How to work with an executive recruiter for your next role

Mar 11

If you’re a job-seeker on the hunt for your next (or first) senior leadership, VP, or C-suite position, working with an executive recruiter can be a very smart move to guarantee you maximize your potential.

Not only do the best executive recruiters have extensive networks – which may open doors to opportunities you would have otherwise not known existed – they can be a powerful advocate for you, your interests, and your needs. Additionally, they will be the coach you need to guarantee you’re putting your best foot forward.

Ultimately, however, how beneficial your relationship is with your executive recruiter comes down to how effectively you work with them – yes, you are also an essential part of the success equation.

As our name, People Obsessed, implies, we are obsessed with empowering exceptional job-seekers to write the next chapter in their professional success story – and that’s true even if you never end up working with us. So, we’re putting our decades of executive recruiting expertise to work for you in this article by providing you with a guide to working effectively with an executive recruiter.

OK, enough chit-chat. Let’s dig in.

Keep in mind that standard recruiter rules 100% apply

Before we dig into what you need to know about working with an executive recruiter specifically, there are a few points that actually pertain to how you should work with a recruiter, no matter what your current or desired role may be.

Show up to your recruiter, ready to tell your story

The goal of your executive recruiter is to remarket you. Unfortunately, if you show up to your conversations without the ability to tell your story – who you are, where you’ve been, where you want to go, what you bring to the table – in at least some foundational fashion, you will be making it harder for them to do their job.

Yes, again, a great executive recruiter will provide coaching and guidance, but you shouldn’t expect them to do so when you show up as a completely blank canvas.

Proactive communication is absolutely essential

The #1 pet peeve of every recruiter out there (executive recruiters, in particular) is when they find themselves constantly having to chase down their candidates, particularly given the speed with which things can move in the recruiting space. So, when working with your executive recruiter, here’s how you should plan to communicate with them:

Proactively communicate your availability, as well as times when you will be potentially unreachable (at a company off-site perhaps). Also, provide communication methods your executive recruiter can use if something urgent comes up.
When you receive a question from your executive recruiter or they reach out to you about an opportunity, the speed of your response is often key. Not only to capitalize on whatever the opportunity may be, but also the more you communicate effectively (and efficiently) with your recruiter, the more motivated they will be to go to bat for you.
Don’t make your executive recruiter hunt you down for an update on how an interview went. As soon as your interview wraps, proactively reach out to them to let them know how it went, if next steps were discussed, and so on.

The health of your relationship with your executive recruiter will live and die by your ability to communicate well.

Be honest and upfront about your goals and needs

The only way your executive recruiter can be a fierce advocate for your goals and needs while vetting opportunities for you and communicating with prospective companies is if they know what those goals and needs are.

Let’s say you’re in the market for a Chief Product Officer position, which can range in salary anywhere from $150,000 to $400,000+, depending on your industry, where you live and the types of companies you’re exploring. If you know that you’ll never accept a position below $200,000/year, but it feels strategic to hold that piece of information back, resist that urge – that detail is something you must share upfront with your executive recruiter.

Otherwise, you could find yourself wasting your time (and theirs) on opportunities that were an automatic “no” from the start.

Now, let’s talk about executive recruiting-specific tips.

Industry or domain experience is essential in an executive recruiter

If you’re a specialist, generalist, or even in some more senior roles, whether or not you need a recruiter that has your industry or domain experience varies depending on your unique situation. For example, if you’re in HR (even in a manager or director position), you may be more flexible on what industry you enter, because you can build teams anywhere.

In the executive recruiting space, it’s quite different in that it’s much more important that you find a recruiter who has experience in your industry or domain.

For instance, let’s say you’re in the Adtech space, and you’re looking to make a move to a different executive position within the industry. An executive recruiter with Adtech-specific experience will have a much more lucrative network for you to draw from than a recruiter with more broad experience. They may even be working actively with ideal companies that are trying to fill executive positions.

And the intelligence an executive recruiter within your domain or industry possesses can extend far beyond that. For example, let’s say we are working together and I have the experience you’re looking for in the industry that you live and breathe.

In addition to simply having that baked-in knowledge about the ins and outs of what you do, I might know your boss. I may even know your boss from five years ago and that they were difficult to work with – wow, you really shined as a leader at that organization during a time when I know for a fact it was very tumultuous. I’ll have a deeper understanding of your stories and more capacity to tell deeper aspects of your capabilities and strengths.

Be open to feedback

As we touched upon briefly already, great recruiters of all stripes not only see themselves as your advocate, they also provide coaching and strategic guidance so you can move into the best role possible. Of course, this is also true at the executive recruiting level, and even more important given the stakes involved in hiring executive leadership.

For example, let’s say you sit for an interview for a C-suite role at a company. Not only will your executive recruiter want to hear back from you (proactively) on your feelings about how things went, they will most definitely also have a chat with the company directly. In some cases, they may have feedback from that company on how an interview went. The only purpose for them sharing this feedback is – once more with feeling – to guarantee you are putting your best foot forward at every opportunity so you get what you want.

But if you’re not self-aware and/or open to constructive feedback that is being given to you genuinely to help you succeed, you’re going to run into problems no matter what. If you’re defensive in response to this type of feedback, not only will you close yourself off to the coaching that will help you take the next step you’re looking for, it’s a red flag for your executive recruiter, as well.

Remember, executive recruiters are looking for long-term relationships

Really great recruiters on the whole don’t look at their relationships as transactional, and the same holds true for executive recruiters in particular. They often look at the relationship they develop with candidates like you as a lifelong partnership. You’re not just with them for this next opportunity, they want you in their orbit for the long haul.

So, as you move forward in your executive recruiter search, keep that in mind. That’s what you want to find in an executive recruiting partner, in addition to industry and domain experience. That way, you’re not only making strategic steps for what’s happening right now in your career, but you’re also establishing a recruiting partner for life who will always have you in the back of their mind when something pops up on their radar.

To find the right match for you, ask smart questions about industry and role/function placement experience, as well as what their communication styles and preferences are. They need to be an ideal match for you, too.

Alyson Wuamett