The whole process of C-suite recruitment (senior management and executives) can be something of a mystery to those who don’t quite know how the process works once employment and recruitment has moved up the corporate ladder and away from the ‘send CV’ and ‘attend interview’ route. But it is not a secret, just something that the average worker does not need to worry about until they are ready to make the step into the C-Suite themselves. But how do these private recruitment drives work? What is it that recruiters such as Eagle executive headhunters seek when they are looking for high-calibre candidates? Let’s take a look.

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Industry Experience

Experience in industry, preferably the hiring company’s industry, is always a positive sign. But candidates at this level can also be chosen for their experience of managing large-scale enterprises, even if their career to date has been in a different industry: for example, a manufacturing executive will be able to move into the retail industry, because the basic skeleton of the business is the same: acquire raw materials or wholesale goods; add value one way or another; and sell the end result to the end user or wholesaler. The streams of income vs outgoings, acceptable wastage levels, and profit margins will all be similar to those the candidate is already accustomed to, so this familiarity with processes and margins can count as ‘industry experience’, even if they have never worked in precisely that industry.

Big Picture

Good C-Suite candidates can see the big picture and think strategically about what it means in the long run. This means that they can take on board all the small grumbles and successes of the various departments and fit them into an overall idea of how the business is progressing. Executives who become fixated on small issues that don’t really affect the overall running and profitability of the business as a whole can find that the business becomes unstable due to narrow micromanagement in one area causing neglect and system failures in other areas. It is better, for example, to ignore a small amount of excess ‘wastage’ in the engineering department, than to risk the company being left with no engineers when the business relies on the engineering department to keep all the other parts of the business ticking over smoothly.

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Transferrable Skills

Senior level candidates have transferrable skills. This is similar to the first point made in this article, but it is more wide-ranging. Transferrable skills include things like legal knowledge acquired, for example, at university, being applied to health and safety regulations at work; accountancy and bookkeeping qualifications helping to arrive at a good profitable mark-up that does not disrespect customers by being set too high, and even things like working at menial jobs in the past enabling managers to fully understand the mindset of the waged staff. This last can be invaluable as a manager who understands work-based grievances from the inside, so to speak, can not only encourage productivity, but they can spot and head off threats of industrial action before they become acrimonious.