been through and the problems that they've had to solve so that we know if they can hit the ground running in our new organization. Our willingness to recalibrate when needed is so high, but we also want to make sure that we're understanding everything from the beginning so that we don't run into any surprises during the search. Most of our searches are completed in about 12 to 16 weeks, but speed is never the goal. We do work with a full team of researchers.
What timelines, team resources, and recalibration practices guide a successful search?
We have three researchers that we partner with. We have someone who specializes in marketing and someone who specializes in content as well. I think that we have had to pause a couple of searches. It doesn't happen very often, but when we have and recalibrate it, it's made a huge difference. We're pretty proud of that.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
How does ThinkingAhead gather stakeholder input before launching a search?
0:09–0:27
2
How do hiring committees use discovery summaries to define top candidate qualifications?
0:27–1:03
3
How do you translate organizational strategy and challenges into competencies candidates need?
1:03–1:36
4
How does ThinkingAhead evaluate candidate experience to ensure they can hit the ground running?
1:36–2:08
5
What timelines, team resources, and recalibration practices guide a successful search?
2:08–2:26