Beyond the Search

Your Executive Search Firm as a Strategic Partner
Written by Christina Chaplin, Signium International Spain

For more than 50 years, the executive search industry has been identifying and bringing top talent to companies around the world, and the value of those services are clear. We’ve likely heard (or know some variation of), “A company is only as good as its people” and “recruiting and retaining the best available talent are essential to any company’s success.” While these remain true, the face of executive talent and the market in which we work are changing – and executive search clients’ needs are molding with it.  For these reasons, we’re proud to unveil “Beyond the Search,” a new series in The Navigator dedicated to exploring other services executive search firms offer their clients.

That is, many executive search firms for decades have complemented their core competency (search) with services such as succession planning, onboarding, organizational performance, management appraisals and non-executive board-level searches, to name a few.  At Signium International, we believe the current market has shown many of our clients that executive search no longer is just about identifying and attracting star talent to your company, but rather one of many factors that lead to successful executive management. Fortunately, your executive search provider is ideally positioned to partner with you in these HR spaces.

For example, successful executive search consultants engaged in recruiting for an organization already require a complete understanding of their client’s organizational structures, cultures, current executives and strategic goals. This knowledge translates directly into many non-search or leadership services with very little need for additional details. Value-adds for the client are that the search partner has a running start vs. starting from scratch (with another firm), sensitive company information is restricted to fewer consulting firms and the client-search firm partnership strengthens.

Over the next several issues of The Navigator, Signium’s international quarterly e-newsletter, we provide the opportunity for our readers to better understand the advantages and value-adds of more partner approaches.  Stay tuned to next issue’s “Beyond the Search” topic: “Market Mapping: the talent we have and the pool to search from”.  •

Return to The Navigator Q2 2010