Posts Tagged candidates
Social Media and your job search
Posted by Frank Mortimer in Social Media on February 16, 2010
I’m quite sceptical of people preaching all the wonderful benefits of social media. If you are at a ‘senior’ level you have to be very selective and careful in using these channels. However I’m also convinced that if you disregard it completely you will miss out on opportunities and information in general. Here some experiences of a novice user:
After finishing an intensive six-week course on using social media in December, one of the goals that I have set for 2010 is to actively use it as a job-search tool. This year is supposed to be the year for social media, the year that Twitter finally takes off, so it is very important for me to fully utilize various tools to my advantage.
One of the most important things that I have been doing is Googling my name on a daily basis to make sure that I am not somehow associated to anything inappropriate. I have also created a Google profile so that I can easily be found by potential employers.
I have been adjusting my LinkedIn profile to makes sure it is optimal and effective. I had initially created a very detailed profile, but decided to pare it down and put an emphasis on my core competencies and transferable skills. I want to make sure that my profile triggers more conversations with potential hiring managers, leading to interviews. Of course, a detailed resume is attached to my profile so that I can easily make it available to hiring managers if they request to see it. I have uploaded a profile picture and requested recommendations from former managers to make sure my profile is 100% complete.
I have also joined a number of Linkedin groups associated with finance, prior employers, and school alumni. I follow discussions, ask questions and make comments. This is a very effective way of putting myself out there and being seen. Membership in groups such as those for former Bear Stearns employees also give me access to jobs that are posted in the group forums. I have seen a number of jobs posted by both companies and headhunters, which I have applied for and am waiting to hear back from the hiring managers.
Another tool that I have just started to actively use is Twitter. Although I established a Twitter account over two years ago, I did not actively use it until recently. I have come to the realization that Twitter can be a powerful job searching tool. There are lot of smart and helpful career advisors, bloggers and recruiters that I have discovered and now follow. The wealth of knowledge that these experts distribute with only 140 characters is amazing. And most are more than willing to give advice, whether I ask for it or not. Then there are recruiters that Tweet out job openings, again a great way to find jobs.
There are many other social media tools that I have yet to use. I have learned that I need to balance my time between traditional and non-traditional methods. I continue to make traditional networking a priority, and actively set up meetings and attend events where I have the opportunity to network.
One of the questions that they asked at the end of my social media boot camp was: How will you use what you have learned about social networking in your next job? It is clear that not only will social networking help me during my current job search, but it will give me an edge at my next job, regardless of where I end up. Social networking is coming in with a force to financial services, health care, media, and other industries, and we all need to adapt.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Henry Chalian
Henry Chalian was a relationship manager at J.P. Morgan before his job was eliminated in May 2009 after seven years with the company. Mr. Chalian, 41, received a masters degree from the London School of Economics in 1995 and is currently completing a certificate of business excellence at Columbia Business School. He lives in Brooklyn, New York
Judging the headhunter
Posted by Frank Mortimer in Executive Search, Finding A Headhunter, Interviews on February 7, 2010
Headhunters earn their living by finding and evaluating job candidates for the benefit of their clients. Some are better at this than others, and you should know what distinguishes a good headhunter from a not-so-good one — at least from the standpoint of the job hunter. This will help you avoid (a) wasting your time, (b) divulging confidential information to the wrong people, and (c) developing false hopes.
There are a lot of headhunters out there, and they tend to come in two types:
Those who get into the business because the cost of entry is low. They’re looking for a quick buck. They’re in a big rush to close deals, and they aren’t very concerned about what anyone thinks about how they’re doing it. That’s not to say they’re all dishonest; just that they aren’t taking the long view. You’ll get pretty frustrated working with them because of the way they treat their clients, their professional community, and their job candidates.
Those who are building a business based on reputation, relationships and trust — and on making a contribution to their professional community. They’re in less of a rush, are more willing to take time to establish long term relationships, and they seek to establish their credibility as much as to earn a buck. This doesn’t mean they’ll take anyone’s call, just that they’ll act responsibly.
How does a job hunter separate a knowledgeable, trustworthy, conscientious, effective headhunter from the rest? Assess him (or her) on these four attributes:
Knowledge
A good headhunter will have tons of valuable information about the company he or she is representing, about the job, the manager and his team, about why the job is open, and about the technology (if applicable). He’ll be able to tell you about the interview itself: how the manager evaluates candidates, how his team will be involved and how the selection process will play out. Most important, the headhunter will be able to coach you in a way that will maximize your chances of winning an offer.
Even good headhunters don’t have all the answers. But the good ones will tell you when they don’t know something.
Ask the headhunter thoughtful questions about the position he or she called you about. Don’t just focus on the title and salary — get into the work itself. A good headhunter will share lots of his knowledge and in doing so give you enough information to help you make a decision about whether you want to pursue the job (or recommend someone else). A not-so-good headhunter will quote you the title and the salary, but will be in a rush to get off the phone so he can call the next person on his list.
Integrity
A trustworthy headhunter is proud of his business and glad to talk about it. His success depends on you trusting him. So, ask him thoughtful questions about himself and his work. How many years has he been in the business? What areas does he specialize in? Who are his client companies? What specific positions does he usually recruit for?
The answers matter, of course, but what you’re really looking for is an indication that the headhunter is forthright and willing to tell you about himself. A headhunter who’s in the business for a quick buck won’t have much of a story to tell because he’s operating on the fringes, picking up fees wherever he can. A good headhunter will demonstrate that he has good clients who respect him, and that he knows the in’s and out’s of the industry he recruits in.
A good headhunter also reveals his trustworthiness by keeping his or her promises. Don’t let a headhunter slide on this point — you’ll wind up wasting your time in the long run. Does the headhunter call when he promises to call? If he says he’ll call you early next week that means Monday or Tuesday of next week — not Friday at 6:00PM or two weeks later.
Does he return your calls? Once you’ve established a relationship, a good headhunter always returns your calls, just as you should return his. However, if you made the first contact and the headhunter didn’t show any real interest, don’t expect he’ll talk to you again in the near future. He’s not being rude, but he’s also not in business to help you manage your career. Either way, you should expect the headhunter to honor his commitments and to treat you considerately.
Conscientiousness
A good headhunter tries to locate and separate out the best qualifed talent for his client company. That’s why he won’t take cold calls or waste time with people who want a “job handout”. His focus is on the companies and people who will help him do his job. When he’s working on a search that has led him to you, he will be 100% attentive to you.
A good headhunter won’t just ask for your resume. He’ll do his research by taking the time to ask you the tough, detailed questions that will reveal whether you fit the company, the manager, the job and the technology. (Some headhunters will have a researcher on their staff handle this preliminary discussion. Expect the researcher to be as professional as the headhunter, and insist on talking to the headhunter himself if the discussion seems to indicate you’re a potential candidate.)
To a good headhunter, your resume is a follow-up, a kind of background material. It isn’t his objective when he calls. If a headhunter just asks for your resume and says, “I’ll get back to you”, you know you’re dealing with a guy who’s too busy dialing for dollars and not taking the time to do a great job for his client.
By investing the time to get to know you, a headhunter demonstrates his conscientiousness. So, pay attention to the questions the headhunter asks you: he’s revealing himself as much as he’s probing you.
Effectiveness
A good headhunter finds the right candidate and fills the job. That’s his business. To accomplish this, he has to gain the respect of the people he is recruiting, and he must demonstrate his ability to be right. If he makes a few “wrong” placements, his reputation is shot.
When people get frustrated because a headhunter won’t talk to them, it’s often because the headhunter is very good at what he does. And talking to just anyone isn’t his job. A good headhunter usually does not have the time to spend with individuals who contact him unless they happen to have expertise in the exact assignment he’s currently working on. (I’ve gotten such “lucky” calls only twice in eleven years.) My own specialty is the semiconductor industry, which means I cannot help the vast majority of the people who find me in the phone book.
What does all this mean to you? If you are actively looking for a job, then take control of your own job search, because the good headhunters won’t talk to you. That seems contradictory, but it makes perfect sense when you consider what we’ve said about the headhunter’s business: he can’t be an effective headhunter if he starts acting like a career counselor. If you’re the person the headhunter is looking for, he prefers to find you himself. Believe it or not, this is one of the best ways to recognize a good headhunter: he’s the one who calls you.
But to judge him properly, evaluate the headhunter carefully on all four of the attributes described above. When you encounter a good headhunter, do your best to help him with his search. Because there’s one last attribute you should know about: a good headhunter remembers.
J.Borer, Headhunter
Von Generalisten, Spezialisten und T-Shaped Professionals
Posted by Frank Mortimer in Executive Search Deutschland on February 5, 2010
Mit diesem Thema befasst sich unser Beitrag von Helen Siegel und Frau Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Heinemann, die an der Fachhochschule Worms einen Lehrstuhl für Schlüsselqualifikationen hat.
Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie hätten einen großen Garten. Vielleicht haben Sie den sogar. Umso besser! Stellen Sie sich zudem vor, Ihr Gärtner wäre überaus kompetent – sozusagen mit Ihren Pflanzen auf „Du und Du“. Und nun stellen Sie sich noch vor, Sie würden gerne einen Koi-Teich anlegen. Wäre Ihr Gärtner dann der richtige Partner? Vermutlich nicht! Denn (nicht nur) bei Gärtnern trifft man zumeist auf folgende beiden Spezies:
- Generalisten: Sie haben „auch schon mal etwas mit Teichen gemacht“. In punkto Wasserpflanzen glänzen sie aber mit Halbwissen. Und selbstverständlich kennen sie die beliebtesten Teichbewohner nebst solch edlen Fischen wie Kois. Doch wie Teiche angelegt sein sollten, damit diese schwimmenden „Maybach“ darin gedeihen und sich vermehren, das wissen sie leider nicht. Trotzdem geben sie Ihnen gerne Rat.
- Spezialisten: Sie kennen alle Gartenblumen und jede Rosenart, nebst deren Merkmalen und Besonderheiten. Doch „rechts und links davon“ haben sie keine Ahnung. Wenn es um Teiche und deren Bewohner geht, sagen sie daher: „Davon habe ich keine Ahnung. Ich kann nicht für alles Experte sein.“
Sowohl mit einem Generalisten als auch Spezialisten kommen Sie beim Anlegen eines Koi-Teichs nicht weit – zumindest dann nicht, wenn dieser auch gut in die Gartenlandschaft eingepasst sein soll. Hierfür brauchen Sie einen Gärtner, der nicht nur das Gärtner-Handwerk beherrscht. Er muss sich auch gut mit Gartenteichen und der Haltung von Kois auskennen.
Der Gärtner sollte also ein Spezialist sein. Zugleich sollte er aber über den Tellerrand „Fischteich …“ oder „Garten anlegen“ hinausschauen können. Er sollte also das erforderliche fachliche Tiefenwissen mit dem für die Aufgabe nötigen Breitenwissen vereinen. „T-shaped“ nennen Bildungsexperten ein solches Qualifikationsprofil.
Wie viel Spezialwissen darf es sein?
Auch in der Informationstechnologie (IT) sind zunehmend Mitarbeiter mit einem entsprechenden Kompetenz- oder Qualifikationsprofil gefragt. Spricht man mit Personalverantwortlichen von Unternehmen, hört man oft folgende Klage:
„Mit den Informatikstudium-Absolventen ist es stets dasselbe. Wenn die bei uns anfangen, sind sie zwar fit, was die Technik angeht. Aber von den Strukturen und Abläufen in Unternehmen haben sie null Ahnung. Außerdem bringen sie kaum Ideen ein. Und strategisches Denken? Fehlanzeige. Für die reine Netzwerkadministration brauchen wir aber keine Akademiker. Ein gelernter Fachinformatiker liefert uns da dieselben Ergebnisse und kostet deutlich weniger.“
Die Unternehmen klagen also darüber, dass die Kompetenz- und Qualifikationsprofile ihrer (jungen) IT-Fachleute oft eben nicht T-shaped sind. Sie sind entweder Generalisten, die salopp formuliert von allem ein bisschen Ahnung haben, oder Spezialisten – also streng fokussiert auf ein Gebiet wie zum Beispiel die Netzwerkadministration.
Das ist an sich nicht schlimm. Denn auch Generalisten und Spezialisten werden gebraucht – aber im Service-Zeitalter immer weniger. Unternehmen benötigen zunehmend Mitarbeiter, die die Vorzüge beider Spezies in sich vereinen: sogenannte T-Shaped Professionals.
Die Sache mit dem „T“
Dass künftig mehr (IT-)Mitarbeiter mit einem solchen Kompetenzprofil benötigt werden, erkannten einige Bildungs- und Personalverantwortliche schon vor fast 20 Jahren. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt tauchte der Begriff „T-Shaped“ erstmals in der Fachliteratur auf. Und IBM legte bereits Mitte der 90er Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts seiner Mitarbeiterförderung und -entwicklung das Modell einer „T-Shaped Career“ zugrunde.
Das Unternehmen IBM war es auch, das 2007 auf einer Konferenz Anwender fragte, was aus ihrer Warte für das erfolgreiche Einführen einer Service-orientierten IT-Architektur, kurz SOA, unabdingbar sei. Das Ergebnis: 68 Prozent der Befragten erachteten die Kombination von breiter Geschäftserfahrung und umfassendem IT-Know-how als Schlüssel zum Erfolg. Das heißt, die mit der SOA-Einführung betrauten Mitarbeiter dürfen keine reinen „IT-Cracks“ sein. Sie müssen auch Geschäftsprozesse und technische Konzepte verstehen und – an einem Leitmotiv ausgerichtet – miteinander in Einklang bringen können.
Das erfordert eine Aus- und Weiterbildung, die ebenso in die Breite wie in die Tiefe geht. Welche Fächer hierbei die Breite darstellen und welche in die Tiefe gehend vermittelt werden sollten, hängt von der Schwerpunktsetzung des Einzelnen ab.
Hierfür ein Beispiel (siehe Grafik 2). Ein Workflowmanagementexperte verfügt über ein vertieftes Expertenwissen (Tiefenwissen) in seinem informatischen Teilbereich. Darüber hinaus sollte er ein breites Verständnis (Breitenwissen) beispielsweise von Geschäftsprozessen und Organisationsstrukturen haben. Erst hierdurch gewinnt er die Kompetenz, sein Spezialwissen möglichst effizient und effektiv einzusetzen. Das erhöht auch den Wert seiner Arbeitskraft, denn dann erst ist sein Kompetenzprofil „rund“.
What a CIO does
Posted by Frank Mortimer in CIO Jobs and Careers on January 29, 2010
The chief information officer (CIO) is a job title for the board-level head of information technology within an organization. The CIO typically reports to the chief operations officer or the chief executive officer.
The Chief information officer (CIO) is one of the most unique of all corporate positions. Like all jobs, the CIO role is defined by a set of requirements and expectations specified by the management of the corporation. The problem is that CIOs can do exactly what they are asked—and still fail.
The position of a CIO is a paradox. How can a CIO be a visionary implementer of new technology and, at the same time, an operational manager whose systems never fail? How can a CIO find ways to simplify the current infrastructure and save money while adding capability and capacity to that same infrastructure? Can a CIO be a supportive business partner while driving information technology (IT) standards?
A good summary of requirements of CIO’s by K. Anderson (2007) does shed some light on this role:
Requirement 1: Manager of people
The CIO is responsible for the overall management of the IT organization. This organization is a mixture of technical, business, and service individuals who may be full-time, part-time, contracted, or outsourced. Many of those individuals are highly technical, not necessarily customer-friendly, and cling to pieces of technology and projects like over-protective parents. Many times, technology and project review meetings begin as intellectual exercises and end as civil wars between two distinct factions.
The CIO needs to ensure that the right people are in the right jobs, create a management team that brings order but doesn’t limit creativity, and recruit/retain top IT talent. The CIO needs to clearly articulate:
- The purpose of IT within the enterprise
- The roles and responsibilities of each member of the management team
- The interaction between IT staff members and customers
The CIO is a leader, recruiter, disciplinarian, negotiator, communicator, and mentor.
“CIOs can do exactly what they are asked— and still fail.”
Requirement 2: Manager of Infrastructure
The CIO is responsible for the management of the current IT infrastructure. While most of this infrastructure is probably the result of a previous administration’s decisions, its overall availability is critical to the success of the corporation. Documenting and understanding the current infrastructure, as well as understanding how the corporation uses it, are baseline requirements that are extended by the addition of service and support commitments.
Requirements also include a plan for obsolescence of old technology, capacity management for normal growth, and creation of a disaster-recovery plan based on corporate needs. A CIO must look for opportunities to reduce cost and simplify current infrastructure. In addition, a CIO must be a forward-thinker and be aware of any radical impacts on that infrastructure including growth, downsizing, acquisitions, or divestitures.
CIOs that provide a reliable, flexible, and cost-effective infrastructure tend to go unnoticed. Completing projects on time and within budget is expected. Responding to customer needs in a timely manner is considered business as usual. These functions, once thought strategic, now constitute entry-level requirements for any CIO.
Requirement 3: Financial Planner
Investments in IT not only improve operational performance, but also shape a corporation’s communications and interactions with employees and external partners. As a corporation continues to invest in technology, the financial planning skills of its CIO become essential to the success of its IT department. Because IT budgets are large and complex, a CIO must have the ability to manage the department as a stand-alone business. They must understand when to make strategic purchases, when to implement those purchases, and how to depreciate those assets over time. Moreover, a CIO must manage all hardware and applications as a portfolio of investments, each of which must show a significant return or be subject to obsolescence.
Requirement 4: Business Expert
CIOs need to not only establish rapport with the various departments, but also know their company’s business and industry as well as (or better than) their executive peers do. CIOs must understand their business partners’ domain and objectives as well as be able to effectively articulate how IT can help. CIOs with business savvy and technical confidence can influence business strategy and identify ways in which technology can give their corporation a competitive edge in the marketplace. That involves more than just aligning IT with the business; it involves bridging the great divide between technology and business.
Requirement 5: International Expert
CIOs are now being asked to bridge cultural gaps between countries and societies. Global differences between technology and business perspectives are complicated by significant cultural diversity. This results in an intricate mix of requirements and expectations. Many CIOs have been managing global organizations for years and have attained a good understanding of how the global market works. Relationships created through offshoring and near-shoring development efforts and support functions can be a benefit to other business relationships. For any global initiative, understanding how other cultures work, how to communicate between time zones, and how to stay aware of the complexities of collaboration can mean the difference between failure and success.
Requirement 6: Customer-Facing Executive
CIOs who have traditionally been internally focused are now finding themselves working directly with external customers, vendors, and suppliers. Not only are they involved in overall corporate business strategy, they are being asked to communicate that strategy in the public marketplace. Frequently, CIOs are quoted in the press and serve as guest speakers at conferences. In the past, CIOs fielded questions about technology implementation; today, they are being asked to justify their corporation’s existence in the modern marketplace.
Requirement 7: Leader
As manager of the IT department, the CIO has direct authority to make changes regarding priorities and resource staffing. This authority allows the CIO to set clear performance expectations and processes for addressing poor performance. This authority is essential to building a competent IT organization—but does not extend to other departments.
As business leaders, CIOs must be skilled communicators who have the ability to foster strong business partnerships. Without direct authority over other departments, CIOs must understand the art of negotiation, persuasion, and influence. An effective leader understands that human relationships supersede reporting structures.
Conclusion
The roles and responsibilities of the CIO constitute one of the most unique corporate positions. No competing role demands such a broad range of capabilities and yet provides so little in terms of defining requirements. So let’s ask the question again: What does the CIO do? The answer is: A CIO is a manager of people, a manager of infrastructure, a financial planner, a business partner, a business expert, an international expert, a customer-facing executive, and a corporate leader.
From the Field:
Marriott International CIO Carl Wilson on why it’s up to today’s IT leaders to teach future CIOs tomorrow’s skills (August 2007):
In the eighties successful CIOs were mostly seen as strong technologists. Many of the leading technologies of the time—MS-DOS, Apple’s Apple’s Macintosh, IBM PCs, Windows and analog cellular phones—were designed to enable individual productivity. Reflecting the standalone nature of those technologies, companies created predominantly siloed IT functions that reported to finance or to a unique line of business, with limited cross-functional interaction. Our business peers thought of us as data processing or information systems managers and not chief information officers. IT, not the business, “owned” the technology, and we were solely responsible for making it work.
The Cross-Enterprise Era
And then, a little over a decade ago, the IT profession began to come of age with the rise of technologies such as the Web, Java programming and wired and wireless local-area networks. These tools made it economically feasible to enable business processes across functions and speed up decision making. CIOs started to look horizontally across functions and became involved in all aspects of the business. Business leaders began to see technology’s potential to integrate business processes, and they began to seriously assume their role as the ultimate owners of that technology. CIOs gained meaningful seats at the table; we were at last positioned to automate processes horizontally and achieve the real value of IT.
My experience at Mariott International mirrors these changes. I joined Marriott 10 years ago as its first CIO and an officer of the company. Our technology then was predominantly back-office. With the advent of CRM, IT moved out to the hotel front desk, enabling guest recognition. Then IT moved into the guest room with high-speed Internet access. Now with our Web reservation systems, technology is in our guests’ homes and offices. Marriott.com brings in more than $4 billion in annual revenue—that’s IT driving top-line growth. When our Chairman and CEO Bill Marriott launched his public blog Marriott on the Move earlier this year, I knew that Marriott had reached a new milestone in the power and reach of technology. His blog has had more than 175,000 hits since its launch in January of this year. The expectation that we will take care of the back-office technology has never gone away, but now we also have accountability for this broader scope of IT.
What makes a great CEO
Posted by Frank Mortimer in CEO jobs on January 24, 2010
A rather good summary of characteristics of great CEO’s was given by Mike Myatt (n2growth) mid last year. Good to compare with my earlier blog on How top Headhunters look at CEO positions.
1. Integrity: Always do the right thing regardless of sentiment and never compromise your core values. If you cannot build trust and engender confidence with your stakeholders you cannot succeed. No amount of talent can overcome illegal, immoral or otherwise ill-advised actions. A leader void of integrity will not survive over the long-haul.
2. Excellent Decision Making Skills: As a CEO you will live or die by the quality of the decisions you make. When you’re the CEO good decisioning is expected, poor decisioning won’t be tolerated, and great decisioning will set you apart from the masses.
3. Ability to Focus: If you cannot focus you cannot perform at the level necessary to remain in the C-suite for very long. The ability to do nothing more than understand, and lock-onto priorities will place you in the top 10% of all executives.
4. Leveraging Experience: Inexperience, a lack of maturity, needing to be the center of attention, not recognizing limitations, a lack of judgment, an inferior knowledge base, or any number of other common mistakes made by rookie CEOs can cause your house of cards to fall. If you don’t have the experience personally, hire it, contract it, but by all means acquire it. Great CEOs surround themselves with tier-one talent and the best advisors money can buy. They don’t make uniformed or ill-advised decisions in a vacuum.
5. Command Presence: Great CEOs possess a strong presence and bearing. They are unflappable individuals that never let you see them sweat (unless of course it serves a purpose). Everything from how they carry themselves to how they speak and dress messages that they are in charge.
6. Embracing Change: Great CEOs have a strong bias to action. They don’t rest upon past accomplishments and are always seeking to improve through change and innovation. In today’s fast paced and competitive environment those CEOs who don’t openly embrace change will often be shown the door prior to the expiration of their initial employment contract.
7. Brand Champions: Great CEOs understand branding at every level. They seek to build not only a dominant corporate brand, but also a strong personal brand. CEOs that are not well branded on a personal basis, or who let their corporate brand fall into decline will not survive.
8. Boundless Energy: Great CEOs have a boundless amount of energy. They are positive in their outlook, and their attitude is contagious. A low energy CEO is not motivating, convincing or credible.
9. Business Acumen: Great CEOs have a deep understanding of the business and a strong orientation toward profit. Great CEOs possess what often appears to be a sixth sense or an almost instinctive feel for what the company needs to do to make money and remain competitive.
10. People Acumen: Great CEOs have a nose for talent…They understand how to recruit, develop and deploy talent while focusing on applying the best talent to the best opportunities. They also know when it’s time to make changes and cut losses as needed.
11. Organizational Acumen: Great CEOs know how to engender trust, know when and how to share information, and are expert listeners. They develop strong and positive corporate cultures driven to performance by aligned motivations. They can quickly diagnose whether the organization is performing at full potential, delivering on commitments, and whether the company is changing and growing versus just operating.
12. Curiosity: Great CEOs possess a powerful motivation to increase their knowledge base and to convert their learning into actionable initiatives. They question, challenge, confront and are never accepting of the status quo.
13. Intellectual Capacity: Great CEOs are also great thinkers both at the strategic and tactical level. They are quick on their feet and know how to get to the root of an issue faster than anyone else. I’ve never met a great CEO who wasn’t extremely discerning.
14. Global Mindset: Regardless of the geographical boundaries of the current business model great CEOs think globally. Limited thinking results in limited results. Whether global thinking is applied to capital formation, supply-chain issues, business development, strategic partnering, distribution, or any number of other areas, those CEOs who don’t grasp the importance of thinking globally will not endure. Great CEOs are externally oriented, hungry for knowledge of the world and adept at connecting developments and spotting patterns.
15. Never Quit: Great CEOs refuse to lose…They have an insatiable appetite for accomplishment and results and while they may reengineer or change direction they will never lose sight of the end game.
How to get headhunted in 2010
Posted by Frank Mortimer in Executive Search, Finding A Headhunter on January 13, 2010
Below an article from Efin.careers. Quite all right although you could add a lot of other stuff to it: P.e. make sure you’re listed in the relevant social networks. Also the time that a candidate waits until he or she is approached by an executive search firm is long past us.
In this day and age candidates are actively involved in managing their next steps and professional online tools are available also to high end candidates (p.e. www.lintberg.com) to get in touch with head hunters and to be informed of new opportunities. Anyway for what it’s worth:
1) Put yourself about
Most articles on how to get yourself headhunted (and there are many), suggest you need to get your name out there. And how better to do this than to become known as a great authority on your subject? This can be achieved via appearances at conferences and frequent citations in the media.
Such things tend to have a snowball effect: once you’ve appeared at a conference or in the press once, you’re more likely to be asked to speak or provide a quote in the future. With luck, headhunters and their researchers will then spot you, add you to their databases and call you when a suitable opportunity presents itself.
2) Frequent the company of respected professionals
If putting yourself about publicly is helpful, putting yourself about in the right circles privately is crucial. All the headhunters we spoke to for this article told us they source candidates through recommendations from people already known to them.
“Most of our people come from referrals,” says Alex Tracey at Clifden Partners. “You need to make sure you have a big network of people who like and rate you.”
“It’s all about the company you keep,” says Ray Baptiste of search firm Marlin Hawk. “Good people recommend good people. Everyone understands that the people they put forward reflect on their own reputation.”
3) Let your frustrations be known
As well as knowing ‘good people,’ you need to let those people know that you’re ripe to be headhunted. This carries the risk that your boss may become aware of your frustrations. However, it also makes it more likely that your name will crop up if one of your esteemed friends is headhunted themselves.
“The most effective way of getting someone to call you is to let your friends know that you’re actively looking and are open to conversations,” says Tracey. “The best referrals we get are those where someone recommends Bob Smith because he’s fed up and will be receptive to a call.”
4) Ensure your clients rate you
As well as asking peers in the market for recommendations, headhunters and line managers will also ask clients for names.
“If we want to hire someone, we simply phone our most friendly clients and ask them who their favourite people in the space are,” says the head of research at one brokerage firm. “We then tip the headhunter off. The same applies for any client facing role.”
5) Be a big earner
This may be a slight chicken and egg situation, but you’re more likely to be headhunted if you earn lots of money and are at VP level or above than if you’re an analyst or associate.
This is because headhunters are paid a percentage fee according to first year total compensation of the person they’re placing. The incentive to move a lowly paid analyst is therefore minimal. However, headhunters do exist to ferret out top analyst/associate talent for private equity funds.
6) Fall into a minority group
Needless to say, you will have little control over this, but your allure to headhunters may be increased if you fall into a minority group. “Most of our shortlists are full of white, upper class males,” says the director of one financial services search firm. “If we find someone who can do the job and who doesn’t fall into this category, they make the shortlist more diverse.”
Finding Jobs with Headhunters
Posted by Frank Mortimer in Finding A Headhunter on June 5, 2009
Not easy to find the right job via an Executive Search Firm. Why:
1. There are many intermediaries calling them selves “Executive Search firms” whilst they almost never have 100k+ jobs or jobs that can be described as ‘executive jobs’
2. The head hunter is supposed to search and to find the candidate (the head). This concept has changed significantly in recent years however. Even the most senior candidates will not longer wait for a headhunter to approache him and will contact them themselves (discretely) or will make his or her profile visible in one of the limit number of database that cater the Executive Search firms (www.lintberg.com)
3. Headhunters will, generally, only be able to discuss a small number of positions with you when what you really want is a good overview over the available positions in the market. You want choice.
Some useful links to locate decent Executive Search Firms:
http://www.onlinerecruitersdirectory.com (US only)
http://www.allheadhunters.com (world)
Kind Regards,
Frank Mortimer
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