By Claudio Fernandez-Araoz

Hiring executives has always been a daunting task and today's economy makes it tougher than ever. The global scope and breakneck pace of business, the shrinking supply of job candidates and the constant shift of organizational structures has increased the stakes exponentially; one wrong hire can quickly derail a company. Yet recent studies indicate that between 30% and 50% of executives-level hires end in firing or resignations.

What makes hiring go wrong so often? And how can executives substantially improve the outcome of the process? This article provides some surprising answers to those questions.

Fernandez-Araoz presents ten common hiring traps and many real world examples of how those traps have scuttled business plans in a variety of industries worldwide. A large consumer goods company, for instance, slipped into the delegation gaffe trap when it handed over the screening and interviewing process to a mismatched team of managers that had an agenda different from the CEO's. And the ignoring emotional intelligence trap tripped up a US telecommunications company that hired a CEO with a great track record-only to fire him less than year later when his lack of cross-cultural social skills was discovered.

Hiring well is a strategy-perhaps an organization's most important one, the author says. 

To sidestep the hiring traps, he suggests ways to systemically assess the company's needs and to determine how those needs mesh with the open job description-before candidates walk through the door.

Fernandez-Araoz's search strategy incites managers with hiring responsibilities to be creative, determined and courageous when embarking on a candidate search.

Courtesy the Harvard Business Review 

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