It’s important to find candidates with relevant qualifications and experience when hiring managers and executives. If someone is going to take on a leadership role in your company, they need to be familiar with the industry.
That goes without saying. However, professional experience isn’t the only quality worth prioritizing. You also need to ensure you hire leaders who possess certain key traits you might otherwise overlook. They include the following:
Passion
This is key. An executive or manager needs to be genuinely enthusiastic about their work. Quite simply, there will be times when employees working below them may feel discouraged, stressed, or disengaged. A true leader has enough passion to inspire others when this happens. Thus, during interviews, you should pay attention to how excited they seem to be when discussing the work they would be doing at your organization. It’s worth noting that passionate leaders often develop other essential leadership qualities naturally.
Culture Fit
An executive who thrives at one company isn’t always going to enjoy the same degree of success elsewhere. If they don’t fit the corporate culture, they’ll struggle to motivate their employees, coordinate with other executives, and communicate their ideas effectively. For instance, if your company has a relaxed, casual culture, with an open office, permissive dress code, and flexible employee schedules, you might not want to recruit someone who tends to work in stricter settings. In fact, culture fit is so important that 84% of recruiters consider it to be a major priority.
Curiosity
Industries change. Your company needs to adapt to these shifts. That’s more likely to happen when the people in charge have curious minds. Instead of feeling they need to stick to their old ways, curious people are willing to explore new solutions to problems. This is helpful when you need to adjust to industry developments. Plenty of once-successful organizations have eventually failed because they couldn’t keep up with the times. This may be why the Harvard Business Review considers adaptability to be a major competitive advantage.
A Proactive Attitude
A strong executive or manager isn’t merely someone who communicates well and has smart ideas. They also need to be someone who acts on their smart ideas. They need to transform a vision into a reality. Knowing this, you may consider asking candidates about past instances in which they took major action to help their former employees reach ambitious goals. Odds are good someone with a proactive attitude at one company will maintain that attitude at yours. You might also want to learn how they can inspire other workers to be proactive as well.
Flexibility
Every organization is different. When you hire a new executive, although they will very likely apply many of their current techniques and methods to the work they do at your company, they will also need to adapt to the unique way in which you operate. They might also need to encourage other members of the organization to adapt and change at times. Someone who isn’t willing to change won’t be a good fit. On the other hand, someone who is happy to adjust their ways in order to better fit in at your organization is a candidate worth remembering.
Risk-Friendliness
Always make a point of asking potential executives and managers about past experiences in which they have taken risks. Many entrepreneurs credit their success to taking risks. However, it’s important to hire someone who strikes a delicate balance. They need to be willing to take risks, they those risks need to be calculated. You don’t want to hire decision-makers who act on impulse. They need to be willing to evaluate various factors to decide which risks are worth taking.
Keep these points in mind whenever you’re recruiting major players for your company. Again, while professional experience is important, so are key personal qualities. These are simply some of the more noteworthy. If you look for candidates who embody them, you’ll be much more likely to make the ideal choice.
