Leadership Hiring Challenges

A recent LinkedIn research report on leadership challenges states that 78% of HR decision-makers in India say that it is difficult to fill leadership positions, with the prime reason for the same being attributed to unrealistic compensation expectations followed by soft skills deficiency including key leadership competencies.
From the leader’s perspective, the report also points out that besides high compensation, leaders look for companies with long term strategic vision, good work-life balance, strong career path and challenging work as their top 5 important needs, in that order.
“The Times they are a-changin”……. business demographics are changing, and that average age has come down is an established fact.
We cannot, however, overlook the fact that today we do have many of the crème de la crème of top management professionals who may have superannuated or have had their contracts completed or have branched out to pursue an interest, and who are available to the corporate world.
So my question is why is it difficult for companies to fill a leadership position with so many of these ladies and gentlemen with decades of enriched experience around? Could it be sheer age factor? Is it that the grey matter diminishes once they cross the age limit prescribed by companies? To my mind, these professionals would look more for the latter aspects mentioned above such as company’s strategic vision, work-life balance and challenging work in their assignments rather than high compensation (as long as it is reasonable), and companies would do well to take advantage of their experience.
In fact, these seasoned professionals are now even available to companies in a way that further lessens the impact of high compensation costs, simply by hiring them for just the period of time they need. EXPERTies recently placed on similar basis a highly experienced chief financial officer and business strategist with a mid-segment company at Gurgaon, resulting in way-below the expected cost for the company. The company even deferred the hire of a full-time resource, which they found hard to hire for exactly the reasons narrated above.
Are we open to experimenting? Like Max Planck, a German theoretical physicists and Nobel laureate said - “Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination”.

​Priti Gulati, Founder of EXPERTies, October 2016. www.experties.net