Tales from a Headhunter Deep in the Bush

As a condition of being released from custody, the brilliant yet troubled title character in the movie Good Will Hunting must meet regularly with a counselor. Determined to sabotage the process he torments and is dismissed by a series of psychologists until he is sent to ‘Sean' played by Robin Williams.

Last week I met the CEO of a recently funded tech firm (yes, it still happens) who described at length his plans to build his business. As he spoke of his young executive team, its successes to date, and his plans to lever the new funding round to conquer the world, he exuded the sense of invincibility that comes with youth and the validation of funding. Afterwards, as I reflected on our meeting, part of me hoped that underneath the bravado was an individual who was as least a little frightened, for if he bothered to peruse his new venture partners' playbook, he would know that he is anything but invincible.

If intelligence is the best predictor of achievement what accounts for the wide range of achievement among individuals of equal IQ? Professor Angela Duckworth studies this question for a living and believes she has the answer

If you long to be taken to Shangri-la, that fictional, mystical, utopian oasis of harmony and love, what kind of person do you hire to help you get there? Do you recruit a lifelong resident, intimate with the ways of the land, or someone trained in navigating the treacherous jungles to the western end of the Kunlun Mountains where it is said to be located?

This week the Globe and Mail published an article titled "How to Shine Again After A Year of Gloom" in which employees as well as candidates looking for jobs are urged to emphasize their creativity as a means of differentiating themselves in the marketplace. This appealed to me as great advice, provided you are one of the few people who actually are creative. For everyone else it is a waste of time.

I recently dusted off Jim Collins' book Good to Great. For those who have forgotten, the book compiles a list of companies that have achieved ‘greatness' over a period of 15 years and then analyzes them in order to "discover the essential and distinguishing factors at work". The resulting best practices of these best companies has been a bestseller since 2001.

Two high profile firings took place this week. Both shed light on how boards of directors and the big-named international headhunters who advise them make questionable decisions. The first involved the CEO of Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation who was dismissed along with the majority of the firm's board of directors. Published reports suggested that topping the list of Kelly McDougald's purported transgressions was her failure to deliver wholesale culture change at the government run monopoly. If this was in fact her primary mandate, it is reasonable to look at her credentials going into the job.

The CEO of a small firm asked me this week for tips on spotting talent. Here's a quick take on a very generic question. First, talent comes in a great many varieties, perhaps even more than the 31 flavors at your local Baskin-Robbins store. And this is fortunate for the organizational palate is individualistic, a function of blended factors such as company size, complexity, ownership, location, industry, financial resources, and challenges it faces. ‘Talent' is not a generic label of excellence that can move effortlessly between any and all companies.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote that there are two kinds of experts; hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs have figured out how the world works. They boast a focused central view, strong convictions and ideological leanings. They are certain about what they know and prone to argue in black and white terms.

A study out of Harvard University found that first time entrepreneurs have only a 22% chance of succeeding. This likely won't surprise many people unless of course you are one of the countless dreamers who parade their sure-fire business plans on CBC's Dragon's Den each and every week. Simply stated, an awful lot of things have to go right for an entrepreneurial endeavor to be successful, however success is defined.

This past week, we found ourselves in the middle of a tricky negotiation concerning a ‘non-compete' clause in an offer of employment. Both the client and candidate had valid though polar opposite positions on the necessity of the clause, its language, term and restrictions. In the end one party made concessions in return for changes to another part of the agreement. It was a lot of work for an eventuality that may well never materialize. However several recent well publicized employment battles serve as reminders that ‘non-competes' are not a trivial matter...

There is always someone offering fanciful or overly simplistic solutions to complex problems. And the press is all too willing to put them forth as fact or trend...

We were recently involved in a search assignment in which our client extended an offer of employment to a candidate only to withdraw it after the candidate asked ‘a few innocuous clarifying questions'. The incident illustrates a key misunderstanding about employment offers. Hiring exercises are courtships in which the parties get to know each other over a series of meetings, each designed to estimate the likelihood of a successful employment marriage. Every step is a gate to continuing or ending the process. The offer of employment is the marriage proposal and represents a big leap in the relationship. But, and this is key, the offer is not the end of the process, it is only another step. Many, many things can go wrong at this stage and it is not the time for either party to get drunk with joy, let their guard down, become undisciplined, or veer off the track that got them to that point...

Doug Barber knows a thing or two about building a successful technology firm. He was one of the founders and the long time CEO of Gennum Corporation which he built into one of the most successful and best managed tech firms in Canada.

Everyone has a theory on the Nortel’s descent from first to worst. Many start and end with the murderer’s row of CEOs at its helm. I cannot even offer an opinion on the degree to which Nortel’s demise was a function of any one of a hundred different factors. But to the degree that the last three or four CEOs played a role, the board of directors has to take a shameful bow.

Sound intriguing? If it does, give your head a shake and forget about it! The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on the current challenges of finding executive jobs. It noted that many job seekers are turning to a new breed of professional executive marketing firms, executive agents and certified personal branding strategists whose sole purpose is to help clients win the very best of those scarce jobs. Sound intriguing? If it does, give your head a shake and forget about it! Let me explain.

Reputations are built over time, easily damaged and difficult to mend. A great reputation yields an army of volunteers happy to speak glowingly on someone’s behalf. A poor reputation can sideline an executive forever.

Headhunters are paid to find candidates who will thrive in their client organizations. Certainty is elusive so the promise of success is always weighed against the probability of failure. Risk is the key variable to be controlled.

Generally, companies are not particularly adept at ridding themselves of underperforming executives. Rather than get on with the unpleasantries, firms procrastinate, waffle, rationalize, or simply put their collective heads in the sand. They do so in part because the issues surrounding a ‘problem’ executive are rarely black and white.

Recently I was asked to interview several candidates competing for a senior management role. The company in question had acquired several firms and was looking to align the disparate, distributed and increasingly dysfunctional engineering teams behind a common direction and leader.

Like many people, I followed with interest the succession drama following the recent death of Rogers Communications founder/CEO Ted Rogers. The process was delicate with selected family and management apparently vying for the top role. After several hand-wringing months, the well-liked wireless business unit head, Nadir Mohammed, was anointed as the chosen one.

Few movies are more frightening than Glengarry Glen Ross, and few characters more haunting than the burnt-out salesman Shelley Levene, played by Jack Lemmon. Everyone who sells for a living can resonate with the former sales great who is now perennially down on his luck.

This past week I visited our nation’s capital. Amidst the bad news on Nortel, a start-up community hanging on for its very life, and a softening aerospace/defense sector, were a series of upbeat headlines on the city’s true economic cluster, government.

Judging by the number of resumes we are receiving, it is not a good time to be a senior R&D/Engineering executive. Tough times are forcing tough decisions and many companies are reducing R&D/engineering spend, or minimally the high-priced help directing those activities.

It is almost axiomatic that all other attributes being equal, the intelligent manager will outperform his or her less intelligent counterpart in the workplace. In fact, according to industrial psychologists intelligence outranks any other attribute as a predictor of workplace success..

Is the candidate a pure seller in an interview exchange, or are they also a buyer? While some might raise their eyebrows at the obviousness of the question, you would be surprised how many people get this wrong. And I am not just talking about junior people but very senior people as well. And they pay a big price for it...

Sound intriguing? If it does, give your head a shake and forget about it! The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on the current challenges of finding executive jobs. It noted that many job seekers are turning to a new breed of professional executive marketing firms, executive agents and certified personal branding strategists whose sole purpose is to help clients win the very best of those scarce jobs. Sound intriguing? If it does, give your head a shake and forget about it! Let me explain.

Last week I received a resume from an executive in the women's fashion business. The email was copied to over 100 headhunters. When the executive followed-up with a phone call, I commented that while I respect the courage it took to call me, a cursory glance at our web site would have shown her that we had little, if anything, to do with the women's fashion industry..

Executives call us regularly to take the temperature of the employment landscape. Here's a quick take…. 1. Despite rumblings of Armageddon, companies are still hiring. Job seekers are reporting that their opportunity pipelines are about half-full and that they remain cautiously optimistic...

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article titled Tough CEOs Often Most Successful. The article reports on a study by three University of Chicago professors who examined the assessment data of 313 CEO candidates who had been evaluated by the selection firm ghSmart on behalf of their venture capital and private equity clients.

The current crisis at Nortel is pushing another wave of executives into the frigid employment waters. If history is any guide, many will not transition very well. For many years, Nortel took pride in hiring the ‘best of the best'...

The first stop in any executive job search should be the closest mirror. While this sounds obvious, even trite perhaps, it actually runs contrary to the urge in many of us to respond to a setback by immediately jumping back into the fray. I get calls every week from executives advising me that they have, on that very day, severed ties with their employer and are making the rounds to get another job...

A distressing number of competent executives are currently on the job market and if you believe what you hear, a lot more are about to join them. They enter a market that will demand much from those seeking to navigate its unsettled waters...

As the Ted Rogers story comes to a close, all eyes turn to the question of succession. Will the Rogers' empire be professionally managed or will the children assume the mantle of leadership? And if they do, will they fare better or worse than the second generation Aspers or Peladeaus who now manage their media inheritances? Or will the heirs liquidate and disappear from centre-stage much like the Waters family of CHUM fame or the Slaights of Standard Broadcasting?..

There is a pattern to foul times. The press picks up the early scent and relentlessly pursues the trail of woe; nervous companies begin to see the smallest market aberration as evidence of the impending apocalypse; the VC cartel issues warnings of supply interruptions to their funding cocaine and before you know it everyone is curled in the fetal position of fear. Discretionary everything is immediately cut, the keys to the old fiscal Diefenbunker are dug out of the drawer and everyone is told to hunker down. Only the essentials will be stocked and deliberations begin on who to invite inside. The most productive..

Emerging companies frequently confuse ‘business development' with ‘sales'. Though each has elements of the other embedded in it, they are very different roles and using them interchangeably is guaranteed to have a negative impact on a business..

We all want to be good at what we do, our jobs, our hobbies, the sports we play. And if asked, each of us could put together a wish list of things we would love to master, improve or learn. But the gap between wishing and doing is the proverbial slip between the cup and the lip of achievement. It is why we do not all have stellar careers, speak multiple languages, play Beethoven and build miniature furniture in our spare time...

As I walked past the crowded biography section of the bookstore the other day, it occurred to me how fascinated we all are by the idea of the great man (and woman). We lap up their stories of triumph, the adversities they tossed aside and the other-worldly lifestyles that have become their rewards..

I have been receiving a lot of calls on the state of the executive job market. Our business is considered a good barometer of the health of that market and if we are slow it is reasonable to assume the same of the overall job market. So how are we doing?.

An implicit consideration in selection is the motivation of candidates. What really drives a given individual? Is it money, power, recognition, excellence, knowledge, relationships or some other group of variables? Equally importantly, where does a given individual's motivation drive them, and what price are they prepared to pay to get there?..

Last weekend I tasted, well actually I was refused a taste, of the world before consumers took it over. It was strange and frustrating, yet in the end, a wonderful thought-provoking experience.

Last week, a disenchanted mid-level executive with 20 years ‘in' at a large company, came to see me with a his job wish list. It included CEO of a start-up, divisional general manager of a mid-sized company, country manager for a foreign company selling into Canada, or senior vice-president in a large company.

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..

Discussions on leadership have a tendency to be one-directional with the focus largely on the leader rather than the led. The leader is the magician, the headline act if you will, while the employees are the faceless, doe-eyed audience passively waiting to be enchanted. Scanning the local crowd, the leader pulls out of his sleeves the tricks of his trade; power, authority, charisma and legitimacy. It is the magician alone that determines whether he kills or is killed on any given night.

I regularly interview executives who effortlessly reel off strings of accomplishments, some seemingly single-handed, that have contributed to the success of their employers. These are impressive ‘A' players who, to hear them tell it, border on near perfection. When the discussion turns to my clients' particular needs and the suitability of the candidates' to address them, they scoff. Of course they will succeed, they never fail!

It is election time. And while politicians dole out promissory notes on every street corner, the tech sector stands in line. What will it be? More funding, better tax treatment, fewer regulations or heaven forbid, how about a government that actually purchases from early staged companies?

I overheard someone asking last week why so few recent startups have come out of certain very successful Canadian tech firms. Though I did not chime in at the time, I would suggest that the answer lies in the entrepreneurs who founded and in some instances continue to drive these businesses. Specifically, few tech sector entrepreneurs nurture future entrepreneurs or even strong leaders for that matter.

There is an outbreak of irritability in many corners of the tech sector. Highly infectious, and resistant to even the best of news, it has spread to companies and individuals alike, unsettling all but the most bubbly of outlooks. Symptomatically, the infected appear uncomfortable, moody, easily agitated and at times, even a tad irrational. As one was heard warning to anyone within buckshot, "We'll kick you in the private parts, Litigation is where we'll start".

Everyone would agree that certain bits of information are material when making hiring decisions. For example, an applicant's ‘documented' hobby of robbing banks is likely material when applying to work in one. Also, a candidate's three bankruptcies is probably material when considering that person for a job as a financial advisor. And I would think that an HR person would be interested to know that the candidate applying for a role as an air traffic controller is on medication for depression and chronic stress syndrome.

Two news items this week illustrate the rational and irrational sides of executive compensation. The first was a published report that CEOs recruited from outside a company earn an average of 65% more than those promoted from within. The discrepancy was greatest in smaller companies. The writer reporting on the study spun the results as conclusive evidence that organizations of all sizes must get their succession planning acts together.

I was reading an article a couple days ago about the versatility of GE-trained executives and why this quality makes them so valuable. Executives at GE are deliberately rotated through business sectors such as appliances, jet engines and medical technologies thus exposing them to different market dynamics, technologies, geographies and organizational challenges. The resulting versatility of skills which this develops, according to the article, equips GE executives to tackle almost any business challenge and makes them among the most coveted talent pool in the world. They are only partially correct.

One of the common challenges in executive search is aligning client expectations with the candidate market. Take the typical start-up for example. Almost every start-up envisions itself as tomorrow's monster success. Their widget, software, system or application is going to be big, really big, and only a fool would fail to see that. And though statistically only a small percentage of start-ups will ever cross that golden finish line, a measure of certainty and audacity undoubtedly immunized each and every one against the doubters and skeptics lurking every step of the way. As a result, a level of certainty and bravado must be respected.

Like Las Vegas, the tech sector is known for its bright lights, those geniuses whose inspirations change our lives. Easier to recognize than describe, these entrepreneurs and technological innovators see things, solve things, and do things that most of us struggle to even comprehend.

I profess no special insight into what really goes on inside the Canadian venture capital world. I am not part of the esteemed club, do not possess the insider's secret decoder ring and am not a confidant to anyone who has one. Instead, my vantage point is down the food chain looking up, a service provider selling to, working for, and dependent upon this community for part of my livelihood.

In a recently published book titled The Illusions of Entrepreneurship, author Scott A. Shane takes aim at the myths surrounding ‘entrepreneurship' which he defines as ‘the activity of organizing, managing, and assuming the risks of a business or enterprise'. While most of us associate entrepreneurship with the likes of Terry Matthews or Stephen Jobs, or even Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, the Shane reminds us that the category includes infinitely more dry cleaners, variety store owners, cab drivers and even farmers than high profile, tech superstars.

The plight of the 50+ executive is anything but hopeless. Here are a few things they can do:

An increasing number of seasoned tech sector executives are struggling to understand why nobody seems to want to hire them. These are capable, senior individuals whose ships have been without a port for some time and who seem to be perennial runners-up for positions they covet. Perhaps even more worrisome, they are increasingly losing out for positions they would have turned down not that long ago. Perplexed and angry, they demand to know why. I am often in the line of that fire.

Last week's Fortune Magazine ran an article called Lessons of the Fall. In it several big- time CEOs were asked what they learned from their highly publicized firings. As one reflected on his Board of Directors, he observed, ‘looking at the company through a little hole once a quarter at a four-hour meeting - board members don't know much about the company'. This is a comment we hear a lot.

Salary negotiations are often quite tricky in executive search. First, clients vary widely when they discuss target salaries. Some carefully lay out the compensation band for a given position, while others suggest they will pay whatever it takes to hire the right person. Some are sincere while others are not. Salary ranges are material for us since we can recruit the very best person we can find at the salary the client wants to pay, or we can recruit the very best person we can find, period.

We are occasionally asked by clients to find really stupid, smart people. It usually starts innocently enough as with the following example…

Sometimes candidates pose the most mouth watering questions. Almost every week I am approached by executives who have popped their heads up from busy careers in order to check out the job market. Some are very high performers who I am surprised I do not know.

It's enough to make your head spin ! Earlier this week I had lunch with the Vice-President, Human Resources of a large technology company. The conversation touched many subjects including how her firm is dealing with an aging senior management team.

One of the reasons that hiring is so frustratingly difficult is the enduring view that it is a zero-sum game of war between employers and candidates where the spoils go to the most cunning and devious.

Here are but a few of those low-lights that continue to haunt me to this day …. 1. There was the time when a client called first thing Monday morning to complain that the new VP had failed to show up for his first day on the job. Frantically I tried to locate him. Fearing that his old employer had somehow induced him to stay at the last minute,

A founder/CEO called me the other day to discuss a dilemma. The individual has done a fine job building an impressive venture-backed company which is really coming into its own. But as the firm grows, the CEO is finding it increasingly difficult to make certain tradeoff decisions.

As headhunters we interact with two categories of candidates; those we pursue and those who pursue us. The former are often elusive, the latter frustrating. Our bread and butter are finding candidates on behalf of our clients. We scour databases, web sites, tradeshows, directories and the like for the high performing candidates most likely to thrive in the roles we are trying to fill.

With all due respect to our competitors, I would venture that we conduct more early stage CEO searches than any other search firm in Canada, and we have the scars to prove it.

We are frequently asked to conduct searches for board members on behalf of our tech sector clients. The requirements vary with the company. In some instances the firm seeks an individual with deep experience in a certain market or technology. In others, it is specific relationships or contacts which the board member can bring for the firm's benefit. Sometimes it is the experience and wisdom of scaling businesses beyond our clients' current size or level of complexity. On yet other occasions, it is specific functional experience that is required; geopolitical savvy in a certain part of the world; or specialized experience in corporate governance.

We were recently in for a shock when we undertook a search to find a Vice-President of Sales in the so-called ‘Cleantech' sector. Though the client organization is a manufacturer of environmental products gaining increasing attention, its roots are ‘old-economy' building products which are being made sexy by market forces larger than itself.

A few months ago, the press reported on a system being developed at the University of Calgary called ‘Synthetic Validity'. The system promises a universal selection system for all jobs at all levels. As I am always interested in job-simplifying panaceas, I looked into it, and while it may have some promise, it appears to be a giant shared database of competencies which is a long way from selection prime time, at least in the search world.

I spent time recently with a prominent venture capitalist who has reflected a fair bit on the talent issue in the start-up game. Our discussion focused to the importance of certain attributes for start-up CEOs and how easy it is to misjudge their importance.

The National Post recently ran an article titled ‘How they do it at the Precinct'. In it, the writer argues that while police interrogators and interviewers share a common desire to glean information from another party, police have become far more ‘sophisticated' in achieving their goals. The writer proceeds to provide tips from police interrogators on getting people to ‘talk'.