The Importance of Following a Well-Defined Leadership Strategy When Hiring

Here’s a simple, but powerful, guideline every hiring manager needs to follow when recruiting; leadership qualities are always going to be defined by the context of your organization.

Having a clear picture of your organization’s design will guide you in the recruiting process. It will help you identify the specific capabilities needed by leaders to succeed and meet the organization’s business strategy.

Organizational design- THE critical component for recruiting

A recent survey by Deloitte indicated 90% of business leaders in North America rate “Organizational Design” as their top human capital-related priority. Any company desiring to stay ahead of changing market conditions must also have a flexible organizational structure. This means ever-changing talent needs that match changing business models. HR departments and hiring managers need to constantly validate that their recruiting efforts are in sync with their company’s business strategy. To do this, follow these components:

Have a clear definition of Good Leadership

Is your company redesigning its organization to meet changing market conditions? For example, is it moving from functional departments to more product and customer-centered structures? Is senior leadership wanting to add virtual workers and mobile project teams, tapping into a millennial workforce that is asking for more workplace flexibility? Such changes might affect the leadership skills you will look for when hiring.

Keep an eye on the FUTURE

Just as businesses often fail to keep job descriptions updated to reflect ever-changing job functions, they often fail to update leadership requirements for positions. Like job descriptions, these should be updated yearly. Developing any leadership pipeline or succession planning requires forward planning five-to-ten years out. What will be the skills needed by future leaders and will they differ from those required today?

Identify your leaders

Once you have defined the leadership capabilities that satisfy the organization’s current and future needs, develop the assessment methodologies that will identify leadership from current employees. Use this same assessment as your guide when evaluating new-hire candidates.

At Key Corporate Services, we understand that great candidates are those possessing the skills, experience and behaviors that match our clients’ ever-changing organizational goals.