Executive Recruitment

Making the right hire for key positions is critical to the health and long-term success of any organization. A strategic approach to executive recruitment can be an invaluable service for both governing bodies hiring executive staff and city managers, utility directors, and CEOs filling high-level positions. Talent acquisition is a time-consuming process and very difficult in today’s labor market, but one of the most important decisions hiring managers and governing bodies make. We do the hard work on this so you can focus on good decision-making.

View Open PositionsArrow Icon for Arrow Button

Defining the Need and Stakeholder Engagement

We begin each recruitment working with the hiring manager or governing body to clearly define the need for the position with an eye to the future. We also conduct stakeholder engagement to understand the organizational culture, current strengths and opportunities, and leadership traits and experiences that are needed to achieve long-term goals. The time spent upfront defining the needs, engaging with staff and other stakeholders pays dividends on the back end. We are better able to clearly define what is needed in the position and the unique opportunities for the next leader.

Developing a System for the Top Candidate’s Success

We apply a holistic approach to executive search that focuses on long-term fit and performance rather than short-term placement. Not only will we support your organization by finding the right people when you need them most, our process includes identifying first year goals so the candidate’s skillset is aligned with organizational needs and expectations from day one.

We support the top candidate’s long-term success by creating a goals-driven work plan actionable from day one. Many firms focus solely on finding qualified applicants, leaving the client on their own once the position is filled. Our team uses the objectives gathered during the inquiry stage to prepare new hires for their first year and we follow up after their placement.

We have worked extensively with local governments and utilities in making key hiring decisions. Because we have hands-on career experience in the fields in which we search for candidates, we can deliver the best and the brightest – filling key positions, such as:

We also focus on department heads such as for Planning and Development, Engineering, Public Works, Human Resources, Information Technology/CIO, Human Services/Social Services, Parks and Recreation, Libraries, and other key or difficult to fill positions.

We also offer additional services to assist in onboarding and ensuring success. These include workshops and engagements that focus on clarifying roles and responsibilities, expectations, and goals. We also offer team-building sessions that focus on communication and workstyles.

Building a Leadership Team that Mirrors the Community You Serve

We are committed to helping you further integrate diversity initiatives into your hiring decisions. Diversity and inclusion are a Raftelis core value, and we understand that our role in helping you find a key hire is also an important driver in organizational change. Often there are barriers that might be keeping women and people of color from applying, or being included in an interview pool, for example, unnecessary credentials, educational limits, or years of experience. Raftelis thoroughly reviews the position requirements to determine what is preferred and what is truly required to do the job.

We often find that the professionals who are the best fit for an open position are already employed and not searching for a traditional job posting. To get the best candidates we leverage our extensive, diverse professional network to attract the best talent nationwide. We have been successful in identifying a candidate pool that is racially, ethnically, and gender diverse. We work closely with several organizations that support this goal, and we advertise in national publications that target people of color and women, including the National Forum of Black Public Administrators (NFBPA), Local Government Hispanic Network, and the League of Women in Government. In addition to a large prospective applicant database, we also conduct targeted, customized outreach for each recruitment. We identify individuals and similar organizations to reach out to directly. We will also use social media to broaden our reach and target strong prospective applicants. We intentionally seek well-qualified women and people of color, so our clients have excellent choices.

The results of this approach are excellent—38% of our recruitments resulted in the hiring of females and 21% of our recruitments resulted in the hiring of people of color.