CEO Hiring: How to Find the Right Leader for Your Business
I have witnessed boards of various startups taking managerial decisions – CEO hiring – which in my view are exceptional but not necessarily perfect. The attention tends to be on “experience in an area” of the startup, regardless of how fit for purpose any candidate is. I have attempted to break my thinking down to the 8 major characteristics that I pay attention to when I help with CEO searches for portfolio companies that need a new CEO – a win for the company and the investor since the company is at the inflection point – to the next stage of its evolution from a start-up to an enterprise.
But in the situation where it’s possible to grow with time the skills of the founder, in my opinion, it’s better to find something in between so that they can grow and have a chance to apply what they have grown. But if a CEO is needed, this approach is wise:
1. Describe the Baba-Yaga
Instead of writing a spec, which generally looks like a god in hard-to-meet form, start with a dozen top CEO hiring that you can annotate. Find a few good candidates and process their positives and negatives to form a spec based on the realistic candidates and then pass these markups to your recruiter. The specifications I receive from the recruiters are always too average and I find them useless.
2. Look for the Appropriate Search Firm
There are such small search firms that are closer to the understanding of what constitutes an entrepreneurial candidate especially in recruitment direction than the larger firms that always focus on filling top-level positions in F500 companies. I nadia over the years not come across individuals who have a good head for such companies and their talent. Smaller firms are closer and know more about startups and growth-oriented companies.
3. The Strategic Sportsperson as Opposed to the ‘Aficionado’
I tend to look for a person who is less immersed, or even almost ignorant, in the field in which the startup operates (Seriously! You don’t want too much of the old way of doing things brought to your approach). A little bit of experience in the relevant industry is beneficial, however, too much of the ‘old hand experience’ causes the hardening of the attitudes and practices while a startup is trying to do something different and change the business for the better. For instance, when recruiting for a sterile disposable company, beware of excessively experienced candidates with medical devices. However, the applicant must have experience of working in advanced engineering other than MedTech. The latter, complemented by a broad technical background and a slight proportion of medtech experience, is expected to be more creative and faster in execution. Recruits from traditional retailers to lead new e-commerce startups with very new customer acquisition strategies tend to be ill-advised.
4. The Golden Goose, not the Golden Egg
Make sure that one of the priorities is to find the best CEO hiring builder and an effective leader. That will help you to overcome any engineering issue, any FDA stage, and much more. A great team builder who can hire the right team, who can strategize and advance the mission, and who can get things done is better than an individual with an all too specific know-how of doing the job in a large corporation with a predictable structure where everything from the last year’s strategy to next year’s remains the same. To be able to recruit and build an awesome team is important for those launching new products, and recruiting above the companies punching weight. And given how often plans change in a startup, it would make more sense to have a person who can keep on changing and preparing for the next one rather than one whose skills and knowledge only address the current situation.
5. Growth Velocity Over Experience
Let’s talk about a first-time CEO. The most basic elements that I seek out are the quality of their way of thinking and how fast they will be able to change. It is difficult to capture this in a job specification but I would prefer to find a person who can manage change, adapt, and build a good team rather than the one who has such expertise. I would rather hire a person with no experience as a CEO in the industry who can assimilate quickly than a veteran in the field.
6. Synthesize Diverse Information
The second salient feature is the attainment of synergy across all the participants. In this regard, the CEO hiring of such a firm would not only be required to appreciate the feedback but also channel it to the relevant members of the team, in a way that enables each of them to understand their ‘workflow’ about the technology and the solutions it provides. They need to be articulate. He has to earn the respect of diverse groups of people all trying to achieve the same goal and take into consideration their different needs. Also good to have, especially at the beginning, technical/scientific training, but not a requirement, to make or justify decisions about difficult technical/scientific issues.
7. Prioritize Effectively and Make Trade-offs Wisely
When dealing with complex problems, intelligent people often break the issue down into its parts, organize those parts, which are the core elements, rank them in order of importance, and make the right choices based on the identified components. More often than not, clear and critical thinking triumphs over experience, especially in emerging technical fields.
8. Fundraising
Even at the development stage, it is important to find a candidate with good fund-raising skills. This quality may be important for the survival and growth of the given company. Persuasion, whether it concerns investors, employees, or partners, is also an important aptitude. If one wants to develop a big organization, then creating a vision and selling it becomes an important competency.
Conclusion
To summarize, CEO hiring of the company is an important consideration for any business focused on attaining feasible growth and survival for the long term. It entails finding a person whose vision, experience, and leadership will be in tandem with the company’s aspirations. The perfect CEO should create strategy and innovation, as well as motivate the team to perform better than usual. The process might be fast and efficient if management consultancies, such as Alliance Recruitment Agency UAE, are made available, and the clients are linked to the best possible leaders.
Want to identify and recruit the ideal chief officer for your business? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for effective guidance in your executive search!