5 reasons why you can't hire a top manager

First, let's define who a top manager is. This is the so-called C-level pro, where C stands for chief. These are the first persons of the company who occupy management positions. Examples: CEO (chief executive officer), CFO (chief financial officer), or CTO (chief technical officer, technical director or chief engineer).

Specialists of this level are not used to posting their resumes and fighting for a place. Quite the opposite - companies are actively fighting to get such an employee. Having swapped places with applicants, you start doing everything so that an exclusive specialist chooses exactly you: talking about the company, offering a competitive salary, actively writing letters in an attempt to lure away employee. But all in vain: several months of active hunting do not lead to a result.

Let's face it, working for your company must be truly exciting.

Social package, flexible hours, office in the city center - all these conditions are not considered unique for a long time, especially for C-level specialists.

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Therefore, before starting a complex search, consider what you can offer the candidate. Perhaps you'd better lower your requirements and look for someone “simpler”?

If you are still confident that you are the very "cool, dynamic company", let's look at five main reasons why first-class professionals do not join your team.

1. Unattractive company presentation

Your business line may seem unpromising or uninteresting for exclusive white collars ", if you use template phrases, do not celebrate the achievements of the company, make a dry and monotonous description vacancies.

Compare:

• Option 1: “We are a young, dynamically developing company. Our team consists of professionals who know their business and confidently achieve their goals. We are looking for an ambitious, stress-resistant, sociable person who wants to grow and develop with us! "
• Option 2: “We have been on the market for two years, we have opened offices in Moscow, Riga, Budapest. Our products are used by Gazprom, VTB and Amazon. A month ago, we launched a project on face recognition: the system collects information about a person in 0.2 seconds. Our team includes graduates of Moscow State University, CEU, University of London. We are looking for a specialist who knows how to bring a site to the top of Google-search, where new customers are hiding, what a backlink is and what is the difference between Kissmetrics and Google Analytics.

See the difference?

Think about how your business can hook the pros. Do your business social mission? Do you offer room for experimentation? Working with modern technology? Perhaps you are launching an ambitious startup that is about to be on a par with Forbes leaders and involves extraordinary challenges?

Each area can become attractive, the main thing is how you present it.

2. Uninteresting tasks

Along with the line of business, high-level specialists are attracted by the tasks themselves. Monotonous assignments devoid of zest can drive you into melancholy already at the moment of their listing in the “Responsibilities” column.

Compare:

• Option 1: “Creation of informational reasons, preparation of press releases for the media, communication with the media within brand promotion companies, drawing up technical specifications for SMM-specialists and copywriters, setting tasks and setting goals for the implementation of a PR-campaign. "
• Option 2: “Communication with representatives of leading digital-media: Forbes, Inc., Rusbase, RBC, as well as with The Times, The Guardian and The New York Times as part of the international promotion of the company. Participation in conferences Startup Village (Moscow), Sibos (London) and IBC (Amsterdam). Work in marketing programs Ahrefs, Buffer and Serpstat, KPI analysis and other tasks for brand promotion with the ability to implement your own solutions. "

The first option is formulaic formulations without specifics and attractive sides. The second one reflects the specifics of the tasks and outlines the directions of growth for your top.

Specialists like it when there is an opportunity not only to manage a department, but to influence the future of the company. Top-level IT specialists, for example, show interest in a job when they are offered a high zone responsibility, make it possible to implement their own solutions, use new technologies, experiment.

3. Non-competitive working conditions

If your competitors provide specialists salary above the market average, options (an excellent format of motivation that works well in the world of top management) and other pleasant bonuses, then your task is to offer more.

Study the vacancies of other companies, identify priorities, think over more favorable conditions - and success will be on your side.

Remember that the remuneration must meet the requirements. If you are looking for a candidate with specific skills, offer more attractive terms. You must admit that in companies working with clients around the world, specialists with knowledge of the Japanese language are more highly valued than those who do not. Especially in organizations whose lead partner is, say, Mitsubishi.

4. Geographic restrictions

High-level specialists rarely work remotely: it is important for them to be constantly close to the team and actively participate in the affairs of the company. But this does not mean that you can only find pros in your city.

Modern specialists are very mobile and are eagerly considering options for moving. Working with top IT specialists, I notice that many of them refuse to consider an offer if it does not provide an opportunity to move to another city or country. For example, we recently managed to hunt a candidate from St. Petersburg for a company located in Nizhny Novgorod.

Trust me, relocation is an unusual and attractive experience that can motivate a top specialist to accept your offer.

5. Ineffective recruiting

Have you read the article and realized that you have everything to attract a C-level specialist, but you could not find your candidate? It is possible that the reason lies in the very process of recruiting.

Think you are using all the search channels or are you only using well-known sites? How do you communicate with candidates: write template letters or approach each one individually? How many selection stages do you have? Are you asking for a test item? This is just a series of questions that will help you navigate and answer: are you negotiating with specialists correctly?

If you have little experience in high-level recruiting, it makes sense to contact recruiting agencies. If you do decide to start searching on your own, here are some simple but effective tips:

1. Clearly indicate the profile of the candidate, that is, the knowledge and skills of the specialist that will be needed for work exactly on your team. Before starting the selection, you need to know exactly who you are looking for. How you motivate a specialist depends on this.
2. Do not arrange long interviews and do not give tests in the first stage. A candidate will not spend 6-8 hours on an assignment when he already has several job offers. This is especially true for the IT sector. In my practice, there have been cases when 100% of candidates refused to consider a vacancy, as soon as they found out that they had to pass a test task before meeting the head of the company personally.
3. Ask for feedback from every candidate who turned down your offer. This seems to be pretty obvious, but, in my experience, many people do not consider it necessary to find out the reasons for a negative decision.

conclusions

Luring a high-level specialist is not an easy task even for prestigious companies. Assess your real capabilities: don't try to hunt the Facebook CTO if you can't offer better terms. Be honest with yourself and your candidates.

If you are firmly convinced of your capabilities, do your best:

• Tell us about the attractive aspects of your business.
• Set interesting tasks and add some variety to your workflow.
• Offer higher salaries than competitors and consider additional motivation.
• Look for specialists in other cities and help with the relocation.
• Build your recruiting processes so that candidates are more willing to apply for your job.

I'm sure you will succeed. Good luck finding your ideal!