Org Charts

Org charts offer in-house executive search teams a powerful way to recruit senior executives much more easily. Once you have an org chart of executives at a target company, you don’t have to conduct candidate sourcing research. You can immediately start recruiting the leaders. They also inform succession planning and diversity recruiting, providing immeasurable insights.

Org charts, also known as organizational charts, are graphical depictions of who reports to whom, all the way up to the Chief Executive Officer. At one glance, an org chart shows you the company’s structure — the divisions, departments, and/or product teams. It shows you talent distribution geographically. It also tells you where the company makes things, where it sells things, where it is pulling up stakes, and where it is setting down roots.

Often, the levels of a company’s organizational structure are denoted as N-1, N-2, N-3, and so on. N refers to the top executive, frequently the Chief Executive Officer, and the number denotes how many direct reports the role is from the CEO. An executive who is a direct report of the CEO is an N-1. That executive’s direct reports are then N-2, two degrees away from the CEO. An N series is simply an expression of hierarchies. In org charts, this is the hierarchy of the company.