Communication is at the core of every successful executive search. As an executive recruiter, you have the challenge of sustaining clear, consistent, and personalized communication with multiple stakeholders over a time period that can last up to several months. But what does that communication look like throughout the different phases of a search, and how can you automate your communication without losing the personal touch that is so integral to executive searches? Read on to learn more. Communicating Through the Executive Search Process One of the challenges facing executive recruiters is the way in which communication changes throughout a search. Early on in a search, communication is all about understanding the nuances of an opportunity with you client. Here, clear communication is important to determine the requirements of the position and ensure that the job description is accurate and adequately detailed. Even more so, however, clear communication in this early stage is vital to truly understanding what the company culture is like and what type of candidate is most likely to succeed. Once the details of the position have been determined, recruiters must turn to candidate communication. These conversations can often be quite nuanced and involve many different elements, from working to convince passive candidates to throw their hat in the ring to keeping candidates in the loop through what can be several rounds of interviews and assessments. All the while, recruiters function as a unique middle man, filtering information from the client to candidates and back again. Even when recruiters aren’t focused on a particular search, communication is a constant. That includes communicating with potential additions to a talent pool and maintaining contact with those individuals who may be right for a future executive search as well. In some cases, communication will also be needed to find out whether the company has found a candidate they want to fill the position as well as the negotiating skills involved in making an offer that the candidate will accept. Saving Time in Executive Search Communication While communicating personally is important in executive search, there are ways to streamline communication without losing your personal touch. And streamlining your communication is important. Doing so helps you not only communicate with more people, but makes those conversations more effective. The good news is that Thrive TRM can help. By centralizing your search data within a single dashboard, executive recruiters gain enhanced communication capabilities that enable you to do more in less time. With a centralized contact database, communicating with talent pool members or potential candidates is fast and easy, even if Thrive TRM isn’t your only recruitment database. That’s because Thrive TRM can quickly import contacts from most ATS systems and other software programs. Thrive TRM also streamlines communication by providing a direct, instant link to other members of the recruiting team who need to be kept abreast about search developments, including supervisory staff and the hiring team for which you are working to fill the position. With instant links, phone calls with clients can be spent reviewing strategic decisions, rather than administrative updates. Finally, Thrive TRM can create automatic messages that can keep candidates updated about their progress during the interview process. While human contact may still be needed to keep executive search candidates interested and ensure they don’t drop out of the process before the client is ready for them to do so, these automatic updates can be a good stopgap measure until you have the chance to call them personally and let them know where things stand. Discover how Thrive TRM can be a solution for search firms that want to have the best of all worlds—higher productivity, more positions successfully filled, and the rewards of a job well done.