Productive executive searches are those that yield results—that is, they lead to successful executive hires. The more productive you can make your executive search, the faster that hire can take place, which is usually good for overall company productivity, benefitting the bottom line in more ways than one. Less-productive executive searches, on the other hand, keep your organization short-staffed longer than it should be, affecting productivity negatively, and certainly not helping the company bottom line. How to Increase Executive Search Productivity One way to make searches more productive is to use all resources at hand in the search process. Go to the current executive board and ask for referrals, both those within the company and without, then ask them to get involved in the search and actively ask their colleagues for referrals as well. In-house recruiting teams need the investment of executive-level staff because they typically don’t have as large a pipeline as recruiting firms. Focusing the job description and avoiding the temptation to throw in everything but the kitchen sink will also make the search more productive, especially if you want to attract diverse candidates. While men may still apply if they don’t have every skill and qualification listed in a job description, women are much less likely to do so. Fast Company suggests a technique that seems counterintuitive to more productive or faster searches—two separate interviews for promising candidates. The first interview is less formal and aims to just get to know someone as a person and assess how they might fit into the company culture. A second interview gets more into the nuts and bolts of the candidate’s skills and experience—the qualifications for the position. The Right Technology Boosts Productivity A number of technology tools are available to help with productivity in in-house executive searches by streamlining the process. Some features to look for in a software tool are the ability to integrate other tools into one comprehensive system and multiple functionalities like the ability to communicate with candidates and team members as well as capture and use data. A tool like Thrive TRM, which has all of these capabilities and more, can save your team a lot of time by making communication, reporting and tracking instant and accessible to every person on the recruiting team. Instead of impossible-to-schedule face-to-face meetings, the team can communicate through Thrive TRM’s dashboard privately and with encryption. Messages can even be sent to candidates in real time or scheduled ahead of time. If you don’t use technology to make your executive searches more productive, you will not remain competitive with the in-house teams and executive search firms that do use technology, and you will lose out on talent that will gravitate toward a more streamlined and user-friendly approach. Thrive TRM wants to partner with in-house executive search teams to make their searches as productive as they can be, drawing well-qualified candidates to your company instead of to the competition. Schedule a demo to see what we can do to make your company’s executive searches more productive.