For increasing your company’s production efficiency and decreasing time to market and operational efficiency, you need a dynamic, insightful leader – a leader who can see beyond managing operations to transforming productivity while enhancing business performance levels. That is your Chief Operation Officer. How do you search for a COO? How to identify and attract the best-qualified candidate for the position? Find answers to all these questions and more by the information provided by top COO headhunters. These COO executive search experts also provide tips to help you optimize your COO recruitment process.
A Chief Operating Officer implements the plans devised by the CEO and other C-level executives of the company. Therefore, COOs are hired by companies to align operational methods, functions, and administration with business goals and growth projections.
A CEO takes responsibility for expansion, growth, profitability, and customer acquisition. He or she needs an outstanding leader to ensure that operations are carried out in a manner that all business goals can be achieved.
COO recruitment is common in mid-and large-sized manufacturing companies, logistics and supply chain companies, multinational companies, and retail businesses with huge operations. But in the last decades, companies across sectors are investing in COO recruitment.
Does your company need a COO? How to approach and conduct the entire COO recruitment process? If these are some questions that have you wondering, find all the right insights in the blog. The information and insights are shared by experienced COO headhunters or COO executive search experts.
What Is The COO Position?
According to Forbes.com, “COOs typically have an extensive operations background, ideally with at least five different companies and in several different roles and positions — including in a leadership capacity as a director or vice president.” A COO has to be well experienced to make important decisions regarding the way of working of the company.
It should be noted that in the absence of a CEO, it is the COO that takes the position of the CEO temporarily. “Similar to the Vice President of a country, the COO works in tandem with the chief executive officer to make sure that all company operations fall in line with the plan established by the CEO” is the definition of a COO as per the Corporate Finance Institute.
How Can A COO Help With Business Growth
Hiring a Chief Operating Officer can contribute to the positive growth of your business. Let us see the five ways in which it happens.
1) Steering the Organisation Towards Operational Excellence:
A Chief Operating Officer directs the company towards operational excellence with the help of a mindset that embraces certain principles and develops tools to create a culture of excellence within a company.
By substantiating the main three components of process efficiency, value for the customer, and business growth, the COO aims for operational excellence. Involving the employees and teams under the COO makes the company become more efficient overall.
2) Supervising and Improving Change Management Practices:
A business must be dynamic and constantly develop and adapt to meet a variety of challenges and obstacles. The changes may be in terms of technology, the emergence of new competitors, new or updated laws and regulations, or market trends. A COO plays a crucial role in making change management smooth and successful.
3) Overseeing Workforce Management For Operations Expansion:
One of the biggest roles that a COO has to take up is overseeing workforce and production efficiency.
To widen the business and reach of the company means aiming for business growth. By setting and checking the daily tasks and targets, the COO determines the daily operations to be undertaken by the team. The COO studies the temporal productivity of the workforce and analyses the ways in which the operations can be expanded.
4) Enhancing Employee Productivity and Business Performance Metrics:
For the growth and development of your business, COO recruitment becomes essential. A COO is one who has all the knowledge, power, intuition, and strategies to ensure higher employee productivity and performance.
It is the COO who ensures that departmental heads and managers guide, lead, and drive employee satisfaction and improved performance. The COO evaluates and improves Lean work management practices and SMART goals allocation across teams.
5) Supervise Employee Training and Learning for Transformational Moves:
The business growth depends on the quality and expertise of the candidates recruited by a company. The COO mentors and directs HR directors and managers to ensure that employee training and learning programs are relevant to the achievement of business growth.
How To Identify and Hire the Right COO For Your Company
To ensure a successful and time-efficient COO recruitment process, you need to frame the right approach. Here are some tips and suggestions provided by COO headhunters or COO executive search experts. Understanding and implementing these measures will help you in identifying and hiring the right COO for your company.
1. Conduct a Competitive Research On COO Talent in Your Industry Sector
Gone are the days when any candidate could be hired merely on the basis of educational qualifications, industry experience, and a simple job description.
Conduct research with the help of talent mapping techniques. While conducting the research, keep in mind the specific needs of your company. Collect information about the COO talent in your industry segment.
Without market mapping, you might end up hiring an expert who might not be the right fit for your company or a leader who is weaker than most counterparts in competitor businesses.
2. Find Out Different Types of Compensation and Benefits Offered to COO Positions
You should discuss the different types of compensation offered to the position of the COO. You should keep an open mind while discussing sensitive matters such as compensation, profit sharing, and benefits. A rigid mind could lead to disagreements.
Make sure to disclose the perks and benefits of the COO position. Set your company apart from the others by presenting the advantages in a strategic manner. Before you discuss the compensation, ensure you get the right information about the compensation received by the candidate in his or her previous workplace.
3. Do Not Limit COO Executive Search To Regional Levels
For COO executive search, do not restrict yourself to a particular region. Search candidates from the best talent pools across your country. If you have international operations, then conducting an international COO executive search will provide you with the best talent.
4. Hire an External Expert For Highly Technical Interviews
To have an expert to conduct highly technical interviews means to ensure that your company is not compromising in terms of skilled and knowledgeable human resources. An external expert should be a person who has accomplished important milestones and has bagged significant roles in operations management in your industry.
The expert should be knowledgeable about testing the knowledge of the candidates that have been shortlisted. While hiring such an expert, look through their profiles. An efficient COO headhunter also helps with hiring the right external experts for COO recruitment.
5. Check Psychological Traits Through Emotional Intelligence Assessments
C-level executive recruitment should involve the checking of the psychological Traits of the candidates. Some professionals might be experts at operations management but lack the temerity and tenacity to implement key change management initiatives. If that is one of the key functions your future COO needs to manage, then hiring such an individual would result in more chaos than solutions.
Emotional intelligence assessments have become common in many parts of the world when conducting top leadership recruitment. These assessments need not be carried out through digital or paper-based tests but through carefully planned informal interviews taken by relevant experts.
6. Assess Abilities Through Site Visits, Situational Judgements, and Real-World Practical Knowledge Over Academic Achievements
Top COO headhunters report that the most successful COO recruitments have happened when employers focus on practical knowledge and situational judgment skills of future COO candidates.
According to experienced COO executive search experts, sometimes, employers desire to recruit a COO who holds degrees from internationally reputed universities and has Fortune 500 company experience.
If the experience was not related to the employer’s industry and the academic knowledge was less relevant to overcoming the challenges that the employer was facing, problems eventually occurred. It also becomes tricky to replace the wrong guy.
Alliance Recruitment Agency
Hiring a COO or any other C-Suite leader is a decision that cannot be changed easily. If you get stuck with the wrong professional even for a year, the progress and performance potential of your company is not realized. It is always best to partner with an experienced COO headhunter service company like ours.
Alliance Recruitment Agency is an international company offering recruitment services in 25+ countries in Asia, Europe, Australia, and North Americas. We have industry-specific COO headhunters to ensure that our clients find the best COO recruitment experience leading to the selection of an outstanding candidate.
We help you improve your recruitment practices and reduce the time and costs of the overall recruitment process. Connect with us and find out more about C-level recruitment services.
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