Planning the timeline of a global executive search is important, and while some companies may be close enough with their executive staff that departures will not come as a surprise, others won't get much advance warning.
In these cases, how do you assess whether a high-level employee is planning on leaving soon? Writing for ERE, HR specialist Dr. John Sullivan outlined some common signifiers, as well as ways that companies can prepare.
One of the points Dr. Sullivan asserts is the need to look at the executive's past, and also to use the internet to see if he or she has made any motions toward finding a new job.
Without breaching social media privacy ethics, your company can see if there's any activity on an executive's LinkedIn Profile, Sullivan writes, and compare that to the person's average length of tenure.
"If an employee has a pattern of leaving a job after a certain number of months or years, it only makes sense to examine their resume to get a good indication of when they are likely to leave again," Sullivan says.
It should go without saying that any effort to replace an executive should, in most cases, be done with that person's knowledge: After all, as we pointed out in one recent blog post, withholding information is a main pet peeve of CEOs.
However, once you know the signs and are paying close attention to your c-level staff's engagement, your global executive search can proceed smoothly.
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