Great Questions to Ask A Potential Executive Recruitment Company

Turning to an executive recruitment company to find candidates for the key positions in your company is the best way to streamline the recruitment process and to reduce the time necessary for finding the perfect match. This also means that the first step that your organization needs to make is to find the right search firm – here are some tips about the best ways to identify the best partner and about the questions that you need to find out the answers to before hiring a executive recruitment company.

How to Identify the Best Search Firm

One of the best ways to find the right recruiter is to turn to industry colleagues to get recommendations. Talk to people you know in your industry and ask them whether they have used an executive recruiter before, then try to find out as much as you can about the companies that were recommended to you. You can also turn to management consulting firms for recommendations or you can carry your own research online to find suitable recruiters and to check their reputation.

While searching for a recruiter, be aware that each industry is different, each field of activity comes with different features and requirements, so make sure to hire a recruiter that specializes in your industry.

executive recruitment company

Questions to Ask While Assessing Potential Executive Recruiters

During the interview with potential recruiters to hire, you should ask general questions as well as questions that will give you more insight into the recruiter’s processes and specializations. The general topics should include the company’s longevity in the business, what they know about your organization, their fee structure (there are two structures used by recruiters, retained and contingency-based) as well as topics related to the company’s recruiting policies and processes and to the ways they protect the confidentiality of any data they might obtain during the recruitment process.

While interviewing an executive recruitment company about their specialization and industry insight, you should ask questions about the various stages of their search process, about the search parameters that they use for identifying and approaching suitable talent, about the assessment and the background checks performed to find out more about candidates and the methods used for presenting candidates to key decision makers in your organization (as the candidates are identified or simultaneously). You should also find out about how the interviewing is conducted, whether the recruiter will perform a preliminary interview or they will send the candidates to your organization for interviewing and whether the recruiter’s services also include discussions with your company about the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate.

Get References

At the end of the meeting with your potential recruiter, ask the person you are talking to provide your references, even if you have found the company based on recommendations from industry colleagues. When you receive a list of references, take your time to call several companies on the list – the more people you talk to, the more you will find out about the recruiter, so reference checking is an essential step in finding the right executive recruiter for your company.