Written by: Christi Howard
4 things to think about before interviewing executives
Interviewing executives is much more elaborate and intensive than another employee or position in your organization. This is someone who will be taking ownership of your vision for the company and plays a large part in determining the success of your business. Because of all of this, there’s a lot on the line when interviewing executives.
Here are 4 big things you need to be thinking about before interviewing executives for your company.
- Implementing Change
Whether or not you intend on this candidate changing anything within the company, you’ll want a good understanding of if and how they’ve done it before. Have they implemented change within a company before? How did it go? These are great interview questions to ask.
- Decision-Making Skills
Any good leader is going to need to make some major decisions within the company. Are they comfortable doing so? Are their decisions usually good ones? You’ll want a good understanding of how quickly they can make a decision and how often it’s the “right” one (or at least, what they’ve learned from wrong decisions).
- Capacity to Deliver Results
Have they set strategic goals before and met those goals? What did they do when they didn’t meet goals? Any leadership position needs to drive results and when interviewing executives you need to have an understanding of how well they’ve done this before. You expect results. Can they deliver?
- Leadership Skills
There is so much to leadership skills you need to understand before making a hire. Most importantly, it comes down to people and relationships. Leadership positions are not about tasks and skills. What do others say about them and their leadership? Do people follow them (Which also brings up the point of asking if they are intending on bringing any previous employees over to the new company)?
Prepare yourself before interviewing executives. You’ll want to do your research and prepare questions based on the above. This is a much different interview than other positions and needs to be treated as such. You can not afford to make the wrong hire here.
If you have any questions as you set out to interview an executive, feel free to reach out to our team!
