Your executive search team may not find the perfect executive candidate, but your team can and should construct a description of your ideal executive candidate so that you find someone who’s pretty close. By identifying the qualities you’re looking for, you’ll have a stronger basis for comparison as you move forward with your executive search efforts. Here are the top five qualities to look for in your ideal executive candidate. 1. Approachability An executive candidate without communication skills is not likely to get very far, but communication skills is a broad term that covers a lot of ground. One aspect of communication is interpersonal in nature. An executive that is approachable will avoid the ivory tower mentality that can make them lose touch with the people who really make the company work. 2. Takes Risks (but not too many). It can be very tempting for an executive to play it safe and not take many risks. After all, risk means you could lose money, lose your good reputation, or lose opportunities that you otherwise could have had. But playing it safe means you will lose other things. Often that means losing opportunities to grow and develop. It’s important that executives aren’t reckless but instead that they take some risks in order to propel your company forward. 3. Learns from mistakes. If you take enough risks, it will probably lead to some mistakes along the way. Mistakes are not necessarily bad in and of themselves. The important thing is that an executive learns from their mistakes so they don’t repeat them. It’s often possible to come back stronger from mistakes if you’re able to learn the lessons they have to teach. An executive who learns quickly from mistakes will be an irreplaceable asset to your company. 4. Handles adversity well. In interview situations, no one really wants to talk about their failures or the hard times they have gone through; however, it’s crucial for the in-house executive search team to know that an executive candidate has handled hard times in the past and has handled them well. 5. Seeks continuous improvement. One trait all highly successful people share is that they continually seek to improve themselves and everything around them. Growth generally comes because of finding better and more effective ways to do things, and the right executive candidate will never stop working to make a company bigger and better than it was before. Thrive TRM gives in-house executive search teams the ability to import and compare candidate profiles to see how they stack up against each other as your search progresses. Reports are instant and can be shared with the team through Thrive TRM’s dashboard, which is private and secure. No more trying to sync schedules to have a face-to-face meeting—collaboration can take place anywhere, across states or continents, so there won’t be any delay in making decisions about your executive search. Contact us for more information about all of Thrive TRM’s capabilities in facilitating your executive search process.