Insight

20 years ago I would probably have settled for a search firm with a ‘safe' name and a consultant who is well networked, has a big database and knows decent interviewing and negotiations techniques. After all,  the risk in using the handful of search firmswas low as most recruiters still behaved like management consultants. 

Executive search started in 1950s as service offerings from McKinsey and Booz Allen and off shoots of these companies. Many did not survive into this century but the Big Five did. The founders applied the tenets of management consulting and practiced high ethical standards in their profession, hence commanding good retainers for their consulting services. Then came the contingent players, no one knows when they came into the picture but they did, offering clients the options of paying only when they found the successful candidate. Since then, the massive entrants into the market gave pressure to fees and eroded, in my opinion, what was a commitment to excellence and valued principles. The internet has also turned the recruitment world upside down, with innovations such as job boards, social networks and data aggregation tools.

While I think the retained search firms will remain, they continue to have their market share continually threatened. The rest of the market faces huge uncertainties and successful placement is now based on speed rather than relationship. This is where my contention lies - in the current state of the business world where clients are often not clear about their own directions,this is reflected in their hiring strategies or lack of it, where can one finda recruiter who has both the leadership and functional skills to provide the much needed confidence and speed? I totally believe that a strong, trusting and professional relationship between client or candidate and recruiter cannot be replaced and a firm that practices this tenet will not fail.

My recruiter must:

• Have a sufficient level of business acumen to understand executive challenges
• Be well networked and tend towards people affiliation and client facing
• Have persuasive abilities to engage talented non job seekers
• Have good knowledge on the psychology of work in the areas of executive needs, motivation to perform, response to different types of leadership styles and conflict management (in other words, negotiations)
• Know about and adopt scientifically proven selection techniques
• Have good understanding of competencies as applied to the role that they are seeking for and being able to map competencies to observable traits during every personal interaction.
• Possess high level of conscientiousness in questioning assumptions especially about supposedly well-known candidates
• Know what the predictors of high performance and how to gauge that during an interview.
• Understand the ethical implications of doing a search and managing it with integrity

Sounds like a list that is geared towards the Sciences and knowledge of Psychology? Exactly, it is my belief that recruiters are paying much less attention to their clients and candidates than they should and that there has been too much practice of Art and not enough Science in the field. We have probably been guilty of that too.

I am on a mission to develop responsible and competent recruiters starting with my own team by offering regular coaching sessions in the hope that I can transform mindsets and behaviors. I am open to making the sessions available to potential recruiters who are keen to get into this business with us.  Do contact me if you have an interest.