Beware of Under-Sizing the Job
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Your company is growing fast and as result, so must your team.
With your team already overworked, another hire is crucial. You dutifully draft a job description, including the skills and experience required for the position with a compensation range to attract the ideal type of candidate. Recruiting begins and within a few weeks, you have a short list of suitable candidates. Interviewing follows narrowing the list to a single candidate. An offer is made, accepted and the successful candidate enthusiastically starts in the new role.
The new manager settles into his role and a sense of relief immediately descends on this one corner of the organization.
(Fast Forward 18 Months) The company continues to grow apace – more customers, staff, another office location, more transactions and more complexity. The new manager’s area has grown as well, as have his responsibilities.
The signs of stress are starting to show in his manner and his inability to keep on top of things. Responses to inquiries are slow in coming. His staff members are becoming frustrated and inefficient because he is unable to answer all their questions in a timely manner, preventing them from completing their work. Some of them are turning to you again for direction, causing other parts of the organization to seize up. Customers are calling repeatedly for unresolved issues. Payment is being held which is negatively affecting accounts receivable and cash flow.
So, what happened? It could be that the problem stems from the creation of a job description which was ideally suited for the situation that existed at that time but not for the job as it would be a couple of years in the future. The candidate who was hired may have been ideal for the existing position, however, did not have sufficient potential to grow into the more challenging role that this position could become.
How could this have been avoided? We at Kathbern, recommend developing informal future organization charts for your organization, or a least the area of the organization that you are responsible for. These will be based on the growth plans for the company, perhaps including a strategic plan that has been adopted. Ideally, there will be one organization chart relating to the anticipated situation three years from now, two years from now, one year from now and six months from now. They will allow you to focus and prepare in advance to grow your organization. As you start slotting in the names of current staff into your organization charts, it will become apparent to you whether each employee has the potential to grow into a more responsible role or whether new talent will have to be acquired to fill in the gaps.
This exercise will also help you to imagine how a particular position is likely to evolve. This will enable you to anticipate the skills and experience that may be required in the future and therefore should be included as part of the search criteria to fill a given position.
What if your future organization charts turn out to be incorrect? While not always accurate, you will be closer to making a better-informed decision for having gone through the exercise.
A single senior level hiring event which fails will, on average, cost a year of progress, recruitment and severance costs and have a negative impact on the organization’s goodwill as perceived by other employees, customers, shareholders and outside agencies. In financial terms, a fair estimate of the cost of replacing mis-hires is approximately two and a half times the person’s annual salary.
K
Kathbern Management is an executive search firm based in Toronto, helping companies find the executives and senior managers who not only have the experience and credentials to fulfill their responsibilities, but also have the emotional and “fit” requirements that will enable them to be successful in a particular environment. We simplify the process and, through our deep research, are able to bring more and better candidates forward than would ever be possible through a do-it-yourself passive advertising campaign.
Contact us today for a free consultation about your key person search.
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