The ability to work well with people as the leader of not just a team but multiple teams of people, including employees and staff, suppliers, and customers, is of the utmost importance, as is being able to present oneself to everyone from board-room level company officials, government figures, and other professionals to the janitor who mops the floors after working hours. This quality is probably prized most above all others.
Your first test will come when you are interviewed for the position, probably by very experienced and senior staff who also have a great deal of experience not only in the industry sector the business is operating in but also with the business and its’ idiosyncrasies. You must prepare yourself thoroughly and expect there to be intense competition for the post on offer.
In order to prepare yourself for getting onto the short list of potential employees, you need to develop a competitive advantage over your fellow applicants. This starts when you commence an initial search for the position you are interested in, and given the level of skills and experience you already possess, you should be looking to make sure the market is well aware that you are looking to move and what you have to offer.
Many web resources provide access to listings for CEO jobs; however, many such services are nothing more than harvesters of resumes, which in your case is a very valuable document. Many companies offering recruiting and vacancy listing services are simply taking the resume which is uploaded and firing it out to employers on a shotgun basis, and may in fact be selling the resume on to other third parties who have nothing to do with finding you a suitable position! Ensure that you use a web service which allows you to fully control and manage your resume and who gets access to it; this is a sensitive document that you do not want falling into the wrong hands, not least of which being your current employer.
Many web services are also not what they seem in terms of the actual company that is behind the web storefront. Check that a website is really delivering the services it claims to be providing by performing a few simple checks on the credentials of the site. Any website which does not have a physical mailing address or a landline telephone number should be avoided, and any company that requires you to pay money upfront without any free trial of the service should not be considered either.
The subject of fees and charges is often a thorny issue for many users, both individual job seekers and employers promoting a vacancy for a CEO. Many websites do not charge individual job seekers and instead levy fees against the employer looking to advertise the position. There are many large websites using this model but they suffer from several serious drawbacks which adversely affect a candidate’s potential to secure a CEO position. Employers do not always wish to pay to advertise a vacancy, and so any website which charges an employer is automatically restricting the scope of its listings service for job seekers. Frequently the information that is listed is also out of date, as the website owner may make no effort to update the information and employers themselves do not remove their listings once a position is filled, so users must always question and check the veracity of the information they are being provided.
Web services which do not charge employers, and indeed services which actively collect and collate vacancy information from a range of offline and online sources, are likely to provide the most comprehensive listing services. Look for a web service with a dedicated team that is collecting and analyzing vacancy information as this is a sign that the company operating behind the website is very serious about maintaining the quality and current status of the listings database. The down side is that individual job seekers are required to pay a fee for these services, but this tends to be low and, in any event, you will always get a free trial period from a reputable service provider.
In summary, locating a CEO position and gaining an insight into the requirements of the employer are key advantages for any potential CEO candidate. Learning what an employer is actually looking for and the relative weight they are placing on different skill sets and experience is something that a basic listings service can never provide, so there needs to be a heavy human element in the creation of the vacancy database so information is relevant and accurate as well as delivered to you on a timely basis.
