2018 has brought tremendous changes to the corporate landscape. Tax cuts have spurred growth and investment as well as increases in compensation for many employees, and the unemployment rate has fallen to just 4 percent, the lowest number in over a decade. It only makes sense that executive leadership would also change. A Focus on Personal Growth As hiring has picked up over the last several years, the growing number of executive positions companies are looking to fill has led to a shift in how executives are choosing their positions. Instead of trying to get the biggest payout or the best perks, more executives are now choosing their work based on the level of intellectual growth and challenge they think it will present. Of course, growth and challenge have always been considerations for executive positions and many lower-level ones as well, but the current hiring climate seems to have made this even more of a priority. In the end, this growth should end up benefiting companies as a whole and helping them innovate more in their respective industries. Customer Experience as an Executive Focus Any executive worth his salt knows that customer experience is just about everything in today’s environment of instant feedback through social media and other venues. While many executives had always been content to delegate customer experience issues to upper and middle management, some are beginning to realize that direction needs to come from the top on customer experience issues and are taking a larger role in directing them. A recent study about customer experience showed that the three biggest obstacles to improving it were organizational culture, organizational structures, and processes, and that CEOs and other executives drive all of these things. It only makes sense for them to get involved in improving customer experience, which will impact the company’s level of success and ability to meet goals. The Importance of Employee Engagement Executives who recognize that employee engagement is right up there with customer experience understand that they need to be involved in the process of making sure employees remain engaged. Engaged employees are more productive and stay longer at companies than those who are not engaged. Executives increasingly don’t want to be constantly working to replace employees who leave for what they think are greener pastures elsewhere, and are focusing on engaging employees before that happens. Of course, these trends will all impact executive search–job descriptions, recruiting methods, and hiring criteria may all change as these priorities come to the forefront. These changes point to the need for executive search and recruiting to evolve as well. What used to work isn’t as effective in today’s competitive world of executive recruiting. No matter what the executive search process entails, Thrive TRM helps companies navigate these changes by streamlining recruiting tasks, analyzing collected data to show trends and areas of need, and reporting on every aspect of the search process. We invite you to schedule a demo and see how today’s executive recruiting challenges require outstanding executive recruiting tools.