Our Search Process
Jacobs Executive Advisors provides its clients with an extensive and rigorous candidate selection process. Our unique approach assures greater objectivity and enhanced due diligence while matching organizational needs with candidate talents, personality, and motivations.
Our process begins with assisting our client’s selection-team to gain consensus about the specific characteristics sought in new employees, and about the roles and contributions these new hires are expected to make.
Throughout the process, we raise thought-provoking inquiries that lead to the most effective selection outcomes for all parties.
For each project, Jacobs Executive Advisors develops customized search tools that enable selection team participants to better evaluate each candidate against objective benchmarks, and to establish a structured process that assures objective evaluation of all candidates.
Our extensive four stage process includes:
CLIENT ENGAGEMENT: DISCOVERY, CONSULTING, AND PLANNING
Jacobs Executive Advisors engages the hiring-manager, and other members of the selection team, to fully understand the issues surrounding the staffing project and to uncover organizational goals, problems, needs, and dynamics. We work with the hiring-manager and the selection team to crystallize search specifications. This includes:
- Exploring organizational characteristics including current strengths, weaknesses, operating effectiveness, personality dynamics, and succession considerations.
- Identifying key initiatives that the position occupant must successfully accomplish during the first twelve-months, as well as obstacles they’re likely to confront.
- Revealing needed skills and competencies, experience, acumen, industry expertise or exposure, functional or technical knowledge, style, personality characteristics, etc.
- Establishing a structured interview and evaluation process that the organization will apply for each candidate.
- Developing a composite of target organizations likely to employ qualified candidates.
- Creating a custom scoring tool known as the Candidate Self Competency Evaluation or CSCE, which creates a vehicle for more objective measurement of each candidate’s competencies as compared against defined project criteria.
- Deploying, for diagnostic purposes, PDP™ personality profiling tools to uncover key behaviors necessary for successful performance in the targeted role. Later, we compare each candidate against that benchmark, supported by customized and position-specific behavioral questions. These questions seek to validate a candidate’s history in comfortably exercising behaviors that will be required of successful position occupants in your company.
CANDIDATE ENGAGEMENT: SOURCING, EVALUATION AND APPROVALS
- Developing and expanding a target list of potential candidates.
- Engaging each potential candidate in substantive conversations to explore their individual capacities, interests, motivations, and passions about entertaining the targeted role.
- Leading qualified and interested candidates through our detailed “due diligence” process which explores past history, career performance, current interests, greatest talents, proudest recent accomplishments, possible conflicts, etc. We deploy the custom evaluation tools previously mentioned to include the CSCE, PDP™, and search-specific behavioral questions.
- Earning each qualified candidate’s approval to proceed.
MATCHMAKING & COURTSHIP: INTRODUCTIONS, INTERVIEWS AND FIT-TESTING
- Presenting matched and properly motivated candidates to our client.
- Preparing candidates and client for first and subsequent interviews.
- Debriefing candidates and client.
- Drawing out and addressing concerns and “fit” issues of the respective parties.
- Raising thought-provoking questions of candidates and client to test for objectivity and well-built decision making.
CLOSURE: NEGOTIATION, COMMITMENTS, REFERENCES AND ONBOARDING
- Designing and negotiating mutually acceptable compensation, benefit, and employment terms.
- Generating commitments and acceptance from all parties.
- Executing detailed reference inquiries on the successful candidate by speaking with individuals who have witnessed the candidate’s human performance firsthand.
- Prompting client “on-boarding” activities for the successful candidate, testing feedback from all parties, and constructively using such information to maximize placement success.
- Completing post-placement follow-up to assess the appointed individual’s performance in comparison with the initial project goals.