Here are ten questions your recruiter should ask you if they know what they're doing and really want to compel candidates to talk to you:
1. Why was this role created or what led to this search? Good and bad events, as balanced a version of things as is possible without airing too much dirty laundry.
2. Who does it report to and what does that person expect out of this hire? Or in CEO cases, what does the Board really want to get done in 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. Concrete deliverables.
3. Who needs to be involved in the selection and search process and why? Who are key stakeholders and influencers? What are they thinking about, and where are bottlenecks and disagreements likely to come up (does the engineering team really not want new leadership, for example, because they don't want structure? Do management and Founders not want a new CEO but feel the Board is forcing that person upon them unfairly? Why do people have this view and does their argument have merit?)
4. How many employees do you have, cash on hand, revenues, margins, basic expense line, growth rate, capitalization structure, capitalization strategy, Board makeup, management team backgrounds.
5. History of the company. Why was the company invented, what was the thought process, what is the driving core innovation of forming the enterprise in the first place and what does it aspire to be? "We want to be the THIS of the THAT SPACE" should be covered in some detail.
6. Key challenges and barriers to success?
7. How the organization will change and evolve over the near and medium terms, and how those evolutions will affect the company and this role?
8. What are key opportunities in the market place, key challenges, market dynamics, philosophical camps, various approaches to the problems you're solving, etc.?
9. How do you typically hire people? What's worked and not worked? How do we best work together to ensure success in a reasonable timeframe? What is your hiring philosophy and it is consistent with other key players?
10. Discuss the process. Map out the strategy for identifying the key people, getting them to the table and expediting it so that the process is an advantage in recruiting, and not an impediment.
