Follow a Human Resources Strategic Plan for Executive Search

Follow a Human Resources Strategic Plan for Executive Search

There are some basic steps all organizations follow for executive search both in and outside an organization. It involves forecasting, planning and creating a human resources strategic plan.

Hiring new people for your organization starts by identifying personnel needs and ends by making an offer to the final candidate. But moving from the beginning to end of an executive search process is long and involves a lot of steps and science.

The human resources strategic plan for executive search

The human resources strategic plan is a series of steps that the HR department in any organization moves through in filling vacancies in executive leadership. It applies to both small and large companies and can take several weeks to months.

The recruitment process begins by determining positions that need to be filled through personnel planning and forecasting. HR then shortlists qualified candidates from a supple of applicants both inside and outside the company. They are subjected to a selection process which includes screening tests and background checks with previous employees. Candidates that pass through the selection process are reviewed by supervisors in an interview.

A face-to-face conversation helps supervisors determine whether or not they’ll be a good fit for the organization, as they know what qualities the position entails and will be working directly with the new employee in the future. The final candidate agreed upon by the selection committee is then made an offer by the organization.

However, during the recruitment process the position is not left empty. An interim executive is hired through an executive search agency like Cerius Interim Executives. They keep the ship afloat until a permanent manager is found.

Planning and forecasting in executive search

Recruitment begins by determining a need for new employees. That is achieved through planning and forecasting.

There are two kinds of planning involved.

  1. Personnel planning – deciding what positions need to be filled and how to fill them.
  2. Succession planning – organizations look for how they can best replace top management positions if and when the need arises.

A key issue in planning is forecasting the personnel needs of company. That involves identifying the number of employees needed to meet the goals of the company. There are two main ways to forecasting:

  1. Trend analysis – based on previous employment figures predicts future needs.
  2. Ratio analysis – focuses on the ratio of a causal factor like sales volume and the size of staff required to achieve goals. If for example a company wants to increase their sales volume by 5%, how many more employees do they need to achieve this?

Hiring internal candidates in executive search

Once a company determines how many executive positions are open, they must first decide whether or not to fill them with employees from within the organization. To make this decision, the HR department need to know the knowledge, skills and abilities of their employees. They may access their qualification inventories which are records of a company’s workforces’ education, experience, skills, career interests, etc.

The HR manager may even go a step further and create personnel replacement charts which reflect the present performance and promotability of replacements for each open position. They can be especially useful in deciding promotions as it creates a visual aid to compare the capabilities of each candidate based on their background and current performance.

There are computer programs known as human resource information systems that help large organizations create a database of their employee information to help them construct replacement charts and aid in forecasting.

Hiring external candidates in executive search

Hiring external talent is important for any company. There are two determinants businesses can use to determine qualified candidates outside the organization. The first is through expected unemployment rate – when it is low, few people are looking for a job which forces HR managers to increase recruitment strategies to attract qualified individuals; but if the unemployment rate is high, the company can simply post a job and watch the applications roll in. The second way is by looking at the occupation availability of qualified people in specific occupations like IT, finance, etc. Together the two indicators help businesses forecast supply of external candidates for executive positions.

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