• High Demand for Commercial Lenders: The demand for experienced commercial lenders is consistently high as businesses require financing for growth, working capital, and various other purposes. Commercial Lending, Commercial Real Estate Lending and Construction Lending are typically some of the most profitable business lines that banks provide to their customers. In addition, there are many Chief Lending Officers and Commercial Leaders approaching their retirement.  As a result, there is fierce competition among financial institutions to attract and retain talented lenders.
• Complex Regulatory Environment: Commercial lending is subject to complex and evolving regulations. This can make it difficult for financial institutions to find individuals with both lending expertise and knowledge of regulatory compliance.
• Specialized Skill Set: Commercial lending requires a specialized skill set that includes credit analysis, risk assessment, financial modeling, industry knowledge, and relationship-building abilities. Finding individuals who possess all of these skills can be challenging.
• Evolving Technology: The financial industry is rapidly adopting technology solutions for lending processes. Finding lenders who are not only experienced in traditional lending practices but also adept at using new lending technologies can be difficult.
• Competitive Compensation: Talented commercial lenders can command higher salaries and benefits due to their specialized expertise. Smaller financial institutions may struggle to compete with larger banks in offering attractive compensation packages.

To address the talent shortage in commercial lending, financial institutions can consider the following strategies:

• Training and Development: Invest in training and development programs to upskill existing employees or recent graduates. Provide mentorship opportunities for less-experienced lenders to learn from seasoned professionals.
• Recruitment and Networking: Actively recruit from universities, industry associations, and networking events. Building relationships with educational institutions can help identify potential talent such as offering internship roles to students to assess their acumen and culture fit before they graduate.
• Diversify Recruitment: Expand the talent pool by considering candidates from related fields, such as corporate finance, credit analysis, or small business lending, who can transfer their skills to commercial lending.
• Technology Integration: Embrace technology to streamline lending processes, allowing lenders to focus more on relationship-building and customer service rather than administrative tasks.
• Competitive Compensation Packages: Offer competitive salaries, benefits, and performance-based incentives to attract and retain top talent. Consider flexible work arrangements and career development opportunities.
• Succession Planning: Develop a succession plan to address the aging workforce and ensure a smooth transition of knowledge and experience.
• Collaboration and Partnerships: Consider partnering with fintech firms or other organizations that specialize in certain aspects of commercial lending to augment your lending capabilities.
• Continuous Learning: Encourage commercial lenders to stay updated on industry trends, regulations, and best practices through ongoing education and certifications.

The talent shortage in commercial lending is a significant concern, but by developing and utilizing proactive strategies and having a commitment to attracting, retaining, and developing skilled lenders, financial institutions can better position themselves to meet the ongoing demand for commercial lending services.

The post Solving the Commercial Lending Talent Shortage appeared first on Battalia Winston – Executive Recruiting Firm | Executive Search.

It’s plain that in this new era of work, the traditional understanding of leadership must evolve. Hybrid leadership emphasizes visibility, empathy, inspiration, authenticity, and being there in person when possible.

This approach helps CEOs navigate the challenges and maximize the opportunities present in hybrid work environments. Learn about hybrid leadership and how CEOs can thrive in today’s ever-changing landscape.

Embracing the Permanence of Hybrid Work

As a practical matter, CEOs have always been hybrid workers. Any CEO for an organization with multiple locations locally, nationally, or globally works away from headquarters a great percentage of their time. Remote work is in the DNA of the CEO, so embracing it for workers at every level of the organization should be easy.

Some CEOs find it difficult to set aside being the one who is always connecting from a laptop in another country and share remote work with all employees. That type of CEO will not succeed as a hybrid leader. Embracing the reality of permanent remote and hybrid work environments for all workers is essential to leading a modern company. Resisting hybrid structures can cause attrition and damage a company’s reputation for innovative thinking.

Visibility Both Remotely and in Person

In a hybrid work environment, it is important for leaders to maintain visibility with all their employees, both in-person and remote. Regular communication, updates, and personal interactions ensure remote workers feel included and valued. CEOs should utilize technology to their advantage, employing video conferencing and virtual meetings to maintain a strong presence even when they cannot be physically present.

Empathy for Employee Stresses

Empathy is crucial in a hybrid work environment, as employees may face unique challenges and stresses related to their work arrangements. CEOs must recognize the needs of diverse employees and create a supportive, inclusive atmosphere. This can range from accommodating flexible schedules for parents, students, and family caregivers to checking in with staff about their well-being. An empathetic leader keeps employees engaged and motivated, fostering a healthy corporate culture.

Inspiring Loyalty and Productivity

One of the most important aspects of hybrid leadership is the ability to inspire employees. CEOs must communicate the company’s vision clearly and creatively, aligning individual goals with overarching corporate objectives. An inspirational leader helps employees feel connected to the bigger picture and cultivates a sense of purpose. This drives performance, loyalty, and innovation within the organization, even when employees are scattered among far-flung locations.

Authentic Communication

Authenticity is vital in bridge-building between in-person and remote employees. CEOs must foster a genuine connection with their staff, being honest and transparent in their communications. An authentic leader gains the trust and respect of their employees, making it easier to navigate the complexities of a hybrid work environment.

As organizations seek to adapt to hybrid work environments, the demand for executives with strong hybrid leadership skills is on the rise. Consulting executive search firms can help find candidates with these sought-after competencies.

As hybrid work environments become the norm, finding executives who understand hybrid leadership and what it means for CEOs will be crucial to maintaining a successful and innovative organization.

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The sales executive role has never been more critical. But what sets top sales professionals apart from the rest? Explore the unique characteristics that make these individuals indispensable in their roles and learn how they contribute to driving businesses to new heights. Below are eight of the best qualities of top sales executives.

Exceptional Communication

One of the most critical qualities of a top sales executive is effective communication. This goes beyond being an excellent speaker; it includes the capacity to actively listen, empathize, and understand a buyer’s needs. This skill set is imperative to engaging with prospects and offering tailored solutions that address their unique concerns.

Persuasion is a delicate balance of confidently sharing information and connecting with the customer on an emotional level, all while ultimately guiding them toward a beneficial decision for both parties. Great sales executives are engaging storytellers who are able to connect products and services to a prospective customer’s needs organically without sounding like they’re making a pitch.

Goal-Orientation

A top sales executive is never satisfied with the status quo; they constantly strive for improvement and set ambitious goals for themselves and their team. This commitment to continuous growth and improvement is what propels both the individual and the company forward.

Goals are a roadmap for success. The most accomplished sales executives understand the importance of setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives. This focus on goal-setting fosters motivation, inspires resilience in the face of obstacles, and ensures that everyone remains accountable for their performance.

Relationship Building and Consistency

The art of sales is not a one-time transaction; it’s the cultivation of long-lasting relationships. A top sales executive knows this well and works relentlessly to connect with prospects, clients, and colleagues in a meaningful way. These executives establish trust, demonstrate sincerity, and win loyalty by consistently delivering on their promises. By nurturing these connections over time, top sales executives earn a reputation of dependability and establish their credibility in a way that propels ongoing success and generates a robust pipeline of referrals.

Adaptability To Embrace Change

No two sales situations are alike, and even the most seasoned sales executive will continuously encounter new challenges and environments. The ability to adapt on the fly is an essential quality for success in the ever-changing business world.

Top sales executives are quick thinkers, agile problem solvers, and willing to pivot when necessary. Digital transformation, globalization, and changing economic landscapes are just a few of the forces that sales executives must navigate daily. Top sales executives remain flexible and adaptable to new information, new technologies, and new sales strategies, optimizing their approach to meet changing circumstances.

Curiosity and Innovation

Curiosity is the fuel for innovation. Top sales executives know that continually learning about new products, market trends, and competitors is key to staying ahead of the game. By remaining curious and seeking out new opportunities and insights, they can offer their customers valuable expertise and become trusted advisers. Curious sales executives are better suited to create innovative solutions tailored to their customer’s unique needs. Curiosity stimulates creativity and can lead to out-of-the-box thinking that opens doors to new sales strategies.

Resilience and Persistence

The road to success is rarely smooth, and top sales executives understand that setbacks and disappointments are inevitable. It’s how they handle these challenges that sets them apart. Resilience is essential to the role of a sales executive, allowing them to handle rejection and bounce back from missed opportunities quickly. It also enables them to stay motivated, focused, and persistent in driving forward to accomplish their goals, even when they encounter unexpected roadblocks.

Strategic Thinking

Top sales executives think beyond the here and now, focusing on the long-term goals and objectives of their organization. They constantly analyze the marketplace to find inefficiencies and areas of opportunity.

By continually seeking out new prospects and opportunities, they create a pipeline of business that ensures the allocation of resources where they will have the greatest return. This type of strategic thinking also translates into a comprehensive understanding of the company’s overall business goals and how sales can help them achieve these objectives.

Team Building

Perhaps the most important characteristic of a top sales executive is their ability to build a stellar sales team. A quality business development executive search firm will look for a sales executive with a loyal following of successful, driven salespeople who consistently produce results that top expectations.

The ability to nurture talent is a central quality of a successful executive. The sales executive who puts nurturing and inspiring their team far ahead of their own ego is a sales executive who can set your company up for lasting success and blowout results.

The skills necessary to become a top sales executive are varied and numerous. The most successful sales executives are exceptional communicators who are goal-oriented, patient relationship builders, and adaptable, curious innovators. They’re resilient, persistent, and strategic long-term thinkers.

These qualities allow individuals to work effectively with customers, colleagues, and superiors, making it easier to inspire others to greatness. With continuous learning, hard work, and the knack for fostering relationships that add value to the business, sales executives can push a successful business into a record-breaking one.

If your organization needs a change at the top of the sales team, contact Battalia Winston. Our decades of experience, expansive network, and ability to identify candidates who don’t identify themselves as looking for a new position have contributed to success for small and mid-sized businesses across industrial, consumer, healthcare, pharmaceutical and family-owned businesses. Contact us before you initiate your next search; we’ll help you find a leader who can drive success for your business.

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Executive recruiters specialize in identifying, evaluating, and recruiting top executives for organizations. Here are three reasons you should hire executive recruiters as a startup.

Three Things Executive Recruiters Can Do for Startups

Save You Time and Money

Since they specialize in recruiting senior executives, executive recruiters know what to look for and can quickly find the right candidates for your open positions. This saves you the time and effort of interviewing and evaluating candidates who don’t have the skills you need and who don’t resonate with your business’s culture. Executive search firms save you money because they have access to specialized industry networks and research resources that you otherwise might not be able to find or would hopelessly follow into a dead-end lead.

Specialize in Your Field

Many search firms specialize in just a few industries, giving them a deep network and inside knowledge that can streamline your search. Specialized recruiters understand the nuances of recruiting senior executives in your industry; they know how to find the best candidates for your positions and how to attract them to your startup.

Manage the Hiring Process From Start to Finish

Professional recruiters know how to structure job offers and negotiate effectively with candidates. They’ll pitch your business to competitive candidates and stick with you throughout the hiring and onboarding process. This makes them invaluable when it comes to filling key positions in a startup.

Signs a Startup Should Hire an Executive Recruiter

There are some telltale signs that indicate it’s time for a startup to hire an executive recruiter. These include high turnover, employee burnout due to understaffing, and trouble maintaining confidentiality throughout the recruitment process. Professional executive recruiting services know how to keep the lid on a search, even in industries where everyone seems to know everyone and everything they’re doing.

The Difference Between Retained and Contingency Search

There are two main types of paying executive recruiters: retained search and contingency search. Retained search is when the recruiter is paid a lump sum retainer for their services upfront, while contingency search is when the recruiter only gets paid if they find a candidate your company chooses to hire.

Although retained search may be more expensive, it can often give you access to a more focused and qualified range of candidates, as well as provide more personalized attention during the hiring process. Retained executive recruiters also do significant industry research and work to get to know your business’s culture and needs. As a result, they can do a better job developing a focused list of top candidates, and pitching your startup to highly desirable candidates who may be sought after by competing companies.

The reasons your startup should hire executive recruiters make it obvious that experienced, retained search firms are an invaluable resource for startups. They save you time and money, provide expert advice, and steer companies through the hiring process from start to finish.

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Building your organization’s culture doesn’t have to be hard or complicated, but it does take commitment from leaders. Here are five steps for building your organization’s culture.

Clearly State Company Values and Mission

Every company should have a clear set of values, policies that support those values, and a mission statement that all employees understand. Reinforce these pillars regularly in meetings, newsletters, emails, and other methods of communication to ensure everyone knows that upholding the company’s values and mission is a fundamental expectation. Hold employees accountable if they deviate from those expectations.

Foster an Inclusive Environment

Make sure everyone within the organization feels included and knows that they are a valued part of the team. Create an open environment where all employees can share their ideas, experiences, and opinions in order to create solutions that benefit the entire company.

Hiring a diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist demonstrates your organization’s commitment to inclusivity and can help forge a cohesive yet diverse company culture. Finding the right DEI leader is essential. Engaging a diversity executive search firm can streamline the process and bring innovative, effective leaders in as candidates for the position.

Lead by Example

Leaders must set a positive example for their colleagues to help create an encouraging environment and guide how others should act and behave in the organization. Employees are more likely to buy into company culture expectations if leaders demonstrate their commitment through their own behavior.

Celebrate Successes

Taking the time to recognize and appreciate employees’ hard work goes a long way toward creating an environment where people feel valued. Celebrating successes, both individually and as a team, is essential to developing strong relationships within the workplace.

Encourage Open Communication

Being able to openly communicate ideas and opinions without fear of backlash or judgment promotes trust and encourages employees to bring their best selves to work every day. Demonstrating honesty, transparency, and integrity in communication is essential to building a genuinely supportive company culture.

By following these five steps for building your organization’s culture, you can create an environment that fosters collaboration, creativity, and growth. When employees feel supported and valued within the company, they will be more likely to stay with the organization longer and continue contributing to its success.

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Job Description

Before beginning to seek candidates for a CFO position, prepare a detailed job description that includes your most desired traits, non-negotiable qualifications, and preferred types and length of experience. It’s impossible to hire the CFO you want if you can’t accurately describe the job you want that person to do.

If your company is in a position to hire a new CFO, it is also in a position to transform the role. This is especially true when a departing incumbent has held the job for a long time. While everything may be working well, the business may be missing opportunities for new forms of financing, cost savings, or restructuring relationships with suppliers that could benefit the bottom line.

Think strategically about what you’d like a new CFO to tackle and include that in the job description. But be realistic: include a reasonable timeline for when you expect the new hire to accomplish specific goals and start with the most achievable ones. Then move on to more long-term aspirations.

Qualifications

It goes without saying that a CFO should have an advanced degree in business, accounting, finance, economics, or a related field. Top candidates may also have professional certifications such as CPA, CFA, CMA, or another certification from a financial executives’ professional association.

Equally or perhaps more important is experience. Industry knowledge is important, but hands-on experience in managing the financial aspects of a similarly sized business is critical. Exposure and experience in managing compliance with reporting requirements for public, private, or non-profit organizations are essential.

CFOs oversee risk management, investments, debt, accounting and cash flow, assets and liabilities, financial reporting, taxation, and financial forecasting, which may affect major decisions like product development, mergers and acquisitions, and investments in new capital assets.

Education, experience, and certifications are top considerations for hiring the ideal CFO. Equally important are personal traits, often referred to as “soft skills,” that can spell success or failure for a new CFO hire.

Integrity

A CFO should be the conscience of the company. CEOs might get tempted to take inadvisable risks when revenues and profits are at stake, particularly in challenging economic environments. While a CFO should be a forward-thinking, strategic partner, they are also the voice of reason when proposed courses of action are too radical for the business to bear.

Any candidate for a CFO position must have an unblemished record of integrity and a reputation for delivering unbiased financial information truthfully, without “spin” designed to assuage the ego of the CEO or the egos on the board.

Communication

Hand in hand with integrity are superior communication skills. Delivering financial results and information truthfully doesn’t mean delivering it brutally or wantonly. CFOs now play a much more prominent, public-facing role with Wall Street and the financial media. A misstep with analysts or the business press can result in plummeting share prices and speculation about the businesses’ health.

CFOs must deliver accurate information within SEC rules for public companies and quash rumors about “succession” or upcoming changes in family-owned or privately held businesses. They also communicate with banks and investors.

Officers learn media skills through experience, and a new CFO must be able to remain calm, refuse to answer leading questions, or get baited into revealing more than the required information.

CFOs are also critical resources for board decisions and for legal teams, who must have accurate financial information to effectively represent the company in mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, or legal disputes. The selected candidate must have a record of inspiring confidence and respect among the entire team of leaders upon whom the company relies.

Management

CFOs may lead teams of accountants, bookkeepers, and financial analysts and must keep an eye on payroll and human resources, including employee expenses and benefits. Setting a tone of approachability, accountability, and integrity across the company’s entire financial operation is a CFO’s responsibility.

Analytical and Strategic Thinking

Gathering data is one thing, but making sense of it and seeing possibilities in it, is quite another. A CFO should be able to articulate areas for improvement, expansion, or cost reduction based on company data and forecasts. They’ll be able to develop new financing sources and have a network of industry connections that may prove fruitful for strategic partnerships.

Technical Skills and Adaptability

Technical advances affect every industry and every leadership role within a business. A CFO must be open and eager to learn about technical improvements that can save the business money, streamline its operations, or expand its global reach.

When a CFO identifies a technical advancement that can benefit the company, they may get tasked with selling the adoption of new technology across company operations and between functional teams. This is another area where communication and management skills are critical.

Crisis Management

CFOs are on the spot when something happens that threatens the company’s revenue or even its very existence. They must know how to prepare and implement disaster plans that will preserve data and maintain operations in the face of unexpected disruptions.

The global pandemic that began in 2020 perfectly illustrates the impact of unanticipated developments on business. Every aspect of business got impacted, from the collapse of “just in time” supply chains to the nearly immediate shift to remote work. That means that costs, revenues, human resource management, and information security with a remote workforce became critically important and immediate concerns.

CFOs were on the line to help lead the pivot to new ways of operating that could help a business survive through lockdowns and massive changes in the workforce.

The competition for qualified CFOs in the changed business environment of the twenty-first century makes it imperative that businesses consider hiring professional financial executive recruiters. Search professionals will help companies to avoid common mistakes in a CFO search. They will work with search committees to limit false starts and quickly develop a pool of highly qualified candidates from which to choose.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Ideal CFO appeared first on Battalia Winston – Executive Recruiting Firm | Executive Search.

Strategic Vision

Supply chain executives must think strategically and develop long-term plans that set their organizations up for success. This requires an understanding of the industry landscape, current trends, and customer needs. Strategic vision helps supply chain executives anticipate future challenges and opportunities and provide solutions that position their companies to meet those challenges and capitalize on new opportunities.

Communication

Supply chain executives must communicate effectively with internal and external stakeholders, including employees, at all levels of the supply chain operation. Excellent listening skills and the ability to distill a message to a few clear and concise points combine to forge effective communication. An effective supply chain executive can clearly identify what must be done and knows how to do it.

Collaboration

Supply chain executives should have strong collaborative skills to build a unified team of professionals that work well together to achieve business objectives. They identify areas for collaboration between different teams and departments and develop solutions that meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Problem-Solving Abilities

Problem-solving is at the core of the supply chain executive’s role. Each day, supply chain executives must find solutions for complex issues. This involves analyzing data, identifying patterns, and thinking critically about potential outcomes. Problem-solving skills also drive the development of innovative solutions that keep an organization competitive and profitable.

Decision-Making Abilities

Supply chain executives make decisions quickly and decisively, sometimes under immense pressure. They must understand and assess the potential implications of their decisions and take calculated risks to maintain operations and generate greater returns.

Technical Know-How

Understanding how to leverage the latest technologies to improve processes, increase efficiency, and reduce costs is another central skill any prospective supply chain executive should demonstrate. They should be able to give examples of how they’ve used or implemented supply chain software and automation specific to their industry and an eagerness to stay informed about new technological developments.

Economics, Market Conditions, and Cost Effectiveness

Supply chain executives are immersed in a world that is exceptionally sensitive to market conditions, unpredictable global political shifts, and even natural disasters. These executives must understand economic indicators, shifting costs, and alternative sources to maintain operations during economic, political, or climate-related disruptions.

These must-have leadership skills for supply chain executives define talents that should be at the top of the list when filling supply chain management positions. An experienced industrial executive search firm can streamline the process of developing a shortlist of qualified candidates when the need is urgent. Candidates equipped with these skills are supply chain leaders that can ensure their organization is well-positioned for success.

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If an executive lacks the necessary industry knowledge or important people skills to motivate and energize workers, they won’t produce the needed results. They won’t be successful . That puts a business on a treadmill of false starts and expensive recruitment repeats that deplete company resources and energy, bringing progress to a dead stop.

Rapid technological changes and the astonishing switch to hybrid or fully-remote work-from-home models require a level of flexibility never before seen in business. Companies that must fill leadership positions should be alert to these executive search trends to watch in 2023.

Engagement

In times of economic upheaval and uncertainty, competition for executive talent can intensify, even amid layoffs, budget cuts and retrenchment. Recruiting practices that emphasize communication and engagement, particularly with passive candidates who weren’t looking to make a change, will have an edge.

This need for engagement is spurring the growth of “candidate relationship systems,” modeled after customer relationship systems (“CMS”) that have managed consumer relationships for years. If they haven’t already done it, recruiters will add these tools to their operations.

Frontline employees need a leader who conveys that employee well-being and concerns are top priorities. Dictatorial leadership like is out, out, out. Not-so-quiet quitting will strike organizations that don’t attend to their employees’ needs.

Branding

Another aspect of engagement is branding. Executive-level talent gravitates toward organizations that have a clear identity. Your recruitment team should be able to state, in 30 seconds or less, what your company is all about and what they want in an executive leader.

Company culture can make or break a search. Candidates don’t want to make a move unless they feel they’ll be welcome, valued, heard, and supported.

Scarcity

A pandemic-related wave of retirements has created a strong need for developing middle managers and director-level staff into senior executive talent. Star performers will be in great demand, and companies will fight to nurture, promote, and retain the talent they’ve already got, along with trying to recruit new hires.

In addition to retirements, there has been a disturbing uptick in departures by female executives. Companies were already far too complacent about their efforts to recruit women into executive positions.

These are a few of the top trends in executive recruiting you’re likely to see in 2023. For help navigating this new talent acquisition landscape, hire a professional executive recruiting firm. They’ll save time and money and generate strong pool of candidates to help you to hire a winner.

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Following the Money

No one expects a CIO to be an accountant or a financier. But a CIO who will improve your bottom line must understand how your business makes money. When a CIO has done the work to understand where profits come from, how clients and customers are gained and lost, and how the business invests in its own growth, there are better able to recognize opportunities to forge bridges to technologies that can save money, speed processes, and improve productivity.

The right CIO can analyze data to spot areas of waste, where the business is spending or losing too much money on a marginal product or service and can suggest technical improvements to reduce costs and inefficiency.

At the same time, a CIO should be able to defend expenditures on new technology by demonstrating real results. Underpromising and overdelivering (UPOD) should be their operational philosophy. A candidate for the position should be able to describe how investment in technical improvements has paid off for the companies they have worked for in the past.

Spotting Opportunity

In addition to making current operations less costly and more efficient, a CIO should be able to participate and contribute to C-suite discussions of new business opportunities. A central responsibility of a CIO is to stay ahead of technological advancements and think strategically about how your business can capitalize on them.

The right CIO thinks beyond the server and the screen to the broader implications of technology for business success. They may deploy a newer, faster, and more responsive customer relationship management (CRM) system. They may recognize areas where computer-assisted design and manufacturing can create superior products or services, as in 3D printed parts or robot-assisted manufacturing or food service. Or, they may use artificial intelligence to gather new data to optimize business decisions

Mitigating Risk

Not a day goes by without news of some new cyberattack—phishing, Trojan horse viruses, hacking, or ransomware. The CIO is the general commanding the guardians at the gate. A CIO capable of protecting your business from information security breaches understands that training employees to be watchful and report security issues is critical to reducing risk.

Above employee awareness, CIOs should be able to think strategically about what measures must be taken, should be taken, or could be taken to secure a company’s intellectual property, customer data, and proprietary processes.

Hiring the right CIO to improve your business’s bottom line can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. Working with an experienced CIO executive search firm can save your company time and help you quickly build a roster of highly qualified candidates.

The post 3 Ways Having the Right CIO Will Improve Your Bottom Line appeared first on Battalia Winston – Executive Recruiting Firm | Executive Search.

As the industry begins to recover, businesses may need new leadership in manufacturing, from operations and logistics to marketing.. Learn questions to ask manufacturing executive-level talent.

Successes and Learning Opportunities

True leaders know how to give credit where credit is due. An executive who fails to acknowledge their team’s contribution to business successes isn’t likely to have the people and political skills to lead a manufacturing operation, which requires the ability to communicate effectively across teams and functions at all levels of the business.

Similarly, an executive who doesn’t acknowledge failures should raise red flags about integrity. After all, how can you trust a person who can’t name a single time they failed to tell you the truth when something goes wrong?

A talented manufacturing executive will be able to describe not only the fact of a failure in the past, but also how they learned from the experience. What could they have done to prevent the problem? What did they do to fix it? And how would they avoid similar issues in the future?

Changes

One question you should always ask manufacturing executive-level talent is, “What would you change about our company?” or, “What are the first three things you’d do to improve our company if you were selected for this position?” Ask candidates what they’ve noticed about your business that they think could be improved. Also, ask them to be as specific as possible about what improvements they’d implement. These could be organizational changes, cost reductions, technology improvements, or product advancements.

Asking a candidate about what they’d change, add, or improve at your company will tell you if they’ve done their homework about your business, their knowledge of your industry, and their leadership and communication style. For instance, do they answer tactfully yet directly, or are they disdainful or evasive?

At the executive level, candidates should have been given briefing materials describing your business’ organization and structure, current financials, and even plans for growth (with appropriate safeguards for confidentiality, of course). If they can’t respond convincingly with some insights about improving your business, they didn’t prepare appropriately for the interview, which doesn’t bode well for success in an executive role.

Diversity

It’s simply a proven fact that businesses with diverse workforces are more successful. Ask executive-level manufacturing candidates about their past efforts to diversify a workforce, establish DEI policies and activities, and how they measure results.

Building a diverse pool of candidates for executive positions is a challenge, and the competition for candidates who bring different perspectives to these positions is stiff. Enlisting the help of a manufacturing executive search firmwill streamline the process and tap you into a network of superior candidates that can bring diverse perspectives and experiences to the role.

Omissions

Ask executive-level candidates about what’s not on their résumé. Probe to require a candidate to fill in gaps in employment, reasons for multiple job changes, and lateral moves. Also, give the candidate a chance to tell you something that’s not listed that they think you should know.

It’s a squirmy question; a talented leader will take it head on, answer briefly and directly, and readily offer something that gives you a better sense of who they are and what’s important to them both in their career and their life outside of work.

Criticism

“Tell me about a time when a supervisor, colleague, or board member criticized you directly. How did you respond?” This question is one any C-suite level candidate should be able to answer calmly. Board relationships and communication with other senior executives will always involve disagreements—and criticism comes with the territory. Candidates should be able to describe how they defuse conflict, what compromises they are willing to make, and where they draw a line and stand their ground in the face of criticism.

Pressure

C-suite candidates will have had careers that are long and varied enough to have faced many tough decisions. They will have gone through reorganizations, layoffs, difficult choices among suppliers, site selection, relocations, and community relations. Ask candidates to describe their most difficult decisions and the effects they had on the company, its workers, and their own position.

A great manufacturing executive will always think about the impact of their decisions on front-line workers, consumers, and their company, beyond profitability to legal compliance, brand image, and the human impact on workers and their families. Executives make tough decisions all the time; delay, evasion, or delegation (where an executive makes difficult decisions someone else’s problem) signals that a candidate isn’t ready for a C-suite role.

Communication

Ask candidates how they communicate good and bad news to all stakeholders. Do they explain how they modify their messaging in tone and content depending on their audience? Do they acknowledge that listening is just as important as talking? Present prompts such as, “Describe a few times when you communicated good news and bad news, both internally and externally, at your past positions.” If the candidate doesn’t explain who the audience was for the communication, ask them to elaborate.

Globalization

Even small businesses have global relationships, whether with suppliers or customers. In the 21^st century, it’s a rare business that maintains a strictly local profile. Simply having a website exposes you to a global audience. Ask executive-level manufacturing talent about their global experiences and what adjustments they’ve made or would make to appeal to an global audience.

Large companies with an established global presence will want to know how an executive models appropriate cultural sensitivity when dealing with customers, suppliers, and business partners from countries other than their own.

Ask candidates about their travels and what they have learned about relating to a diverse international audience. You’ll get a better sense of a candidate’s flexibility and adaptability, which are important factors that drive continuous improvements in manufacturing. Perhaps even more importantly, cultural sensitivity can help break bottlenecks in supply chains, repair misunderstandings, and avoid time-wasting snafus in communications.

Leadership Matters

In just the first few years of the 2020s, manufacturers have encountered unprecedented challenges. Companies that weathered the storm and recovered rapidly did so with outstanding leadership and despite weak or inept executives. When hiring executive manufacturing talent for your company, you should select a leader who can inspire confidence and trust across the company, lead change, make tough decisions, and tell the truth about missteps and disappointing results.

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