Q4.4 2024

Discovery is always a fundamental element of the recruitment cycle. All candidates going into a hiring process are explorers; no candidate knows whether an opportunity will be right for them, or if they are even right for the opportunity.

There are, however, significant differences in the journeys of direct candidates and headhunted candidates. Direct applicants embark on their adventure having booked their own tickets, written their own itinerary, and printed out their boarding passes ahead of time; headhunted candidates begin theirs being ushered onto an unmarked plane by an acquaintance (or sometimes a complete stranger) who has apparently taken care of their itinerary and promises that they will enjoy their destination.

It is no surprise, then, that passive headhunted candidates often require a level of coaxing. In fact, ensuring a well-paced and collaborative hiring process is essential to getting headhunted talent on board, and even more prevalent in today’s turgid Risk talent market, where high-quality talent is scarce, and headhunting is consequently more common. Successful hiring campaigns are flexible, but they often adhere to the following best practices:

First meeting:

Here, talent is coming in at its coldest, so a collaborative and exploratory conversation, preferably with a more senior member of the hiring team, is valuable. Senior involvement demonstrates an investment of time in a candidate, signalling to them that there is significant stakeholder engagement with their hire. Moreover, senior hiring managers can sell their team and business function more potently than juniors, as their presence encourages the candidate to think long-term about career progression. Keeping this stage fairly informal is important, as throwing in a case study or some cold technical competency questions before getting buy-in from the candidate can be perceived as overly transactional or aggressive.

Second round:

A great time for a case study/assessment. Once a headhunted candidate has high-level familiarity and motivation pertaining to the role, effort justification bias comes into effect: high performance derives from high motivation, and thus assessment scores will likely be more reflective of a candidate’s full ability when they are motivated. Moreover, a second-round assessment/case study works in conjunction with initial impressions from a first-round interview to contribute to a hiring team’s perception of a candidate, rather than being the sole determining factor.

Third round and beyond:

Good exposure to the team members across all levels is paramount for a candidate to better understand the dynamics and nuances of the seat. Here, face-to-face time should be prioritised, while balancing the time burden on both the candidate and the team. Getting Risk talent in front of the business is a real additive at this stage, as it deepens the connection between first and second line and reinforces stakeholder engagement with the hire.

Time:

Time kills deals, so getting the hiring process timeframe right is crucial. Slow processes can demotivate candidates or, in the worst instances, inspire candidates who were initially passive to start looking at alternative opportunities. On the other hand, overly hasty recruitment processes can reflect a team that is desperate, having left hiring too late, which in turn can be indicative of poor leadership or organisation.

Ultimately, hiring processes reflect a firm’s culture. A collaborative process that values face-to-face interaction and embraces individuals for who they are speaks to a strong and attractive internal culture. Furthermore, the initial impression of a firm’s hiring processes can linger long in the memory of a candidate. If a candidate has had a negative experience during an unsuccessful hiring process in their formative years, those associations abide even when that talent has matured, demotivating them for any potential hiring processes in the future. While an associate level candidate pulling out of an opportunity is not devastating, a strong VP+ candidate some years down the line turning down an opportunity can be seriously frustrating.

Eversearch provides executive search and modern talent solutions exclusively to the risk and finance sectors.

We are true sector specialists and partner with a select group of core financial services clients that demand best-in-class talent. Many of our clients have partnered with us over several years. We are an extension of their in-house talent strategy and are trusted advisors. We know their operations well and have great instincts on how to navigate challenging talent pools to deliver consistent results.

Risk has emerged as one of the most important business functions across complex financial services institutions. While many of our competitors now cover the sector, our differentiators are our depth of experience, thorough insights, and proven ability to deliver on otherwise hard-to-find talent.