Searching for the Stay-At-Home Rushing Defenseman

It is late Friday afternoon and my partners and I are commiserating about our struggles to find the exact candidates wanted by our clients. And since wallowing in self-blame is far less fun than attributing one’s woes to others, we enthusiastically point to our clients’ specifications as today’s source of our angst.
Now before you get the wrong idea, we are immensely appreciative of the work we receive and understand organizations’ desires to find the best possible executives for their firms. We also recognize that the bar of expectation is elevated when a company pays the big bucks to retain a headhunter to go searching on their behalf. And while we work with our clients to sort out the ‘must-have’ attributes from those that are just ‘nice to have’ it seems that we are regularly asked to search for candidates who embody equal portions of opposite qualities. Let me explain by using a few classic examples.

The Stupid-Smart Guy.

Clients often direct us to find and recruit the ‘best of the best’. The client’s market challenges are immense, the solutions complex, the potential enormous and only the smartest, most competent of executives will do. After said superstar has been identified, vetted, and found to be worthy, we invariably get down to negotiating the offer of employment. The initial document looks reasonable until the candidate examines the fine print regarding issues such as preferred shares that skew heavily to certain stakeholders and make it unlikely that the candidate will benefit financially from the fruits of his or her labor. When the candidate pushes back, the client reacts indignantly at the insolence.

Whether it is the compensation structure, elements of the corporate culture, or basic assumptions built into the business plan, candidates regularly analyze and weigh opportunities and judge them lacking. This sets up the somewhat challenging situation that the candidates coveted by our client do not covet them in return. As this is an unacceptable interpretation of reality for the client organization it sets up the Alice in Wonderland search for the smart candidate tinged with enough stupidity that they will overlook key aspects of the opportunity being presented to them.

The Master-Servant

We work with a lot of entrepreneurs. When they describe their ideal candidate who will support their quest for world domination, they use adjectives such as ‘take charge’, ‘action-oriented’, ‘strategic’, ‘self-starter’, ‘driver’, and ‘high performer’. They paint a picture of the prototypical ‘A’ player, the master of his organizational domain, the star.

Unfortunately, the star being recruited must thrive in an organization which already has a spotlight hogging organizational supernova who happens to be hands-on (“I am not a micromanager, I just like to know what is going on”), takes criticism personally and can be volatile (“only when people make me angry and it is never personal”). The well-intentioned entrepreneur sincerely intends to give the new employee a free hand, “as soon as he earns my trust, of course”.
Candidates need to understand that if they are going to be successful in an entrepreneur’s organization they must accommodate his idiosyncrasies, serve his needs, make him happy, keep him happy. Since a great many ‘A’ players struggle with this requirement, it sets up the search for the market facing conqueror who is concurrently docile and servant-like internally.

The Big Picture Detail-Oriented Guy

This is a scenario which starts at one end of the skill spectrum. The client asks for someone who will take on a series of strategic initiatives, corporate development, M&A or some combination of related duties. Or, the client asks for someone willing and able to sort through and fix a series of very tactical, detailed-oriented issues, processes or systems needed for the business to thrive.

At some point during the search, the client adds that the successful candidate should also be able to contribute at the other end of the spectrum. The big-picture person should also be detail-oriented, the back-room analyst should also venture out with customers. For those who visualize best with hockey metaphors this begins to take the shape of the fabled stay-at-home rushing defenseman. The reality of course is that people who reside comfortably at one end of the spectrum, rarely find pleasure at the other and thus the frustration begins.

There are many other such archetypes. There is the workaholic family man, the mercenary missionary, and the intuitive, creative process guy. And while one can laugh at the seeming absurdity of searching for opposites, the reality is much more serious as organizations genuinely try to reconcile their varied needs in a world which expects everyone to do more with less.
The answer usually lies in some middle way. In this instance, middle does not refer to the middle of a line of two opposites, but rather a centered understanding born from working through the competing issues and priorities, sampling the candidate market, and weighing tradeoffs. In the end, we are paid to assist in this process to help find that middle way.

Such a discussion is less fun than whining over a beer on a Friday afternoon…