The organisation launched a specialised recruitment service – Engage Executive Talent – last year in a bid to focus on permanent executive recruitment, interim executive recruitment and board level recruitment.
Patrick said: “Employers need to acknowledge that Covid19 is not a permanent fixture and that they need to think, even in the short term, about ensuring they have the right leadership at the right time.
“If anything, during Covid 19, Engage has been working even more proactively in matching those candidates to Chief Executive roles in homelessness, international aid and community development.
CO3 is the leadership and management and members organisation for chief executives and managers in the third sector. It is the leading organisation in providing support and training and placing candidates with suitable roles.
But Patrick warned that employers “need to adopt a sense of urgency and recruit now to ‘get ahead of the game” and not be left playing ‘catch up’ in the recruiting process.”
Patrick explained: “Organisations in third sector had been planning to recruit from march onwards but they tended to hit the stop button when the Covid19 pandemic struck.
“This is leading to a hiatus in leadership at a time when organisations need more organisations not less. There’s a traditional dependence on the idea that you can’t run a successful recruitment process without having face to face meetings in the same room with the usual panel versus candidate set up and that is one of the problems.
“But this is really a myth. Direct Engage Executive Talent have been facilitating conference interviews for a number of years and, for us, it was just the case of training up on the platform that we use for such interviews. “
Patrick acknowledged that the pandemic had impacted the recruitment landscape in Northern Ireland but insists the current situation presents the perfect opportunity to hire in leadership positions.
He continued: “Covid19 has definitely had some affects on the recruitment landscape. We’ve seen a slow down in the private sector recruitment activity.
“Thankfully many of the charities we’ve been working with have had sufficient foresight to be able to see action needs to be taken now to ensure they have candidates in position in a number of months.
“Even if the goal for an organisation is to have a leader in position by September they would need to have been already acting before now.
“From initially advertising a post to approaching passive candidates, interviewing and getting them through assessment centres and negotiating a contract – it can take three months.
“Employers also have to factor into that equation the potential of a three months’ notice period as well for the successful candidate. It’s time for putting the starting blocks in place and for organisations to start thinking what they need in place at the end of this year.
“Employers also need to acknowledge the extra time required for new post holders to grow into their role in the context of lockdown measures. And they need to factor in induction phase for front line service delivery.”
Patrick explained some organisations that Direct Engage Executive Talent work with have taken the initiative and been matched with suitable employees through the organisation during Covid19.
He said: “One factor we’ve observed on the availability of candidates is that those in the public sector have preferred to stick with the positions that offer them job security and the terms and conditions associated with public sector security.
“That said, private sector and third sector leaders are often more resilient to the notion of market variabilities and the febrile funding environment as it affects their own job security.
“Consequently, when we look at the number of candidates who presented for jobs in the quarter to May 31 2020 as opposed to the same quarter in 2019 we actually see the number of candidates inch slightly ahead this year.”
C03’s Director of Business Development Patrick Minne
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