For effective recruitment and succession planning, the goal is to fill critical roles as quickly as possible with minimal interruption to the business. While developing talent from within is a crucial element of any successful succession planning strategy, there is also a time and place to look externally. Succession Challenges in Executive Recruiting Transitions in leadership are always risky for companies, especially when it comes to highly visible roles in the c-suite. When a departing leader has made a positive legacy, there is understandable anxiety about finding someone to fill their shoes while still making the role their own. That’s especially true when there isn’t a clear cut internal candidate ready to take the helm. And while qualified candidates often exist on the inside, occasionally, it’s necessary to seek out external talent to breathe new life into a department and take the company in a new direction. The Case for External Executive Recruitment The practice of vetting executive candidates has evolved considerably in the past decade. While CEOs and successors often were able to hand-pick their own successor, recent years have come with substantial advancements in best practices for succession and recruitment. These best practices require more involvement from boards as well as a strong business case based on past performance and data and analytics to predict future success. Gone are the days when gut feelings and popularity contests sufficed. Thanks to advancements in cloud-based recruiting technologies like Thrive TRM, today’s executive search consultants are increasingly leveraging a wealth of data that was previously unfathomable to make better informed hiring decisions at all levels. Using Tech to Support External Recruiting With an increased prevalence of data and analytics in the executive search sector, recruiters no longer have to rely on board consensus or worry as much about their inherent biases clouding their hiring decisions. Cloud-based recruiting software like Thrive TRM allows organizations and executive search companies to make fact-based decisions to locate and onboard top talent for their most critical leadership roles. However, the best tactic is always to diversify between external recruitment and developing the talent you already have to be ready to assume more senior leadership roles as their careers progress. Is your recruitment software up to the challenge of finding top talent from the outside? Thrive TRM’s collaborative, easy-to-use features allow you to spend less time managing a database and more time advising the hiring team. Thrive TRM allows users to create dynamic talent and business/contact networks. Additionally, its permission-based tools enable you to share these systems with hiring managers, key executives, and external recruiters. Data-based tools put informed hiring decisions at your fingertips to help you identify, source, and train top executive talent for all levels of your organization. Contact us today to discover executive search solutions for your client or organization today.