In response to an excellent article in Financial Times (Nov. 16, 2015) by Andrew Hill, I posted this and was pleased to receive ‘editor’s pick’ notice. Here is a link to the article, which I have previously posted on LinkedIn and elsewhere:
Financial Times Article (click on the highlighted link to read “Headhunters and CEOs are less valuable than they think”)
My comments:
“If CEOs are highly-paid and lowly-rated, the people who pick them must share part of the blame.” — True! And, therefore, it follows that the companies who pick the wrong Search Firms (and Recruiters) must share the blame too.
http://nicholasmeyler.tumblr.com/post/96209740878/what-is-my-work-worth
Perhaps the main reason headhunters aren’t really assessing success of the candidates they place is because companies are using the wrong headhunters. The bulk of retained CEO searches go to the “giant” search firms like Korn-Ferry, Heidrick and Struggles, Russell Reynolds, etc. (all of them great companies). Still, they are companies with nothing left to prove… they don’t necessarily have the ‘fire in the belly’ that smaller boutique firms have.
I’ve been a recruiter for 26 years, have a technical degree in Chemical Engineering and graduated from Princeton University’s Philosophy Department (Highest-rated academic department in the World at the time), and I have research skills that are clearly unmatched by my competitors even in the the more massive firms like KF and RR. Yet, I rarely see CEO searches (although I did place someone who much later ended up CEO of Gateway Computers, very early in my career).
The problem is that the competency of the Search Giants is something people take for granted — complacency results, and striving to identify the best possible candidates is diminished.
Perhaps a more “disruptive” approach to hiring CEOs would work better for many companies. Quit relying on the “big name” firms and try out the much more agile, independent and sometimes very superior recruiters who work at small boutique firms instead, and then see how they perform… That’s a strategy that would shake things up!
