Clockwork Recruiting Blog

If you’ve been in the executive search industry for a while then you know the importance of having a process in place for managing your projects and business leads. What many new executive search professionals just entering this industry may not realize is what a good executive search process should look like. Furthermore, many don’t realize the importance that a good process can have on the success of their growing business. 

So you’ve successfully placed the top candidate and have (hopefully) exceeded your client’s expectations. It is cause for celebration, but rather than sitting back and wiping your hands clean of the search project, it is key to stay engaged. In this moment of success, when the client is most impressed, there is a big opportunity to find future search work. In fact, this stage is so full of business development opportunities that, when done right, you’ll have the work coming to you rather than you having to seek it out. Let's take a look at the top 4 most important action items after the search is complete. And be sure to follow along with our Search Closeout Checklist.

After completing the assessment stage of the executive recruiting process, your client should have all the information they need to make a decision. Nonetheless, executive searches can get stalled just before a decision is made. Although your client is doing most of the heavy lifting at this point, your work here is far from over and your role remains a crucial part of the process still.

Every successful search project starts with a great search strategy. This strategy is what kick starts your project and keeps it moving in the right direction. Not to mention it's the foundation upon which the rest of the search project relies on.

In our last article “Best Practices For Marketing Your Executive Search Firm” we discussed how to leverage your executive search specialization to find new executive search work. By completing the Specialization Worksheet and Targeted Marketing Worksheets you have generated a list of prospects and companies to target using SEO, paid social media campaigns and digital marketing channels. Now that you have set these marketing plans into action, or partnered with a marketing expert, new leads will begin to come through your website and fill your sales pipeline. When a prospective lead hits your inbox your next steps will be to:

So you’ve reached out to the candidates with the most potential and have dwindled that list down to the top 10%. By this point, you should have garnered as much information as possible on those you interviewed during your outreach. More specifically, you should have ascertained whether they are QIA, how they fit the role and how they compare with their peers.