“Why do organisations still pay to use executive search firms? Surely they can find anyone they want on LinkedIn.”
At first, this feels like a reasonable question, and undoubtedly one that anyone working in our sector faces daily.
Sure enough, finding people who can perform a role is pretty simple. Search for ‘COO and Mining’ on LinkedIn, and you get more than 16,000 results. The same search for General Managers in Mining yields something like 93,000 profiles.
But the simple fact is most of these profiles will have been stylised to the point where they are virtually indistinguishable.
Even if you manage to sort the wheat from the chaff, research tells us that four out of five applicants are hired on the basis of fairly subjective assessments, such as their skills on paper and the interviewers gut instinct (not to mention the influence professional nepotism/favouritism without objective assessment).
Yet we know that only 20% of new hires leave a job because they lack the right skills.
The remaining 80% leave for “behavioural” factors such as friction with a manager or colleague, essentially, because of a poor ‘fit’ within a company culture.
I believe that a company’s culture manifests itself primarily through the small number of key people, say 3-5, that you engage with daily, most likely you manager, close peers, subordinates, etc. While traditional psychometrics and broad assessments against a company’s culture play their part, we believe that success and optimal ROI generation is far more likely when a person “fits” this small group of daily influencers.
That’s why we introduced behavioural surveying (to help align hiring stakeholders/manager), and behavioural assessments (to match candidate profiles) as a core part of our innovative TalentAssay™ process. As a direct consequence we’ve been able to confidently predict retention rates of 96% in year one and 93% in year two, compared with a sector average of just 75%.
We wanted to share some of our own learning, and for this new research publication, we’ve accumulated data from nearly 150 assessments of mining leaders who are in or aspiring to become COOs, Operational VPs or site-based Mining General Managers. More than 140 companies are represented.
We’ve now analysed all the data, combined with the results of a survey and our own experience of the industry to produce our latest research report, ‘Fit to Lead?’.
The report takes a closer look at the importance of a fit between the individual and the organisation, considers the behavioural styles of those presently in these business-critical roles, and asks whether these are the same styles that will be needed for the future.
Our findings have implications for recruitment, personal development and coaching, succession planning and talent management.
With nearly 140 companies across all geographies represented in our research, we believe the report will be of interest to anyone involved in talent acquisition or development as a stakeholder, hiring manager or in those HR and recruitment.
There’s also much to interest you if you currently hold, or aspire to hold, a senior operational management or executive role.
You can download a copy by visiting our new website at https://stratum-international.com/market-reports-data/fit-to-lead/.
Do let us know what you think.