Building your dream management team… it’s not all about the resume!

At OpenView, we invest in companies looking for venture funding that are at the expansion stage. Many times, these companies are growing rapidly and need to hire senior resources to expand their management teams in order to scale. In several cases, we assist by offering recruiting support through OpenView labs (led by Diana Winings) to speed placement.

It’s not all about the resume when hiring a new senior executive, and Nat Stoddard and Clair Wyckoff have a book titled The Right Leader that details many of the nuances that need to be considered when making a hire. The book focuses on what to consider as you are going through the executive selection process and building your senior management teams.

Often times, people can focus too much on capability and talent and neglect to consider culture, character and personality fit. Stoddard and Wyckoff explain, the main reason why new leaders fail is because they are unable to align with a corporation’s culture.

Below are some recommendations that come from the book:

• Get an objective outsider to study your culture so you can identify executives who will fit

• Fully understand the background, cultural and strategic information from the current employees who will report to the new senior executive or CEO. If there is potential conflict, you should know this upfront before making a hiring decision.

• Give the board enough data to make good decisions

• Base much of the executive interviews on character and behavior traits in addition to core competency

• Ask candidates how they handled certain difficult situations in the past. This will help you get a better sense of how they will perform on the job when faced in similar situations

Stoddard and Wyckoff describe a 25-step process that goes through the above in more detail. If hiring a new senior team member or CEO is something you plan on doing in the future and you are new to the process, I recommend picking up the book or going to their website. Of course, if you are looking for capital and this is a current pain point, OpenView definitely is able to help here.

-KKF