By Heather Johnson, Managing Director at Focus Search Partners
As private equity continues to deploy capital at record-setting levels, it’s never been harder to acquire tier-one talent. There is a pent-up demand for great transformational business leaders. We are driven to find the best athlete and understand the criticality of identifying senior management teams to grow and scale a business.
Recruiting trends we are seeing
Time kills deals, and top talent is aggressively being pursued.
Candidates need to move quickly through the interview process, and companies need to communicate interest levels, setting reasonable expectations and timelines.
How do you attract top talent?
Candidates have other opportunities they are considering. You must understand what the candidate wants, what motivates them, and why they might want to come to work for you. Are you attracting suitable candidates? How does your opportunity create a step forward in their career growth? The best people want to work for solid intellectual leaders who provide clear direction and freedom to do their jobs.
Candidate experience at each company represents their brand.
They are part of the growth or turnaround story and need to know how they engage and contribute to the organization. Candidates are more selective in ensuring they join a company with an excellent reputation and investor that they can trust and depend on.
Candidates are less open-minded about commuting and want the flexibility to manage their schedules.
COVID proved we could successfully work remotely despite missing the interaction with our colleagues. People will return to the office to be with their colleagues, given an extended period of video calls is unsustainable. However, they may be in the office three days a week compared to five days a week. Options and flexibility are essential.
With high demand for diversity, equity, and inclusion, candidates are making job choices based on their assessment of a company’s visible DE&A commitments.
Hiring managers are being held accountable for interviewing a diverse slate of candidates; some clients restructured the hiring process to reduce bias, building diverse interview panels, and mandating data-driven reporting against diversity goals.
High demand for growth roles; Growth Revenue Officer or Corporate Development.
The deal market is frothy, and businesses need internal resources to manage the pipeline and grow the top-line revenue. We learned in 2020 that we are ready to innovate, shift strategy on a dime and try a new direction while overcoming many obstacles. Some businesses are looking for ways to recover from financial loss and transition to the new normal.
Virtual hiring is here to stay, with a hybrid workforce of onsite and remote employees becoming the norm.
A hiring process that combines virtual and in-person will become increasingly standard due to the associated cost and time savings.
With PE firms adopting a multi-hire approach, hiring strategies are changing, creating a more significant opportunity for teams to forge chemistry early on.
It enables investors to build a growing, scaling, and sustainable business and instill a mindset of building the next-level talent and future-focused orientation. Equally important, key executives are continually needed to ensure the operations keep up with the growth across go-to-market functions.