Avoiding The Pitfalls of Recruiting Retail Executives: Part V

By Gail E. Amsterdam, Founder, CEO, and Chief Talent Curator, Amsterdam Associates

Over the past 5 weeks, we’ve prepared a 5-Part series exploring how Retailers are Avoiding the Pitfalls of Recruiting Retail Executives.  You’ve joined us each week with a new article that built on the prior one to detail how you can maximize your talent stream.

How to attract top-notch talent who will take your executive roles, stay with you, and advance in your retail organization.

Once you identify who you want to consider as a potential hire, you must develop a tight, concise, direct, and appealing message to attract them to get their enthusiastic buy-in. Long messages just won’t work, people are in a rush, and brevity is what works today. Make sure to use your network and your secondary network. Contact people in batches, give them some time, and then have a follow-up message. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again. Have all your messaging and materials ready to send to your talent prospects so the process will be seamless. Time will be of the essence.

Remember, you are looking to find top talent either with who you’re directly contacting or with whom you’ve already been introduced to through their network of people. People always want to help others with great opportunities. Make sure this position sounds compelling, even if it didn’t start out sounding that way.

Gather as much information about the executive you’re contacting as possible up front; their current company, anyone you knew that they previously worked with, their LinkedIn profile, google information to enhance your upcoming conversation, and then be as prepared as you possibly can. Depending upon the executive opportunity, you might choose to withhold the name of your company until you do a video meeting with the executive, when you can share more details considerably at that time.

In having an initial interview with an executive prospect, share exciting features about your retail company, your strategic plan, performance metrics, organizational wins, and allow them to ask you questions. 

Once you’ve wet their whistle, quickly shift to finding out about them. Be facile with your questions to ascertain key information to determine if you would like to proceed further. Make sure you’ve done everything to entice the executive genuinely by listening to what compels them and is important for their future and their families’ values. Throughout the recruitment process, this will be a mainstay in connecting with and later securing them, while navigating your success in the talent recruitment cycle to avoid many pitfalls.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series to Avoid these Recruitment Pitfalls. We’ll be glad to send you the complete composite of the 5-Part Series, so please email us your contact information here, so we can better acquaint you with these key valuable points. It’s a lot of pivoting and process, however, if you follow these benchmark points, it will yield top-flight talent for you.

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As we continue to curate Talent Roadmaps for our Retail Clients for their 2024 recruiting plans, we would be pleased to schedule a 30-minute complimentary zoom consultation with you to unpack your recruiting concerns for the upcoming year.  We’re here for you, just reach out.