Confidential executive search: tools, risks and required competences
Confidential management selections are delicate projects that require rules and very strict adherence to them. There are two sides to the confidentiality of a change of manager within a company: internal to the company and external to the labour market. It is possible to apply both one and several confidentiality axes in a single executive search project, but this must be agreed at the outset to prevent all risks.
Accountability searches
If the executive search is carried out confidentially and the search is not known to internal employees, then the responsibility for organising the process rests with a very narrow category of informed employees and the executive search firm. Pre-agreed boundaries of action should prevent information leakage. The executive search firm must be responsible for organising the public and confidential headhunting, but cannot be responsible for internal company communications. This part depends entirely on the ability of the company’s employees who are aware of the selection to maintain internal confidentiality. Confidentiality from within the company is also the responsibility of the candidate, but this part is often not discussed very much. The candidate himself may disclose the details of the position to people in the employer’s environment, so this is an additional risk that needs to be discussed before communicating with candidates.
Risk management
The risk of disclosure of an internal executive search is always present and a plan of action should be in place to deal with such a situation. This is often the responsibility of internal communicators, but there are times when these communicators are not on the list of those informed about the executive search. In this case, this communication strategy needs to be coordinated without their assistance, with the help of the executive search partners. The risk of maintaining the confidentiality of candidates is shared by both the recruitment firm and the employer. It is important for the executive search firm to ensure that, when disclosing any information about a candidate to a client, it obtains the consent of the candidate.
A very important aspect for the employer is the confidential model for checking the candidate’s references, which must also be agreed with the candidate himself. The ethics of each company’s manager on the issue of candidate confidentiality is different, but if confidentiality is broken, both sides suffer, so both the employer and the candidate must have the same interest in maintaining confidentiality.
Competences required for a confidential executive search project
The issue of trust is crucial to confidentiality. If the candidate does not feel trust in advance from the executive search project manager, then the communication will not even get off the ground. The ability to communicate the level of confidentiality and having a confidentiality plan in place are necessary competences for an executive search project manager. These competences also create an image of trustworthiness, which managers always assess before becoming candidates in a confidential search. Competences on the employer’s side are also important, as they must continue the work started by the recruitment project manager. It is important to have enhanced confidentiality measures in place: meetings outside the public working environment, advance notification and approval of meeting participants, no outgoing information to third parties.
