During my 20+ years in recruiting, I’ve worked as both a Senior Corporate Recruiter and an Executive Recruiter.

In one role, I was a Senior Corporate Recruiter with 20 or more open positions at different levels of the organization.

One day, I might be recruiting for a Senior Pricing Analyst supporting a B2B sales organization.

The next, I could be looking for a Senior Cloud Engineer for the eCommerce team.

In my role as an Executive Recruiter, the searches were different.

At the executive level, it wasn’t simply about finding someone who could perform a function or even manage a team.

You were looking for someone who could lead leaders, influence others, and help shape the direction of the organization.

A VP might have Directors reporting to them, with dozens or even hundreds of employees ultimately within their organization.

That changes what you need to understand about a candidate.

I had to dig deeper into questions like:

• How do they set direction for an organization?
• How do they develop and lead other leaders?
• How do they make decisions when the answer isn’t obvious?
• Can they translate corporate strategy into action?
• How does their leadership philosophy align with the company’s vision?
• What kind of organization do they build around themselves?

The resume could tell me where someone had worked and what positions they had held.

It couldn’t tell me how they would lead an organization.

That required a different conversation.

And that’s what I found most interesting about recruiting across different levels of an organization.

The higher the role, the more the conversation moves from what someone has done to how they think, lead and influence.

A Senior Cloud Engineer and a VP of Technology may both need deep technical understanding.

But you’re evaluating very different things.

One may need to design and solve complex technical problems.

The other may need to decide which problems the organization should be solving, build the leadership structure to solve them and make sure those decisions support the broader business strategy.

Neither is more important.

They’re simply different hiring challenges.

That’s something I’ve carried with me throughout my recruiting career.

A strong recruiting process can’t be one-size-fits-all.

The questions you ask, the people you target, the way you evaluate candidates and even what “great” looks like should change based on the role.

And that’s part of what makes recruiting so interesting.

I’ve had the opportunity to recruit across functions, levels and very different types of organizations.

Every search brings a different set of challenges.

Recruiting isn’t all the same.

And that’s a good thing.

Better Decisions. Better Hires.