Masters of fit: how leaders enhance hiring

Abstract

Purpose

Recruiting is a key aspect of building a leadership team. But hiring the right senior executives is not easy and can prove very costly when it goes wrong. This paper aims to address this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper provides leaders with guidance on how to add value to the hiring process by improving their recruiting diagnostics.

Findings

The paper focuses on the concept of fit and unpacks the different strands: fit with the job, fit with the leader, fit with the team, and fit with the organization – not just with the current needs of the organization, but also with its emerging talent requirements.

Research limitations/implications

Based on extensive discussions with senior executives and leaders and their answers to informal surveys, the paper also draws on published interviews with high‐profile CEOs. It considers the types of questions that leaders must ask and the cues to listen for when assessing fit. It also proposes questions designed to gauge the authenticity of a candidate's responses. Finally, it reminds leaders of their responsibility to provide candidates with the right information to make informed decisions.

Practical implications

Hiring errors have expensive consequences and leaders must continually improve their hiring diagnostics by paying as much attention to recruitment failures as they do to learning in other domains.

Originality/value

This paper explains how leaders who become more effective at hiring can be “masters of fit.”

Citation

Bottger, P. and Barsoux, J. (2012), "Masters of fit: how leaders enhance hiring", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 33-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878571211191684