---
title: "Precautions for Bosses Using Parachuted Executives"
description: "Bosses have limited energy and knowledge, and as business expands, they often need to recruit senior or technical staff externally, known as 'parachuted executives.' However, hiring is easy but using them is hard, and many bosses face various problems. This article offers eight precautions, including aligning recruitment with strategy, thorough vetting, providing system support, early engagement, meeting family members, planning for exit, skill transfer, and using external advisors."
author: "潘文富"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2017-08-15"
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# Precautions for Bosses Using Parachuted Executives

> Bosses have limited energy and knowledge, and as business expands, they often need to recruit senior or technical staff externally, known as 'parachuted executives.' However, hiring is easy but using them is hard, and many bosses face various problems. This article offers eight precautions, including aligning recruitment with strategy, thorough vetting, providing system support, early engagement, meeting family members, planning for exit, skill transfer, and using external advisors.

Private Enterprise Internal Management Research / Pan Wenfu

Every boss has limited energy and a relatively limited knowledge base. As the company's business volume expands and new fields are explored, new demands are placed on human resources, especially for management and senior staff with specialized technical skills. **If there are no suitable candidates among current employees, external recruitment becomes necessary. Many bosses refer to senior staff recruited from outside as 'parachuted executives.'**

Hiring people is easy, but using them is hard. Many bosses have encountered various problems with parachuted executives in the later stages. Since these executives often hold high positions and have high capabilities, they can have a significant positive impact if used well, but conversely, a significant negative impact if not. The author has summarized some successful experiences and failure cases of bosses using parachuted executives and offers several analytical points for reference.

**1. Align personnel needs with the company's development strategy, and clarify early what kind of people are needed for new projects or senior management positions.**

Bosses only generate new human resource needs through continuous forward development. If a boss has a clear plan and deployment for the company's development over the next few years, they can directly see which positions and links will have what kind of human resource needs in the future, the specific characteristics of those needs, and roughly when those personnel need to be in place. They can also see which of these needs can be met through internal training and promotion. If there are no suitable internal candidates, external recruitment is necessary. Knowing exactly what human resources are needed in advance allows for early arrangements, avoiding situations where positions wait for people. This effectively improves the efficiency of the company's internal systems, which is why many companies' HR departments create annual human resource requirement tables.

**2. Observation period for candidates.**

Unlike general grassroots business/workers, senior or professional staff should not be recruited and used hastily in external hiring. If you bring in parachuted executives without understanding their true situation, it may cause many hidden problems in the later stages. As mentioned earlier, bosses should understand their human resource needs in advance and prepare early. They can contact as many suitable candidates as possible within their familiar circles or through referrals. Do not reveal recruitment intentions directly; instead, calmly observe their true state and performance in their current positions to obtain genuine first-hand information, laying a foundation for future negotiations and hiring.

**3. Provide a list of system support status.**

The parachuted executives recruited by bosses are often senior staff from large, well-known companies. These large companies have very different employee support systems compared to the current company. For example, a sales director at a large company has a marketing department providing market analysis and activity design, a finance department managing customer accounts, a logistics department arranging warehousing and delivery, and an HR department considering career development, arranging training, and handling social security. In contrast, some small and medium-sized companies may not have these departments, or even if they do, their functions are far inferior to those in large companies. Employees parachuting from formal enterprises into small companies often spend considerable energy and time adapting to working in an environment with an incomplete internal support system. Some leave because they cannot adapt to the low efficiency of the internal support system. To avoid this, bosses can provide candidates with a list of the current status and problems of the company's internal systems, directly informing them in advance. This allows parachuted executives to know the relevant system conditions, compare them with their current company's systems, analyze the gaps, and clarify whether they can adapt or to some extent change these gaps. If there are unclear points, they can raise them with the boss in advance. By explaining the situation clearly beforehand, you can prevent future dissatisfaction and unnecessary trouble. In fact, a simple one-page explanation can save many later problems.

**4. Reach a preliminary agreement with the parachuted executive at least half a year in advance to gain more resources and conduct information collection.**

After a boss initially identifies a candidate, they should start preliminary negotiations three to six months in advance. The boss states their intentions, listens to the candidate's opinions, and both sides have enough time to mutually evaluate and consider. Another factor is that bosses recruit parachuted executives partly for the resources they have in their current positions. These resources include understanding of industry trends, sources of information, management and business materials, relevant industry materials, and new project validation data. However, these resources are hard to obtain after the executive leaves. Even if they can be obtained through other channels, the cost is high, or the timeliness of information cannot be guaranteed. If the boss reaches an initial intention to switch jobs early, it is convenient for the executive to start collecting and organizing relevant materials in advance.

**5. Meet the boss's relatives in advance to avoid obstacles in later work.**

In China, many companies have family-based senior management teams. Currently, when bosses recruit parachuted executives, they usually communicate only with the candidate, rarely introducing family members to the candidate. This often leads to situations where the executive gets along well with the boss but has friction and conflicts with the boss's family members, causing the executive to leave in anger. To avoid this, bosses should arrange for the executive to meet relevant family members before joining the company, deepening understanding and communication to ensure smooth cooperation in the future.

**6. Be able to invite gods and send them away.**

As the old saying goes: "It's easier to invite gods than to send them away." If the parachuted executive performs normally, it's fine, but if they become rebellious, it's troublesome. These expensive executives often hold key positions, so their impact is significant, both positive and negative. Bosses must think about how to send them away before deciding to recruit them.

**7. Quickly decompose and replicate unique job skills.**

The parachuted executives are not hired for ordinary tasks; they either help with company management or are responsible for specialized positions. A common situation is that after the executive arrives, the related work difficulty is resolved or alleviated, and the boss can relax, naturally developing a dependence on the executive's advantages. However, if the executive becomes emotional or suddenly resigns, the boss may not be able to adapt to the absence of the executive in the short term, causing work to fall into trouble. To fundamentally solve this problem, once the executive starts, the boss should try to integrate the executive's unique skills with the company's current operating system. In the early period of the executive's tenure, the focus should be on training existing staff, gradually decomposing and replicating the executive's skills and scientific management methods, allowing more employees to master what the executive brings. This effectively improves existing employees' skills and also prevents the passive situation caused by the executive suddenly quitting.

**8. Hire external advisors for assistance.**

The parachuted executives recruited by bosses often have certain professional skills, but there is always someone better. If not suppressed to some extent, some executives may develop arrogance, which is not conducive to internal unity. To avoid this, bosses can consider hiring external professional advisors, such as friends from other companies or government departments, as advisors. Many bosses have such nominal advisors, usually friends who provide reference opinions on development plans, with little fixed cost. If used properly, they can also serve as a check on the executive. Of course, considering the executive's feelings, the boss should introduce the advisors to the executive before the executive formally joins the company, and try not to establish advisor relationships with friends after the executive joins, to avoid the executive thinking the advisors are there to check and suppress them.

**Recruiting senior staff from outside is a vision and a boldness, which places higher demands on the boss's management level and overall control ability.** Since there are many differences between the boss's company and formal enterprises, more careful preparation and planning are needed in the recruitment and use of parachuted executives to ensure their safe and smooth introduction and effective functioning.

Author: Pan Wenfu, a private business owner, has managed a family-owned distributor company for many years, during which he also served as a business manager and trainer in several production enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and veterans entering private enterprises. He continuously breaks down over 400 topics related to private enterprise internal management and keeps updating material collection and solutions.

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