Friends and Followers, here are the top guide posts for this week. This week we talk about Forever, Check Mate and Questions.

Attention Senior Leaders!

Your single greatest challenge is getting worse as we go over the demographic cliff. According to the BLS, labor force participation is expected to drop from 62.2% to 60.4% in 2032 due to population shifts.

Forget about the fact that today the number one challenge cited by business leaders is a lack of skilled talent. This problem is going to be magnified by the "Forever" Labor Shortage.

So, that means it is going to be even more critical to hire the most skilled and productive people possible.

Why?

You're already accustomed to doing more with less. If you don't hire top talent, you're going to do less with less.

And the one place there isn't a shortage of talent?

You guessed it. It's at the senior levels.

So, if you can't perform, they will find someone who can.

The Moral of the story: Hire the best people you can now. And no, the best people are not responding to postings.

To access the BLS report, click the link below:

https://lnkd.in/gvkurSVN

Do you want to win the war for talent?

Due North is here to help,?click here?to schedule a meeting.

If you don't use your product why should I?

At one point in my marketing career I worked for a large printer of paper checks. I was brought in to help them develop new businesses.

One day the president of our division stopped by and asked about an electronic payments project I was leading. He stated that while he thought it was interesting, that paper checks were not going away.

I asked why he was so certain of the durability of paper checks as a method of payment. He gave many reasons. Some were better than others but in the end he said that I didn't look convinced.

As a relatively new employee, I had recently completed all of the onboarding paperwork. One of these was a direct deposit form as this was the only way to receive my pay.

When I respectfully mentioned this to him, he grumbled and walked away.

The moral here is don't expect others to use your product if you won't.

Strategic Questions

As a Marketing Recruiter, I often find that well-prepared candidates work hard on having smart, concise responses to interview questions. What they often fail to do is have good insightful questions for the interviewer. Everyone knows that asking if Arbor Day is a company holiday is a terrible question. But what candidates often ask are questions that do nothing to advance their candidacy. They will ask questions like “What’s it like to work here?” or “What can you tell me about the team?”. Both fair questions but anyone could have asked them.

Smart candidates recognize that the interviewer is still assessing whether the candidate has the requisite functional skills, experience, and interest to be successful in the role. Candidates should leverage their questions to demonstrate their functional expertise, directly relevant experiences and interest in the role, company, industry, etc.For example, say one is interviewing to be a senior product manager at a digital health company. Based upon the candidate’s knowledge of the industry and past experience they know that the company’s product could reach a whole new market. The candidate could ask “Based upon my experience in the industry and my research on your product it appears that with a few added features, the product would do well in the X market. Has the company considered adding this into the product roadmap?”

Through this question, the candidate just demonstrated industry experience, functional knowledge, and interest in the company. Moreover, they did so in a way that is likely to spark a conversation. That my friends are when the magic happens during the interview process. After all, a great interview should feel like a great conversation between colleagues because it addresses the most important question an interviewer wants to answer which is “Can I stand being around this person 50 hours a week?”

Next time you interview try to have 4 or 5 questions prepared that illustrate your functional expertise, industry savvy and passion for the role. They should help you to create more of a connection to the interviewer and help them to be able to envision you in the role. If by chance you exhaust those questions, you can always say something like “Of course I have more questions, but I want to be respectful of your time. I would love to ask those questions during a subsequent interview.” Trust me, having multitudes of questions is more likely to knockout a candidacy than advance it.

So, just because the interviewer asks you if have any questions, they are not done interviewing you. They are still assessing if you are the “right” candidate based upon the questions you ask.

Chris Gustanski – Founder and Lead Talent Guide

Chris is a classically trained marketer with over a decade of executive search experience. He moved into recruiting because he was someone that was frequently recruited and was tired of recruiters hounding him to consider roles they didn’t understand, and he wasn’t interested in pursuing. He was determined to disrupt Executive Search to deliver a better result and experience for companies and the commercial talent they need.?After over a decade seeing the dysfunction in executive search firms large and small, he formed Due North Executive Search in collaboration with his wife Amie.

To learn more about how Due North can help you build World Class Commercial teams?click here?to schedule a meeting.