When vying for a C-suite role, you’ll need to win over many different stakeholders: board members, the CEO (existing or outgoing), executive peers, and external parties like customers and shareholders who might weigh in on the decision. But all candidates, even internal ones, must prepare for another set of increasingly powerful gatekeepers: professional recruiters and assessors.
In our work coaching executives and consulting to companies, we’ve seen a steep increase in the use of these advisers, not just to search for CEOs but also to fill top marketing, operations, technology, people management, and other roles at medium- to large-sized organizations. Candidates at this level can now expect to face small armies of outside experts who will drill down into their strengths and weaknesses and try to predict their potential for success. These might include representatives from leading search firms like Korn Ferry, Egon Zehnder, Russell Reynolds, Spencer Stuart, and Heidrick & Struggles or from assessment specialists like Assess International, Hogan Assessments, DDI, ghSMART, RHR International, MDA Leadership, YSC Consulting (now part of Accenture), and Mercer.
Few, if any, of these evaluators will have experience doing the job you’re seeking. But they have conducted hundreds of tests and interviews, studied best practices, and applied frameworks grounded in social science. Companies are using them in increasing numbers to ensure that their most critical hiring decisions are based on data-driven analysis rather than gut instinct or bias. So like it or not, these firms hold sway over not only your chances of being appointed in a current search but also your future career opportunities, either elevating you into contention for other top jobs or taking you out of it. That’s because their work feeds into both candidate selection and leadership pipeline development for many client companies. To impress these outside hiring experts (as well as others involved in the process), we recommend you prepare in five key ways: Adopt a development mindset, craft a bold vision memo, anticipate every assessment, delve deep for interviews, and line up strong references.
Adopt a Development Mindset
The prospect of multipart tests and conversations with people who don’t have deep expertise in the work you do can feel unduly onerous—a bit like a baseball player being coached for hours on hitting by someone who’s never been up to bat. We implore you to shift to a more positive mindset and think of the process as an individualized career strategy session that will yield benefits even if you don’t secure the target job, because you’ll learn something to help you win the next one. Getting ready for recruiters gives you the chance to formulate a personal go-to-market plan, glean insights from assessments, think through and flesh out your leadership story in interviews, and receive helpful feedback from reference requests. The process is almost always an eye-opener, helping candidates better understand how others perceive them—and how they perceive themselves.
As Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon puts it, even the most elite candidates need to build their skills, and a rigorous evaluation by search professionals, no matter the outcome, can show you where you should focus. “The most important thing for you to know is the distance between your areas of competence and your areas of incompetence, and then you can push the line forward,” he says, adding that if you’re not willing to do that, “I’m not sure you deserve the next promotion.”
Craft a Bold Vision Memo
When James Citrin, who leads Spencer Stuart’s CEO practice, advises on succession, he asks all the contenders to write a five-page vision memo—what they’ll achieve and how, including strategy, operating moves, and financial performance. “Then the board can look at each candidate as a representation of alternative futures,” he says. If you’re up for a C-suite role, do the same: Develop a vision for your remit that tackles critical pain points, aligns with the company’s long-term goals, and shows you can execute and adapt.
Shout
When we proposed this to one client, Bill—a first-time chief financial officer contender at a Fortune 500 tech manufacturer—he balked. Bill worried that a vision memo might unwittingly stray or conflict with the CEO’s plan or tip his best ideas to peers vying for the role. We reframed the ask as a five-page “capital allocation strategy” memo—then a hot-button topic with the board since activists had been pressing many companies for more clarity. Bill did his homework—scanning the industry and conducting a quick listening tour with plant managers, sales leads, research and development, customers, and his boss and peers—and then over the next quarter outlined his recommendations for where to invest, harvest, or exit. He laid out a working-capital plan with triggers, a pricing and supply-risk playbook, and a finance-modernization agenda (faster closes, cleaner unit economics, clearer decision rights). After running the memo by trusted colleagues and tightening the details on free cash flow, downside cases, and pacing, he presented it to the team evaluating him for the CFO role, discussing it in more depth with each subsequent interview. By the final round, recruiters no longer saw him as a strong controller but as an “enterprise CFO.” The CEO and board were especially impressed that he had challenged their existing capital plan as an activist might—an increasingly common stress test in his industry. Bill got the job, beating out three other candidates.
