The leaders worth hiring already have good jobs. They're running an operation somewhere else, and their current employer would very much like to keep them.
So recruiting top talent at the leadership level comes down to a single question: what would make a person like that leave? For a general manager or a VP, the answer decides whether you get the hire.
Go to them
A job posting reaches people who are looking. The leader you want is busy running something, and a posting probably won't cross their desk.
So the first conversation has to come to them, by name, from someone who understands their work well enough to make the call worth taking. Whether that's you or a search firm, the person making the approach needs a specific reason this role should matter to this person.
Tell them where the company is going
A leader with a good job moves when they can see a better future, so describe that future in plain terms. Tell them where the company will be in 3 to 5 years and what this person will own when it gets there.
The 3-to-5-year path for the role is part of every search profile we build, because a candidate weighing a move wants to know the job grows.
Be specific: a second location you plan to open, or the owner's own plan to step back. "Lots of opportunity" means nothing to someone who already has plenty of it where they are.
Make the role bigger than their current job
A strong candidate compares your role with their current job. If yours carries the same scope at a similar salary, they'll stay put, and they'd be right to.
What usually moves people is real ownership: a P&L that's theirs, and room to grow past the job as it's written today.
That means deciding before the search how much authority this person will have. Owners who say they want a leader and then keep every decision for themselves lose the strong ones, and we've written about why that's such a common way for a new executive to fail.
Do the money and family math early
Compensation that comes up late is how good offers fall apart. Talk about it in the first conversation and keep coming back to it.
A consultant on our team asks candidates early on: "Where would you need to be for this to be appealing?" The answer shapes the offer, so the number at the end holds no surprises.
The family side weighs as much as the salary. A move can mean a new school, a spouse's job, more travel or a different schedule, and a leader settles all of it at the kitchen table.
"Boardroom to family room" is how we put it at FireSeeds. A role that would cost someone their family is a bad offer at any salary.
Sort out the logistics early as well. On a recent search, the strongest candidate lived in a state the client wasn't yet set up to employ people in. The hire happened, and the client said that detail made the final stretch messier than it needed to be.
Show them the culture
Candidates judge your culture by what they see during the search.
Let them meet the people they'd lead and work beside, as well as the owner. On that same search, the team members who met the candidate during interviews came out of it feeling good about him before he'd started.
How you run the hiring process is part of the culture they're judging. If interviews start late or feedback goes quiet, a candidate assumes that's how the company runs.
Tell them the hard parts
Every role has problems, like a team that needs rebuilding or a system that's years behind. Tell candidates up front.
When we define a search, we ask owners for the yellow flags: the things a strong candidate will find out eventually. That way they hear them from us before they discover them on their own.
A leader who hears the hard parts and still wants the job has already decided to fix them. Someone who discovers them in the first month starts taking recruiters' calls again.
Run a process that respects their time
A strong candidate reads your hiring process as a preview of working for you.
Keep it short. Schedule interviews days apart, give feedback quickly, prepare everyone who interviews, and decide in advance who makes the call.
The ways a hiring process loses strong candidates are laid out in our Six Momentum Killers playbook.
When the right person shows up, move. Leaders good enough to want usually have options.
Where a search firm helps
You can do all of this on your own. A retained search firm helps most with the first step, reaching leaders who aren't looking, and with keeping them engaged all the way to a signed offer.
If you're weighing it, we've written about hiring an external recruiter versus keeping it in-house. And if you're hiring a leader now, let's talk.