How To Find Your Ideal Executive Candidates And Their Emails in Under 5 Minutes

To build a great company, you need to hire great people. As David Ogilvy said,

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Just a heads up, hiring an executive typically takes anywhere from 4 months to a year. It's quite a bit longer than filling other roles. For context, the average job search across all levels usually lasts about 2 to 6 months. A 2018 study found Americans typically spent 5 months job hunting, and government data from 2021 showed similar patterns.

But executive recruitment is a whole different game. There is a slightly different process to hire them versus most employees. These top-level positions are more challenging to fill because you've got a smaller pool to fish from and the stakes are pretty high so there’s no room for mistakes. So, companies tend to take their sweet time, which naturally extends the timeline.

While other companies dawdle in their executive hunt, this actually opens up a golden opportunity for you to pounce on top candidates quicker than them.

Here is a sneak peek of how you can find your ideal executive candidates and their emails in under 5 minutes. We have a demo you can try in this article too, so sit tight.

Challenges of Executive Recruitment

Scarce candidate pool

The pool of qualified candidates for executive positions is often quite small. You're not exactly fishing in a big pond like filling up fresh grad or associate-level positions. Filling up an executive-level position is more like trying to catch a specific type of rare fish in a small lake.

This scarcity is because these top-level folks need to tick a lot of boxes:

• They need highly specific skills and experience required for executive roles
• A proven track record of success in similar positions
• Industry-specific know-how. Each sector has its own quirks and ins-and-outs and your ideal candidate needs to know these in the back of their hand.
• Leadership and strategic thinking abilities that take years to develop

When you put all that together, you’ll often find yourself competing for an exclusive number of qualified candidates, making the recruitment process more challenging and time-consuming.

Passive job seekers

Actually, many of the top-notch executive candidates are not actively seeking new positions. About 73% of potential candidates, including executives you’re after, fall into the category of passive job seekers. This means they’re currently employed and are not scrolling through job boards or polishing up their resumes. But they might be open to jumping ship if the right opportunity comes along.

That's where things get tricky as you need to engage and persuade them effectively to consider a new opportunity. Posting a job ad and expecting these folks to come running is not going to cut it. It is ineffective in reaching this crucial segment of the executive talent pool.

Insider tip

You can actually predict a sweet spot for reaching out to executives. According to Fortune, the average tenure for C-suite executives is 4.6 years while the average tenure for CFOs is 4.5 years. However, the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies tend to stay a bit longer. They have an average tenure of seven years.

You want to cast your line when the fish are most likely to bite. In this case, when these executives are getting close to these average end dates, they might just be itching for a change. That's when you swoop in with your compelling opportunity.

Accessing accurate contact information

That comes to another challenge: how do you find these executives who are near or exceeding the average end dates and their accurate contact information? This is difficult because:

• Executives often guard their personal contact details carefully
• Professional contact information may be outdated or inaccessible
• Using outdated or incorrect contact information can lead to missed opportunities or damaged reputations
• Finding executives who meet every requirement manually is a soul-sucking task.

Best Way to Overcome Those 3 Challenges, According to the Co-Founder and CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong

In his post on how to hire executives, he talked about three methods you should go through first before getting candidates in your hiring funnel.

1. Talk to subject matter experts

When you're hiring an executive, chances are you're stepping into unfamiliar territory. So you need a crash course about it.

Say you're after a VP of Finance. You should tap into your network. Chat up a few experienced finance leaders or CEOs who've hired people with similar roles.

Ask them the nitty-gritty: What types of finance leaders are out there? Which one fits your company right now? What should I be asking in interviews? Any insider lingo I need to know?

Get them to spill on what's non-negotiable for the role versus what's just nice to have. And how do you seal the deal with these candidates? What makes them tick?

2. Form a hiring committee

It's not a one-man show when you're bringing in an executive. You need a few people to help you make the call.

Aim for 4–7 people on your hiring committee. Why? Well, you want enough brains to get a good range of opinions, but not so many that you're wasting people's time.

A rookie mistake here is to decide what you want in a candidate first, and then tell your committee what to look for. Not only does this limit your perspective, but it also risks alienating your team. They might think they're just there to nod along, not to actually contribute.

Instead, ask for their input early on what qualities and skills they think are crucial for the role. You might be surprised by what they come up with – maybe there's an angle you hadn't considered or a skill set that's more important than you realized.

3. Draft the mission/outcomes/competencies (MOC) document

It’s time to gather input from the hiring committee and agree on what you’re all looking for.

Some people call it MOC, others job spec or candidate profile. Whatever floats your boat - it's all the same thing. What we're really doing here is answering three big questions:

1. Mission: What do we need this person to do over the next 12–18 months? Keep it simple. Two or three sentences, no jargon. Just plain English about the heart of the job.
2. Outcomes: What specific outcomes are we looking for this person to achieve in their first 12–18 months? Pick 4 or 5 specific/measurable business outcomes that support the mission and rank them by order of importance
3. Competencies: What specific skills/experiences/accomplishments should they have? Which of these are must-haves vs nice to haves? And remember, this should all tie back to that mission and those outcomes we just talked about.

4. Source candidates

Now that you know what you’re looking for, it’s time to get candidates in your hiring funnel. There are many ways to do this. Refer back to your MOC document to help people understand exactly what you’re looking for.

Here are 3 ways to source candidates according to Brian:

1. Reach out to your network

This could be your investors, current employees, the subject matter experts you met in step one, social media, etc.

2. Hire a sourcer

This could be someone on your recruiting team or an external contractor you can hire hourly to find suitable potential candidates.

3. Hire an executive search agency/firm

These are firms that specialize in finding executives. If you're in a rush to fill the position, Brian says these firms can be your best bet. But if you've got time on your side, you might want to explore the first two options, which are cheaper.

Here are a few things Brian learned dealing with executive search agencies:

1. Executive search agencies can be expensive. Budget roughly a third of the candidate’s yearly pay in cash + equity, or a flat fee of about $100k.
2. In theory, they are helping you find great candidates faster, and when this works it can be totally worth every penny.
3. It doesn’t always work successfully. Most CEOs Brian knows have a love/hate relationship with executive recruiting firms and have had a few face-palm moments because just like in any service industry, the top people in the field are amazing. But how do you spot them? Even if you notice them, sometimes they’re not willing to work with you yet.
4. Before deciding on which firm to work with, meet with at least three firms. But don't just focus on the company - interview the partner you'll be working with. Treat it like you're hiring them yourself. Build chemistry and trust between you and them. After all, you might be stuck with them for a year!
5. If you have an in-house recruiter, get them involved. They can be the go-between, keeping everything on track.

Another way to source candidates Brian hasn’t told you

4. Use Sapiengraph

This might be new for you so let me explain. Sapiengraph is a spreadsheet extension that allows you to enrich and get fresh B2B data on people or companies easily using custom spreadsheet formulas. Keep reading to see how it works.

How Sapiengraph Can Help You?

Since an executive search firm is expensive, reaching out to network and hiring a sourcer might be your go-to solution. But they are a very slow process. You might miss out on a huge executive candidate pool. Instead of waiting and hoping for weeks for the right person to come, why not actively search for them with Sapiengraph?

You could forget all those methods we talked about because Sapiengraph could save you a ton of time and money. It helps you find exactly the candidates that meet your criteria and their personal email addresses too, right from your spreadsheet.

How to Find Your Ideal Executive Candidates And Their Emails With Sapiengraph in Under 5 Minutes?

Sapiengraph has worked with several recruiting and executive search agencies, and here’s what we teach them to discover ideal candidates and their personal email in under 5 minutes.

Person Search Formula

The Person Search formula is to search for LinkedIn profile URLs of candidates that meet your criteria. This formula has 45 criteria. You can look at the full formula here.

Let's say you want to search for CHROs in the US who have worked at the position for more than 4 years.

Find LinkedIn profile

• US – Alpha-2 country code
• CHRO or Chief Human Resouce Officer– Title
• 2020-01-01 – Filter people who started their current role before this date (an attempt to find CMOs who have worked for more than 4 years)
• Commas – Other criteria in the formula sequence that we skipped

First, enter the formula as below. Then, press enter.

After you press enter, it will load for a few seconds then the results will be as below.

Here are two random LinkedIn profiles from the results: Joyce Norals and Dolores. Check it.

Personal Email Lookup

The Personal Email Lookup is a formula to search for the personal email address belonging to a person's LinkedIn profile.

Find personal email address

First, enter the formula as below.

After you press enter, it will load for a few seconds and the first email for the first LinkedIn URL will appear. Then, drag the formula down to the last LinkedIn URL to get all the profile’s emails. If the particular profile’s email cannot be found, it will be shown as no data.

Give Sapiengraph a try! Let's use Google CEO Sundar Pichai's LinkedIn Profile URL, for example: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundarpichai/

How Much is Sapiengraph?

Sapiengraph is guaranteed more affordable than your in-house recruiter salary and hiring an executive search firm. It offers the standard no-contract monthly and annual credit subscription plans.

It also offers a fresh profile scraping add-on on formulas that support it. Sapiengraph considered fresh profile scraping as any result scraped within 29 days. In many cases, however, this can even be scraped live. Sapiengraph just simply guarantees the data is within 29 days.

You can see the full details of the pricing plans here.

Note: For each plan, if you pay annually upfront, you’ll get two months of free credits. For example, if you subscribe to the Pro+ plan, your credits will be 449,500 credits + 899,000 credits (449,500 + 449,500)

Free trial

If you’re not ready to pay yet, you can sign up here and get 100 free credits to test the formulas firsthand.

P.S. Have any questions or unsure if this is for you? We would love to help. Just reach out to us at [email protected] and we'll reply as soon as possible.