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Discovering Diamonds in the Rough: The Art of Exceptional Executive Recruitment

In the world of executive recruitment, finding the right candidate can be a challenge. The search for an exceptional executive requires a specialised skill set, vast experience, compassion and commitment to ensure positive candidate experiences and exceptional methodologies. It takes more than a cursory review of resumes and LinkedIn profiles to find an executive who will make a significant impact on your organisation. Here, we explore the art of exceptional executive recruitment and how to discover diamonds in the rough.

Four top tips:

  1. Expansive Candidate Pool: Cast the net wide
  2. Utilise exceptional recruitment methodologies and change them as the wind changes
  3. Ensure Candidates have the best experience
  4. Build exceptional knowledge of the healthcare and aged care industry

Expansive Candidate Pool: Casting a Wide Net Finding exceptional executives to fill aged care jobs is largely helped by casting a wide net. Many aged care recruitment agencies and internal talent acquisition teams make the mistake of relying on their existing network to find candidates. Job ads are posted to online job boards in the hope of attracting new talent to fill jobs. This sometimes works. However, the best executives may not be actively looking for new opportunities, and they may not be in your network.

70% of jobs we filled in 2022 were through head hunting.

An expansive candidate pool ensures that recruiters have access to the best talent, even if they are not actively searching for a new position and they come from outside the sector. You can also build on your executive recruitment capabilities and size of candidate pool by attending webinars, networking events, asking for referrals (good candidates know good candidates) industry conferences, and even by becoming active on social media platforms. We build our candidate pool every day utilising this outlook, and have a database of approximately 6500 candidates, most of whom are employed already. There’s still plenty of talent to be found out there above and beyond what’s on our database.

Exceptional Methodologies for Executive Recruitment

Finding exceptional executives requires more than just casting a wide net. It takes a unique approach and a set of methodologies that are designed to identify the right candidates for each position – applies to nursing jobs, middle management and executive jobs.

We’ve been doing aged care executive recruitment a long time. Between us as a team, we have 40 years’ experience in the recruitment industry. We are well positioned to know what recruitment methodologies work, and we tweak them as needed as the candidate market shrinks, wains and expands. We’re particularly informed with changes in the executive recruitment Sydney market and to aged care recruitment and healthcare recruitment trends.

This includes a detailed job and person specification brief: we travel to our client site, where the job we are recruiting will be. We utilise an excellent ATS to manage information and job flow. We conduct pre-screening, behavioural, communication, values based and experiential interviews, often using case scenarios, and technical assessments on a case-by-case basis. We include surveys in our process, which we have developed over the years – improves candidate engagement in the executive recruitment process. This is also in addition to the stock standard reference checks.

These kinds of methodologies allow us to collect multiple data points about a candidate, including behaviours, enabling us to put together a holistic picture of the candidate for our clients and make an executive recruitment match that fits.

We also develop a bespoke recruitment strategy for each job we recruit to, involving our whole team at the beginning of our executive recruitment assignment so our years of experience can be well utilised as aged care recruiters.

Ensure Candidates Have the Best Experience in the Executive Recruitment Process

This is something I’ve always been passionate about.

During the recruitment process, the candidate experience reflects your organisation’s culture, people and values. When you engage an executive recruitment agency, you want them to best represent your employer brand. We believe how we treat our candidates is a representation of our clients, and we try to do our best in this space. Our NPS scores are regularly monitored, currently sitting above 97% and reviews are widely accepted and published.

Candidates who have a positive experience with recruiters are more likely to accept an offer, even if they have other options. Exceptional executive recruitment involves ensuring that candidates have the best experience possible with recruiters. This can include timely communication, transparent feedback, and a personalised, supportive approach to the recruitment process. Ensuring that candidates feel valued and respected is essential to creating a positive impression of your organisation. Too much clunky paperwork/documentation/online admin turns time-poor candidates off – something we hear happening often in aged care recruitment. Even the most basic of all gratuities is to acknowledge when you’ve received a candidate application with a ‘thanks’. You would be surprised how many candidates send us emails thanking us for acknowledging their application by email!

Exceptional Knowledge in Healthcare and Aged Care Recruitment

Healthcare and our specialty aged care are complex and rapidly evolving industries. Recruiters with exceptional knowledge in executive recruitment understand the trends, challenges, and opportunities in this field. This knowledge allows them to identify candidates who have the skills and expertise needed to succeed in this industry. It also allows them to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate future hiring needs.

Between us we have significant (40 years) experience, including executive recruitment in specialised industries like healthcare recruitment and aged care recruitment.

What I believe as the Founder of the business, and with 20 years experience in aged care recruitment is that recruiters with extensive experience in:

  • Nursing jobs
  • Aged care jobs
  • Aged care recruitment agencies
  • Healthcare recruitment
  • Aged Care Recruitment

Are equipped to relate well with candidates and clients, are compassionate and strong communicators, making them capable of finding top talent in the industry – something we all want more of. Recruiters who come from specialised industries bring unique skills and knowledge to the recruitment process. For example, recruiters with experience in aged care recruitment understand the challenges and opportunities that are specific to this industry and we’re able to convincingly persuade candidates by communicating our client story and narrative in the process. This wins hearts and is part of the art in executive recruitment.

In conclusion, discovering diamonds in the rough requires a specialized skill set, expansive candidate pools, exceptional methodologies, a commitment to a positive candidate experience, and extensive knowledge in specialised industries such as aged care and healthcare recruitment. Recruiters who prioritise these elements are more likely to identify exceptional executives who will make a significant impact on organisations.

Curious?

Call PJ on 0414 412 418 to chat. Or send an email to pj@pjrecuitment.au