Last week, I participated World Executive Search Congress (WESC) with insights for Executive Search & Strategic Talen Acquisition in London. The Conference provided two days of networking, interactive sessions, work-shops and presentations to some 150 executive search consultants and researchers from across the world.

During the conference, valuable advice was given in the areas of leadership, talent management, executive search and how to become a trusted advisor.

My five (5) personal takeaways from the conference was:

  • Diversity is seen as a business imperative as 70% of the companies that have an executive level diversity programme in place report significant level of higher engagement from the CEO and executive level persons. Diversity is a not just a global trend but it´s here to stay, so it should naturally also apply and be adapted by Executive Search firms.

 

  • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was one of the main topics during both days. There are so many different opinions of how GDPR will affect the daily life of corporations in possession of personal data. GDPR really sets the bar for how we and our organisations look after the personal data of our customers, our staff and ourselves – and sets the bar high. What are the keys to success then? You should plan and be aware of the new regulation taking place 05/2018. Audit and assess -what personal data do I collect and process and for what purposes. Put everything in written and document it. Check and upgrade your process, systems and procedures, meaning that internal and external data is protected and the system supports this. Train and support your employees and monitor compliance.
  • Meaningful search process ensures that you have a good documented brief of the candidate profile wanted as it makes the search of the right candidate so much easier and effective. Quality is so much more important than quantity when it comes to meaningful search.

 

  • Transparency is something both that the client and the candidate appreciate and the Executive firm should do they outmost to be transparent during the search process.

 

  • Executive onboarding is seen as one of the challenges as almost 30% of the onboardings fail. There might be several reasons for this, but the most common ones are: exaggeration of the role, company culture shock, management style, poor relationships, lack of support and time-schedule.

Beside of these topics there was dozens of other interesting presentations and speeches given not to mention the networking opportunity and discussions with colleagues from India, US, Australia etc…

The author of this article is the CEO of InHunt World – Global Headhunting Network.

This article was written by