Staying Ahead of the Board Recruitment Process

June 05, 2017

Companies are constantly on the lookout for talented, experienced candidates to join their teams. In today’s corporate world, a significant portion of new hires are those who have already had a relationship with a current employee at the hiring company. In fact, when an employee refers a candidate, that individual is hired approximately two-thirds of the time.

It comes as no surprise that this is also generally the approach boards take when searching for a new director, and a common strategy is to look around the table and ask each other “who do we know.” However, oftentimes a board will have a candidate in mind who may be at the top of its hire list—with no other alternatives—only to find out later that the desired candidate has already found a new director role or is otherwise unavailable. This causes an inconvenient setback in the succession planning process.

Since managing a board of directors pipeline is an ongoing process, companies require a stream of information that notifies them of new director changes. For instance, a new feature within Equilar BoardEdge notifies users whenever candidates saved into their folders join or leave board, executive, or committee positions. To receive notifications on potential candidates, users simply save those individuals to a folder and ensure notifications are turned on for that respective folder.

This tactic allows companies to monitor a candidate list so that individuals can either be removed from or added to the succession planning materials based on new roles or recent resignations. Companies will avoid wasting time and resources on a candidate they have little chance of landing, while optimizing their approach to target legitimate candidates in their outreach.

The board succession planning process is complex, and companies must stay up to date if they want to strategically land the candidates who will make the greatest impact on their boards.

An example of an email sent from BoardEdge notifying a user that a prospective director candidate joined a new board.

Learn More

With Equilar BoardEdge, use the latest data to benchmark the composition of your board against your peers, discover the right candidates for your succession planning needs, and connect with individuals using your executive and board network.

For more information on Equilar research and data analysis, please contact Dan Marcec, Director of Content & Communications at dmarcec@equilar.com. Amit Batish authored this post.