How to Hire Someone for a Leadership Role

Leadership, and the evolution of what makes a good leader, means that businesses are more aware of just how important it is to hire effective and excellent leaders. Having strong leadership can boost an organization in all the right ways. It will increase staff productivity, navigate the company through difficult times, and ultimately boost profits and outputs. It's not unreasonable to say that good leadership can be the difference between a business being successful or not making it. That means hiring your staff for leadership roles is one of the most important things that your business needs to do. With that in mind, let's have a look at how to hire leaders for your business.

Know What Makes a Good Leader

Many leadership qualities are often listed in bullet point lists and on these lists, you're going to find everything you'd expect. Things like honesty, integrity, and accountability will find their way onto pretty much every list of good leadership qualities, along with a  list of inspirational leadership quotes. While these are all important, what really makes a great leader, and what separates them from managers, is the inspiration they are able to create with charisma and likeability while maintaining a good level of respect from their team.

Great leaders will be effective at all the skills you'd expect from an effective manager, but they are also experts at carving a path forward for your team or business, setting direction and inspiring and motivating those they lead to meet the objectives of the business.

Know How to Read Their Resume

There are a couple of quick things you can assess a leader by simply by checking their resume.

You should look for good stability. How long do they typically stay at each position they have been in? Management changes are very disruptive for your business and should be kept to a minimum. Hiring a leader that displays a record of jumping from job to job might not promote the stability you need.

Look out for the right experience too. You should assess not only their management or leadership experience but the kind of experience they have too. Leaders need vastly different skills depending on the industry.

Conduct Personality Tests

Many human resource executive staffing experts will suggest that you conduct thorough personality tests on potential leadership candidates. Good quality and comprehensive psychometric testing can make effective leaders stand out in a narrow field of excellent candidates. It's a cost-effective way of giving yourself an advantage when you approach the process of recruiting leaders for your business.

 

As you can tell, hiring someone for a leadership role in your business requires a lot of acumen about what makes a good leader and a thorough examination of each candidate against these qualities and against your company's values and culture. Leaders need to be a good fit for your organization, and they need to be able to produce results by motivating and uplifting your workforce. Knowing what to look for when you make appointments should be a top priority for your business.