Posts Tagged ‘interview selection’
How to Get the Executive Job Interview
“Just get me in front of the CEO!” says Josh Furman, one of my executive job search clients. Josh has been laid off his lucrative Vice President position at a local high tech company, and has no patience with learning the art of keyword populating, or search engine scouring. He just wants to get in front of as many hiring authorities as possible. Why? Because he is positive that he can talk his way into a job if he can just get the face-to-face executive job interview.
Well. There is a lot to say regarding this theory in today’s hiring climate. Yes, it used to be true that executives could network their way onto the CEO’s schedule – a golf foursome, a chance meeting at the local Starbuck’s on Saturday, comp tickets to a Mariner’s game, a coincidental airport introduction – all schemes that used to work. That was before CEOs were saddled with the long, iterative “best practices” for hiring that now include reams of due diligence, behavioral interviewing processes, corporate culture match screening, background checks, and all sorts of rules for the actual executive job interview that will take place after all candidates have been properly vetted.
So, as an out-of-work candidate seeking that executive job interview in today’s market, what are your options for jumping right into that face-to-face meeting?
- Ignore the new hiring realities and keep trying the old ways to get in the chair across the desk from the CEO.
- Seek out a Recruiter who will market you into the CEOs
- Be proactive and provide the CEOs with all that best practices data they need upfront in order to qualify you for an executive job interview sooner.
Selection 1. is simply an approach that is no longer effective in today’s hiring market.
Selection 2. has its problems since professional recruiters don’t market candidates out to CEOs. They make their money by obtaining a specific assignment from a company to fill a specific job within that company. The company pays the Recruiter for presenting only the exact matches for that position. However, on occasion, you will find a Recruiter who offers to “market you” to several companies, but beware of this. If a Recruiter sends your resume to several companies hoping for some interest, and any of those companies have a policy not to pay recruiter fees, then you will be ignored for the next 6 months as a candidate for any position within those companies – since your hiring would now be associated with a headhunter fee. IF you choose to use a recruiter, make sure they will only “market you” to companies with whom they have a written fee agreement. And even then, you’ll have to consider that companies in this economy may prefer non-fee-bearing candidates.
Selection 3. brings us to a definitive market advantage that executive candidates can possess. If you put yourself in the shoes of the hiring authority, you’ll realize that they may give preference to a candidate who does most of the due diligence work for them. This is a world of full disclosure now. No longer do you play cat and mouse in the interview process. Hiring companies want to know, and have ways to find out, EVERYTHING about you. For instance, candidates who provide not only a resume, but the results of recent skills tests, assessment tests, or annual reviews will be put in the pile that is further down the line in the process and closer to the actual executive job interview stage than those with only a resume submitted. Providing written references or endorsements pushes your candidacy further, and a professional video interview can actually put you over the top of the uphill climb for position, since it can eliminate the entire first interview phase of the executive job interview process.
In this candidate-rich market, competition is tough enough for those few executive positions that open up. And internal HR and Recruiting departments are swamped with applications, making the hiring process that much longer.
Just get yourself in front of the CEO. Get a jump on the competition. Be first in line. What this means in today’s market is to take the initiative to do the upfront work for the hiring company. Provide a complete package of yourself as a candidate including most of the due diligence that they will need to collect in order to make a decision. Increase your chances of getting that executive job interview. And by that point, you’re practically hired.
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