The average salary for an Executive in Australia varies heavily based on the company and role, but averages out at about $161,500.

Heads of Operation and Customer Service typically earn the lowest, at around $117-120k. Meanwhile, those in the C-Suite earn the highest, often $200k or more.

Of course, the negotiation of salary and benefits is an important part of the Executive Search process, and our specialists are here to help you understand what to offer, and what to accept.

Every organisation is unique, and so is every leader. As such, at WOW Recruitment our Executive Search process is highly tailored to the individual.

We follow a five-stage networking and headhunting process designed to perfectly match skills, goals and culture fit, working with you throughout not only the recruitment phase, but onboarding and beyond. This helps to ensure that everyone is satisfied with the result, and improves retention/job satisfaction.

Our five-stage Executive Search process includes:

1. Thorough job briefing and project planning.
2. Forensic database and network search.
3. Extensive candidate background research and testing.
4. Negotiation and placement.
5. Onboarding and post-placement support.

A variety of technical and soft skills are required by the modern HR professional to thrive in a complex professional environment. Some of the top most in-demand skills we see include:

1. Empathy and EQ
2. Adaptable mindset
3. Conflict management
4. People analytics driven by AI
5. Talent strategy

These five skills enable great People & Culture professionals to thrive in the changeable, often stressful modern workplace: utilising the latest tools and strategies to keep the workplace operating smoothly, while remaining adaptable and empathetic to people’s evolving needs.

Key to improving retention in any team is to first understand the key factors driving top leaders away. Generally, the best way to get these insights is to find out from your people, either through one-on-one meetings with each member of your leadership team, or anonymous feedback surveys.

In our experience, these are four of the top factors affecting leadership retention in Australia:

1. Uncompetitive pay or benefits
2. A lack of pay increases
3. Lack of personal development
4. Poor onboarding experiences

When you understand your key problem areas, you can then begin to implement strategies that directly address the root cause of these issues. Common strategies we see include:

1. Offering pay on-par with competitors
2. Providing desirable benefits to top up any pay discrepancies
3. Offering structured leadership development programs
4. Ensuring leaders receive as thorough an onboarding experience as other employees

This always depends on your business objectives, budget, time and the complexities of the market.

In-house recruitment can be both highly efficient and very cost-effective, giving you total control of the hiring pipeline and a sense of ownership over the process. 

However, if your team lacks the capacity to run this process effectively, you’re hunting for niche or hard-to-find leadership skills, or the market is experiencing heavy competition, a specialist recruitment partner can provide that extra level of certainty. This is because recruitment teams like ours have spent years building vast business networks across the country (and globe), enabling us to:

• Access hidden talent pools
• Circumvent market competition to headhunt right-fit talent directly
• Maintain a team of high-quality interim leaders who can hit the ground running in under 24 hours

These factors make specialist executive recruitment teams very popular for finding urgent leadership support, leaders for key skills areas and high-level Executives.