Hiring an Executive Director can seem like a daunting task. It’s a vital process for businesses and the pressure to get it right means many businesses always find excuses for putting it off. By following this hiring process, you can break it down into manageable chunks. This will ensure you don’t get overwhelmed and can focus on finding the right candidate for your business.

Step 1 – Outlining Company Pain Points

To ensure a new non-exec director has targets and expectations to hit, it’s good to set out what pain points and issues the business is currently facing. Identifying the areas of the business that need improving, will ensure the new exec director knows what to prioritise.

Step 2 – Creating an NED Non-Executive Director Job Description

Creating a job description for the new role is an important step to promote the role. For help in creating the perfect job description, check out our non-exec director job description template.

Step 3 – Forming a Hiring Committee

Creating a hiring committee dedicated to appointing the non-exec director is a great way to establishing what’s needed from the new hire. An external non-executive search firm can often help establish the best system for hiring a new non-exec.

Step 4 – Reviewing Applications and Interviewing

You’ll need to review applications and step up interviews where appropriate. The interviews should help identify traits needed to be a successful non-exec director for your business.

For help, check out our ultimate guide on how to interview a non-executive director.

Examples of Hiring an NED (Non-Exec)

At first glance, finding NED candidates is not necessarily difficult. If the brief is simply around the need to hire an NED to satisfy governance and shareholder representation (and not much more), then it can be rather straight forward. However, more often than not, organisations are looking for specific help that’ll help them achieve a goal. If the board has a specific strategy involving change and/or growth, and within this can identify specific areas where the board would gain value from specific strategic experience from an individual(s), then Edward Drummond can design a bespoke research-based Non-executive search process to identify and then approach specific candidates (often current executives from within sectors and organisations we proactively target).

Importantly our search often involves identifying and targeting current Board level Executives, with specific experience relating to a clients’ future journey, as well as specific serving NEDs often with recent and up-to-date full-time executive experience.

See how hiring an NED helped us transform a business. Contact us today.