Experience in Hiring External Operators or GMs

February 08, 2023

by a searcher in Chicago, IL, USA

Has anyone had experience in hiring an external operator / GM right after acquiring a company? If so, would love to ask you a few questions:

-How do you source external GMs?
-How do you assess GMs fit?
-At what point do you bring the GM into the fold during the acquisition process?

Assume external because nobody internally can be brought up to a more senior position replace the seller. For the businesses we acquire, we are looking to spend our time working on the business rather than managing the day-to-day. I am budgeting that cost into my financials but would like to chat with folks that have gone through the hiring / sourcing process.

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Reply by a searcher
from The University of Michigan in Greenwich, CT, USA

We find sourcing is best done through personal networks and recruiters including online tools. In terms of assessment, my approach is behavioral interviewing where you ask questions where they tell how they dealt with a situation similar to a challenge they'll face on the job. For example: "Can you tell me about a time when you had to get stakeholders aligned on a common vision when it was clear the various stakeholders had very different viewpoints?" Then look for whether or not their answer reveals whether they employed the skills required for the job in order to be successful. The choice of when to bring them on depends on how much experience you have with the focus area. Generally the more experience you have, the more you can get done before bringing them in. But generally if you have a candidate you like, I'd say bringing them earlier is better. That helps to get them up to speed and helps them to own the role.

Reply by a searcher
from Rutgers in Philadelphia, PA, USA

I’ve found interviews have very little value when hiring for operations managers. They are a necessary step and you can get some useful info from them, but my most enlightening calls have been the reference checks with previous supervisors. Plan to spend some real time getting to know what they did in those previous positions and how they took ownership of those roles. The first 10 minutes of the call will be the common “they were great, highly recommend” but if you can extend the conversation long enough (~30 minutes has worked well for me) you’re bound to get some inside personality info.

For industry experience, I think whether it’s necessary depends on who will be training them and who will be reporting to them. The two external GM hires I did came from similar but not exact industries and had to learn a lot from the outgoing owner.

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