What Executive Selection Committees Want, for Better or Worse
Kaiser, R.B. (2011, April). What executive selection committees want, for better or worse. Presented in R. Hogan (Chair), Who Can Get and Keep a Job? Understanding Employability. Symposium presented at the 26th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL.
This presentation takes a demand-side view of employability and considers what executive selection hiring committees want in a candidate. Thinking over the last 20 years about the “black box” of hiring decisions at the top is reviewed, and then a study of over 325 C-level to VP-level hiring decisions is presented. The results show that most executives are hired for hard skills, but soft skills play a more decisive role in the success of the hired executive. Further, a surprising number of executive selection decisions are based on circumstantial factors such as the preferred candidate declined the job offer or no other candidates were considered. Moreover, bad selection decisions can be attributed to an overemphasis on hard skills and a concomitant neglect of soft skills. When both types of skills are considered, selection decisions are ultimately judged as much more effective. The presentation concludes with eight data-based principles for choosing leaders more wisely.
Filed under: Conference Presentations
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