Adam Ward

As we mentioned last month, one of the natural evolutions of maturing recruiting teams is to build out an internal leadership/exec recruiting function. In fact, as we have noted before, it has been a growing trend for companies to invest in this function on a continually earlier basis. At Growth by Design Talent, we have the POV that building this internal muscle is a key differentiating factor in the success of growing companies. As a trusted advisor, you can position yourself to be anticipating these needs by being close to the business and talent strategy. 

Over the last month, we’ve spent a lot of time with recruiting leaders at events like RecFest, with our client companies, and in 1:1 conversations. Here is what we are hearing as top of mind going into Q4 and planning for next year.

Like many of you over the past year, we at Growth by Design had to be nimble and adjust to the changing market, particularly, our search practice. Almost overnight, the number of open Talent Acquisition leadership roles dropped dramatically, while our People leadership roles picked up. And while the particular competencies, experiences, and characteristics of these roles vary from TA leadership roles, we’ve noticed that no matter what the role, there are four guiding principles for running a successful search.

With a general slowing of hiring across the industry, recruiting leaders and teams are re-evaluating their hiring processes from top to bottom. One area we see getting a lot of attention is the consistency of hiring decisions. Bar raisers, hiring committees and similar types of programs have been around seemingly since the early days of Silicon Valley. With the emergence of more tools and systems to better collect candidate assessment and performance data, the opportunity is there to modernize these programs. 

With hiring slowing across tech, many recruiting leaders are working through the “recruiting tech debt” companies have accrued over the previous period of high growth. Particularly, we are seeing a number of our client companies focus on quality of hire. With companies needing to do more with fewer resources, companies and recruiting teams want to ensure that they are hiring the right people for each role.

Through our executive people searches, we are are seeing one critical characteristic for talent leaders: a leader who is seen as a trusted advisor to the leadership team.

At GBD, we are particularly encouraged to see the demand for leadership searches pick up. We are grateful to be working with a number of innovative companies who are growing their teams and seeking dynamic People, Talent, and Product Leaders. From these searches, we’ve noticed a few trends

Ways to help teams stay positive and focused on outcomes during difficult times

There are a lot of resources out there on how to perform a layoff with intention and empathy, but not many focused on how to support and lead the team that remains. Here are our suggestions:

. Sure — leading recruiting teams is always challenging, but in uncertain times like the present, how you lead through ambiguity and headwinds will be where you grow most as a leader.

How to support yourself and your team when sprinting to hit your final headcount and diversity goals of the year while having limited recruiting resources, and a hiring window that is shrinking each day.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve heard from a number of people who are less than six months into working at a new company and think they may have made the wrong decision. Surprisingly, the majority of these were Talent/Recruiting leaders. This seems counterintuitive—you would think we would be better at evaluating new opportunities as subject matter experts in all things hiring! Let’s talk about why this happens, and what you can do about it.

We partnered with Jumpstart to gain a clearer picture of what early career hiring will look like due to Covid-19's impact.

Adam Ward explains how to distill core competencies from company values and assess for them in a dedicated cultural interview, as well as the common problems he’s helping Heads of Talent address.

Almost overnight, the interview experience has changed. How do you hire a candidate you’ve never met in person?

We started Growth by Design Talent because we wanted to help as many growth stage companies and emerging talent leaders as we could