Seven Tips on How to Find Good Top Managers and Get Along with Them the Right Way

Hiring star top managers who will fix your problems and boost your business is an appealing idea for owners. They are ready to pay whatever it takes for a solution like that. But experience proves that start teams not only fail to guarantee success but can also ruin businesses.

Hire candidates with similar values rather than the best, outstanding, and great ones. It must be those who are capable of handling your tasks right in your conditions.?

Why hire top managers at all??

There are three main reasons why companies are looking for new top managers:

1. CEOs (CTOs, CFOs, and other top officers) can’t cope with their current tasks and, moreover, can’t scale businesses or accelerate growth.?
2. Top managers successfully run startups, but their competencies don’t let them manage companies at a new systems level.?
3. Companies made a mistake hiring top managers; they didn’t live up to expectations and showed different views on business tasks or culture. Typically, top managers like that leave companies in less than a year.?

Let’s analyze how to hire top managers the right way. Here’s a spoiler alert: you need no CEOs from FAANG companies. There are only five exceptions: you are Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, or Google. In most cases, you need employees who can professionally tackle the problems of your company during the next 2–3 years.?

Consider your business size?

Managing a small team at a local company with a small turnover isn’t the same as managing an international business with hundreds or thousands of employees on a team and multi-million profits.?

Perhaps you are now a company from the first category but have ambitions to hit the second one. Businesses are growing and changing fast. Consequently, management requires other competencies and makes leaders do the following things:

• Developing. It’s possible if companies are capable of growing managers. For instance, you have plans to take over the world in 5–10 years, and your current top managers are committed to your business, purposeful, and ready to go through hardships to the stars and grow with your company. But keep in mind that even capable employees can improve no more than two competencies in a year if they have the necessary potential and results rather than from scratch.?
• Inviting top managers to the team from the market. If you need to grow fast, the choices aren’t wide: either hire experienced managers or give up your position. Negotiating with leaders, who manage small companies but aren’t ready to grow, is quite possible. Sometimes they decide to keep running their businesses, yet in a different role, and grow gradually. Forcing people, who have been with you from the start and appreciated every dollar earned, to make a choice isn’t easy. But you can’t avoid hard decisions: as a businessman, you need to either change quickly or wait for the collapse. Taking your company through the stage of rapid growth with all its bad spots is a separate competence you can hone through experience only.??

Evaluate not only professional skills but also personal qualities?

Top managers who have excellent expertise can harm your business, e.g., because of their ambitions and personal qualities.?

Indigo Tech Recruiters had the following case: a company needed to find a senior Python developer. Over several months, we interviewed dozens of candidates, but none was a perfect fit. It surprised our team; the task was difficult but not a disaster. Usually, we find developers like that in a few weeks.?

Only the feedback from the candidates helped us understand the reason. The point is that the CTO voiced conflicting expectations to the developers and was rude like a dictator during interviews. As soon as the company changed the CTO, we managed to complete the tech team and grow it in a short time. Well, top managers may be bottlenecks holding back business growth.??

Hire employees based on your business goals

To begin with, set tasks—at least for a year or two—for your top manager to complete. This way, you can better understand what competencies top managers need to have and create job profiles.?

Their superpowers help them boost one business but can destroy others if they don’t fit in with the business goals and culture. Backed by profiles, draw up your interview structure and make questions.??

When choosing candidates, you need to answer a few key questions:

• Can you consider that candidates for top managers are highly motivated professionals to work for your business??
• Will their competencies help them develop your company (or their area) and deliver the results required by owners??
• Can top managers develop strategies and plans to ensure the operational development of your company (area)??
• Will they be able to lead their teams?
• Do they share your company’s values and culture??

If you need to analyze these points, you can ask these questions (and ask for practical examples):

1. What are the competencies that make you a good CEO (CTO or CFO)? Which of them is best developed?
2. What do you see as your main professional achievement? Please elaborate on this project and your results.?
3. Why do you think you were chosen to complete this task?
4. What career challenges have been the hardest for you to accept, and how did you handle them? Please tell me more about your tasks, plan, and resources. What did you achieve, and what did you fail to achieve (and why)?
5. What helps you understand that you’ve done a good job??
6. How do you react to mistakes? What do you usually do to fix them? How do you develop your professional and managerial qualities?
7. What problem would you solve differently if you had the opportunity?
8. What inspires you? And what—on the contrary—demotivates you?
9. How do you inspire people? What can you do to demotivate your team? What do you do when someone on your team burns out?
10. If we ask for references about you, what do you think your ex-managers and colleagues will say about your pros and growth points?
11. If you were to start a company, what are your three core values?
12. If we make you an offer, what is your business development (area) plan for the first month? For the first year?

You must ask many more questions. You have to understand the main thing: the candidate’s motivation, values, competencies, and willingness to grow. Also, their personal qualities are crucial. For example, whether they are ready to take charge of the results and the team; whether they need to be delving into tasks for a long time or are willing to complete them fast; whether they take the initiative or wait for instructions.?

Avoid hiring too qualified employees

When you hire top managers, too many competencies are as harmful as missing competencies. In some cases, top managers are ready to slow down, e.g., they can run a startup on the verge of growth after working for large-scale companies. If they believe in success and want to be part of its future glory.?

But if companies fail to grow as fast as expected, professionals like that leave quite fast. The disadvantage is that you demotivate your team that can’t understand why an employee who doesn’t share the vibe receives the highest reward. Teams often fall apart because of these stories.?

You’d better hire top managers who have experience in growing startups rather than built their careers at big corporations. The reason is that pro-level experts like that are used to following rules and procedures, while processes need to get improved. Startups offer no rules as people who ride “burning bikes” set their own ones. These are different personality types.?

Get ready to compromise?

Focus on the strengths of your candidates, not the absence of their weaknesses. Ideal candidates are like unicorns: it sounds nice, but no one has ever seen them. In most cases, you have to compromise on non-critical matters when hiring new employees.?

Focus on what candidates already know and do well. This margin of safety will enable them to solve business problems and improve their skills (being highly motivated) at the same time. For example, if English is required for emails and messages rather than constant communication with native speakers, your candidate doesn’t need to be fluent in it; let him/her use Grammarly to check grammar.?

Also, employees can’t be both result-oriented achievers and those who draw up instructions and take care of teams. People like that can quickly build a system to deliver results, but they don’t like instructions and are the first to learn how to get around them to achieve goals faster.?

For the same reason, they easily and ruthlessly let go of ineffective people. If you are trying to find a three-in-one solution, i.e., an employee who will draw up instructions, take care of people, and achieve results, you’ll find someone who can sell you this skill set at an interview, but his/her true strengths and weaknesses will show up later.?

Collect references?

Ask questions to those who give references just like you do during interviews (the starting point is the tasks of your business or area.) Contact not only those people who were suggested by candidates (it’s unlikely that they’ll let you contact those who can potentially speak badly about their professional qualities.) Contact other people: former managers and team members. Owners and CEOs are the ones to collect references about finalists, i.e., top-level candidates.?

We adore asking these questions:?

1. What was his/her greatest contribution to the operations of your company? What his/her success stories and achievements can you highlight??
2. What does he/she do best??
3. In what work aspects does he/she need support??
4. How did he/she interact with other employees? What kind of relationships did he/she build??
5. Would you hire him/her again if he/she wanted to??

Help candidates adapt

Avoid losing those who are hard to find. Hiring a new top manager isn’t enough: people often leave companies because they “just didn’t like it here.”?

All-important things:

• Clarify tasks. Even short-term ones (for a week or a month) at the start. This way, you make goals and motivation clearer (employees will see “smaller” results faster and be more willing to achieve bigger ones.) Also, teams will see their leaders in action and begin to trust them faster.?
• Give more details. Top managers need to get more than a standard set of data about the company, products, clients, and competitors. They need to take a deep dive into the strategy and business features.?
• Introduce newcomers to the team. Help them arrange meetings with other top managers and the team. Ask newcomers to prepare questions (about processes, problems, and personal aspects).?

When you hire top managers, the price of a mistake is too high; you even may end up closing your business. You’ll face lots of tough questions: high expectations mean a long search, while low expectations get you candidates who aren’t up to any challenges.?

Collecting references and analyzing experience are important steps, but they won’t make your business successful. No one is safe from firing top managers in the first year (or even a month), but it’s a bad omen for candidates who will receive offers.?

Focus on finding truly your candidate. Create job profiles based on business goals. Measure real results and cultural fit, not words. Also, be sure to find out whether your candidate is willing to grow along with your team and product.?