Executive Recruiter

Candidates’ answers tell a lot about their follow-through on commitments and dedication to their jobs. Look for specifics in their responses.

Dedicated, committed employees will be able to speak to their efforts to ensure they do a good job in their roles. They will speak to prioritizing tasks and managing their time.

This question helps us get a sense of the leaders commitment to the mission or purpose of their previous company and how willing they are to make the hard decisions leaders have to make when faced with the trade-off of staying true to the company mission/purpose or deciding to pursue short-term interests.

When there is a shortage of skills and talents at a particular geographical location, the company tries to hire people from other geographical locations. These people are called expats. Sometimes the companies require only expats for certain positions - depending on their recruitment strategy. While hiring expats it is important to judge following qualities in them:

☛ - Professional qualifications and expertise

☛ - Adaptability and Flexibility

☛ - Cultural sensitivity

☛ - Family conditions

☛ - Open mindedness

☛ - Any past international work experience

☛ - Level of self-motivation

I’m looking for candidates to describe how they’ve done this in the past and how building a network helped them be successful. I’m also looking for creative or unique ways they’ve thought outside the box in order to get introduced to new contacts or reach their goals.

How they answer this question allows me to understand their communication skills, as well as their ability to build rapport and long-term relationships with others.

- Recruitment aims at searching for the talent and promoting the candidates to apply for the position while selection is the process of screening the candidates to fill a position with the most suitable candidate.

- Recruitment process get a pool of candidates for the selection process to work and choose the best one.

- Recruitment encourages more and more people to apply while selection eliminates unsuitable candidates to zero down on the best one.

- There is no contractual agreement between the employee and the employer in the recruitment process while after the selection a contract is agreed upon by the employee and the employer.

This question helps us understand if the candidate has a specific story about someone they coached/mentored/developed and the details of what that person is doing today. Specificity is the key here – details, and lots of them.

The purpose of a recruitment strategy is to hire the best talent a company desires in a timely and cost effective manner. Following are the main elements of an effective recruitment strategy:

☛ - Identifying the jobs

☛ - Type of candidates required depending on their - performance, experience, domain knowledge.

☛ - Sources to tab - job portals, campuses, competitor's employees, employee referral

☛ - Assigned recruiters

☛ - Process to evaluate and hire candidates

This is used to weed out unrealistic expectations. I routinely have executives at $100,000 ask for $150,000 to $200,000. That is just not going to happen. Even if I believe you are worth that number, Human Resources is going to shoot me down. Companies do not give fifty to one hundred percent salary increases. 20% to 25% is reasonable. I drop a significant number of candidates due to their unrealistic expectations. They are good, solid people, however they have an inflated opinion of their abilities. Kind of like when people sell a house - they typically price it way too high.

Not always, but oftentimes, if a candidate is interviewing with your company, he or she is also interviewing elsewhere. Finding out what other positions candidates are interviewing for provides you some additional insight. Are the roles they’re applying for similar to yours or completely different?

A follow-up question asking what the candidate likes about the other positions he or she is interviewing for can be revealing as well. Candidates’ responses can help you understand more about what they’re truly looking for in a new position and may help you determine if the position you’re hiring for matches their career goals.

Equal employment opportunity means an equal and fair treatment for all people. There is no discrimination among the employees or candidates on the basis of:

race, age, sex, marital status, disability, sexuality, pregnancy etc.

Equal employment Opportunities help in overall development of both the society as well as the organization. They help the organizations in creating a good image for themselves and discharging their social responsibilities.

This question helps us understand the depth of a candidate’s introspection and reflection ability.

This question helps us understand the candidate’s approach to conflict resolution. Again, specifics matter.

You can expand on this further by asking about a disagreement with a superior and/or a colleague.

I like this question because it gives hiring managers insight into how candidates handle conflict at work. Are they naturally confrontational, quiet and secretly stewing or balanced when it comes to conflict? If they cannot give you an example, they may be hiding something.

Many organizations outsource their recruitment services to the placement agencies. The main advantages of doing so are as follows:

☛ - It allows the organizations to focus on core and strategic activities

☛ - It leads to optimal use of resources and time

☛ - It provides access to the expertise of the placement agents

☛ - Reduction in recruitment cost

Although I enjoy my work, and ________ is a great company, my current situation does not allow me to grow. When I heard about this opportunity, it seemed to be more in line with my career goals. (Always be positive, but give a reason for leaving)

This question helps us understand their leadership style. If the candidate is a huge fan of Jack Welch for example, and the company we represent has a collaborative culture, it’s a good data point that might suggest misalignment in culture and values.

This is not IBM in the 1960s. No one is going to buy your house off you. And it’s not the Recruiters responsibility to find your spouse a job. Contingencies translate to you performing the job search on your own. Recruiters like flexible executives that will do whatever it takes to move their career forward.