As far as recruiting firms go, those that specialize in executive search tend to be fairly old-school at times. A large part of executive search revolves around personal touches, one-on-one direct contact, who you know, and how you can use those personal resources and contacts to find the candidates you need.

After all, executives are an integral part of any company. While every employee adds (or is expected to add) value, you can’t run a company without leadership, and that leadership comes from the C-Suite of executives, not from entry level employees. Executives are used to being treated as important, and they do not typically respond well to some of the technologies being used by search firms to fill lower-level positions, including resume screening with ATS software, automated chatbots to answer questions about the position, and one-size-fits-all automated communications during the executive search process.

So is there a place for technology in the executive search process?

Most definitely, there are ways to use technology in the executive search process. They just may look different from technology used in other types of recruiting. Executive search is, after all, more specialized and targets a different group of professionals than the standard job candidate search.

Effective Technologies for Executive Search

Using your existing contacts to find the right person for an executive position is always the best place to start, but what happens when not enough viable candidates surface? This is becoming more of a problem as the economy improves and executive candidates become more scarce.

New AI-influenced database tools can search through lists of thousands or millions of passive candidates in ways that can’t be replicated through your existing talent pools–even for executive candidates. What’s more, these tools can widen your base of candidates to help you find the ones you need for even the hardest-to-fill positions.

Social media is another new technology that provides great quantities of information about potential candidates that was not publicly available before a few years ago, making it easier to research and discover appropriate candidates.

eBook: Using Social Media for Executive Search – Learn how to leverage social media in your executive search process more effectively.

The right personality and soft skills assessment reveals more about a person than whether they have the skills and experience to fill a C-suite position. Using an assessment geared toward executive positions may seem a bit impersonal at first, but it is becoming a necessity in the current hiring culture.

Two of the biggest challenges for many executive recruiters are keeping track of candidate information and keeping everyone in the loop, including the corporate hiring team. Both of these challenges can be met with technology, specifically the Thrive TRM system. Thrive TRM works on all devices from laptops to smartphones so your data and communication can be accessed by all users wherever they are.

Thrive TRM speeds up many executive searches by providing instant reports and comparisons of candidates in real time, negating the need for time-consuming and hard to schedule face-to-face meetings. Discover solutions for search firms to see how Thrive TRM can help your executive search firm with various aspects of the executive recruiting process.

Supercharging Executive Search Process Thrive TRM