Microsoft has finally concluded their search for the successor of chairman Steve Ballmer. The choice has fallen on Satya Nadella, a long-time employee of the US software giant. Having worked there since 1992, Nadella was responsible for the Cloud & Enterprise branch for the most recent years.

Nadella’s appointment does not come unexpected, but is seen as a somewhat safe choice for following up on the more flamboyant Ballmer who was criticized for the poor results the past few years and, more notably, his failure to catch on with the mobile market. He announced to step back in August of 2013.

Since his announcement, many suggestions were made as to who would fill his shoes. Among these were candidates as Alan Mulally, CEO at the Ford Motor Company, and Stephen Elop of NOKIA, recently acquired by Microsoft. The eventual choice for Nadella originates in his successful career within the company, with leading positions at the Bing search engine and the advertisement branch. He was also responsible for launching the Azure cloud services.

Satya Nadella is only Microsoft’s third Chief Executive Officer in 39 years, following founder Bill Gates (currently President of the Board) and Steve Ballmer.

Although a € 100k+ position, Lintberg.com was not involved in the recruitment process for the Chief Executive Officer position at Microsoft.

“The best social program is a good job,” President Ronald Reagan once remarked. Those words ring especially true during times like today’s, with high unemployment, modest hiring and government expenditures off the charts.

As much as the unemployment rate has been steadily declining for the better part of three years, it’s still stuck near 8%, and tens of millions of Americans are either out of work, working less than they want, or have simply given up looking. And yet, unbeknownst to many, the number of available jobs has been steadily rising, and now sits at a four-year high of nearly 3.2 million vacant positions.

While many companies are still, understandably, reluctant to hire, plenty of others are not and in fact are actively looking to add employees. In the attached video, the third part of our Who’s Hiring? series, we’ve dug up a pair of industries that are not only hiring, but struggling to find the right people to fill good jobs. Jobs that, with the right mix of training and experience could bring salaries of more than $100,000 a year.

For example, President Obama’s recent re-election campaign was, in no small part, built upon the comeback of the auto industry. The hiring has been brisk, and not just at the Big 3 manufacturers — it’s been even more pronounced at the supporting and surrounding businesses. Data from the Department of Labor project that the need will be above average for auto service technicians in the coming years, and that the auto industry is going to need to find, train and hire more than 100,000 new people who can get under the hood and keep our cars and trucks running smoothly.

“You can make six figures as an auto technician” says Rich Orbain, the manager of General Motors Auto Service Education Program. “If that person has the motivation and skill and the drive, they can do it” he says, adding that despite long-standing programs at 61 community colleges across the country, General Motors (GM) is currently only getting about 500 of the 2500 trained new technicians it needs each year. Recruiting, hiring and training good workers is no easy task, but it’s one that GM and thousands of its dealers are trying to get ahead of. It’s also why we traveled to Detroit for an inside look at the problem — and the solution. Let’s just say this: The job of an auto service tech today is as much about laptops as lube jobs, and the pay, benefits and opportunity to grow that come with it are very real. While the average service technician can expect to pull in an average of $42,000 a year, experience and drive can lead to those higher salaries Orbain references.

At the same, we’ll take you inside another core American industry that’s fretting about its future staffing needs and trying new and different things to attract qualified workers. In this case, I’m talking about the trucking business and its need for an estimated 330,000 tractor-trailer drivers over the next 10 years. The job requires some upfront costs and time to obtain a commercial drivers license but what awaits is an average salary of $55,000 a year and the potential to make much more with additional training and experience.

Our team traveled to Omaha, Neb., to meet with the president of Werner Enterprises (WERN) to see how one of the biggest players in the business is addressing this shortage of drivers. Not only are they training more, paying better and putting their people in an almost brand new fleet of trucks, they’re also reinventing themselves in a way that allows their drivers to get home to their families a lot more often.

We all know that the job market is tough right now, but what you may not know is that many businesses are still adding to their headcount and looking to grow. So if you’re out of work or know someone who is, and you find yourself wondering who’s hiring, here’s hoping the attached piece gets your wheels turning and moves you closer to your next new job.

Source: Matt Nesto, finance.yahoo.com

The Affirmative Position:

Proponents of C-level social media participation believe the digital universe provides the CEO with the ultimate platform to evangelize the corporate brand, and to effectively communicate across multiple constituencies. They are opportunity managers who believe engagement to be more valuable than silence, they believe in dialog not monologue, they believe in change and innovation – not in status quo.

The Dissenting Position:

The stance of the risk averse is there is little to be gained, but the potential for much to be lost in social media initiatives involving C-level executives. The fear of exposing executives and the corporate brand to public criticism, along with disclosure concerns with regard to forward looking statements, and other confidential information have caused concern for boards and legal departments. They are risk managers who believe in protecting what was rather than embracing what is, and what will be.

The Truth (as I see it)

A main point of consideration for CEOs is that social media transforms you from an enigma (the stereotype of the uncaring corporate executive) into a human being that people can relate to…social media personalizes you in a way that few other mediums can. Whether you Tweet, Blog, Facebook, YouTube, etc., these communities allow you to be known for the whole of who you are as an individual, not just as a bio on the corporate website. The following list is comprised of a few representative examples of reasons why all CEOs should be actively engaged in social media:

Leadership Benefits:

As CEO, you’re not supposed to be the relic, but the visionary. This may hit a little close to home for some, but the message needs to be heard. Great leaders lead by example. How can you ask members of your team to be innovative, engaged, proactive, creative, authentic, transparent, and communicative if you are none of those things? You cannot be an effective leader if you don’t model the behavior you seek in others. Be a leader or be a disingenuous hypocrite – the choice is yours.

Social media is not just a tool for pushing out corporate propaganda – use it as such and you’ll pay a steep price. What it is, is open access to people, relationships, communities, and constituencies. Put simply, it’s a chance to observe, listen, process and learn. A CEOs needs to understand that in addition to affording them with the benefit of directly engaging consumers of their goods and services, social media also provides a window into the insights or their employees and allows them to monitor the pulse of their culture. Social media also allows you access to business, market, and competitive intelligence in real time.
Business Benefits:

Yes, I know, you’re the CEO and you have to pay attention to business. Well, social media does have significant ability to drive revenue, increase personal and corporate brand equity, open markets, create relationships, drive innovation, improve morale, build partnerships, attract & retain talent, and to generate communications leverage. Not only does social media work, but it works even better when the participant has a bit of cache. The truth is the farther up the org chart one resides, the more influence one possesses, the more leverage one creates, and the more one can accomplish via social media. You can do none of these things effectively by sticking your head in the sand and pretending social media doesn’t matter.

Communications Benefits:

I hesitate to mention this becasue it’s been so overused, but becuase it’s true, here goes: “The conversation is already taking place, so you might as well be a part of it.” Social media gives you the ability to be proactive in your communications, or if needed, provide a rapid response to crisis. Unfortunate things happen in business, and sadly, they’ll likely happen to you at some point. Having strong relationships, supporters, and fans created through social media is invaluable – so is having a channel to quickly and credibly communicate with those who are not.

Legacy Benefits:

I’ve often said the best legacy is one that can be lived before you’re gone. A legacy is shaped by the sum total of your personal and professional contributions, and most significantly by those contributions which have been the most beneficial to others. Social media takes your personal interests and your professional body of work and gives them access to a larger community. Social media can enhance the value of existing relationships and create new ones, it can help you evangelize your passions, recruit people to your causes, and to help others with their causes. Social media can help you and those you care about make significant contributions.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, let’s look at what some other CEOs said just in reference to Blogging in a recent issue of Inc. Magazine:

“More effective than any marketing budget for getting our name out there.”
“Within 60 days of launching our blog, it is our top referral source.”
“Results have been great – we had more than 100,000 visits in May alone.”
“Our clients love it, and lots of people in our industry pay attention to it.”
“The blogs are 50 percent of website traffic. Great participation.”

Source: http://chiefexecutive.net/should-ceos-use-social-media

With the economy is on its way back up, now is the time to evaluate how we’ve done, what mistakes were made and how to establish the foundation for the coming growth spurt.

Companies make mistakes. All the time. This is an undeniable reality and especially in an economically sluggish period, avoiding big errors is even more crucial. CEOs might react impulsively to appear as a decisive and courageous leader, but maybe paced approach be more beneficial in the long run.

To uphold a financially healthy organisation, CEOs need to avoid some key mistakes. And when it’s already too late, a strong course-correction is vital. Below are some of these important don’ts for CEOs.

1. Quick hires
   Become confident of the people you work with: try them out as independent contractors before you give them a permanent contract. When there’s too much going on, making mistakes in the hiring process is easy.
2. Wasting time on improfitable sales leads
   Form a disqualification process, allowing you to quicly get rid of prospective sales contacts that will most likely never purchase what you have to offer, nor have any intention to do so in the near future. Especially in an economic downfall, the focus should be on productive revenue opportunities.
3. Skipping the Six-Month Plan
   It’s better to map out the next six months, and if a new project comes up, swap it out with one of equal complexity that is already on your plan.  Entrepreneurial CEOs can be excessive idea generators. With a six-month plan, you will have mapped out the projects for the immediate, foreseeable future and can skillfully avoid manic distractions with poor results. Consider the perils of one company, with the painful “strategy of the second” plan.  Each time its mercurial CEO returned from a conference, he’d have a new idea. Were they good ones? Often. But his already stretched staff had no spare energy. Since they had not learned to communicate clearly with one another, they would take on the new project, but all sorts of key tasks would (of course) get dropped or delayed, and no one was happy. Ultimately, you need a gatekeeper for the six-month plan if you want your company to run efficiently. This is someone who will ensure the new projects are either scheduled later or will replace existing project(s) of equal size. Someone who will constantly see the big picture, tackle the small details, and facilitate real results every step of the way is key.

We have all made mistakes in business. The point is to course-correct constantly. Spot a mistake and take action to correct it. What are you grappling with right now? What mistakes did I miss mentioning?

AllHeadhunters.com, the most complete listing of headhunters and executive search firms worldwide, has created a top 15 of companies within the retained executive search industry. The lack of up-to-date overviews and many requests from visitors of the AllHeadhunters.com network, sparked the initiative in forming this ranking.

The top 15 is based on global revenue and is headed by Korn/Ferry. With a 2011 revenue of €568 million, this globally renowned headhunter with activities in 40 countries, tops the list. Egon Zehnder (€490 million, active in 39 countries) and Heidrick& Struggles (€403 million revenue, offices in 35 countries) complete the top three.

The complete top 15 is made up of the following organizations:

1. Korn/Ferry
2. Egon Zehnder
3. Heidrick & Struggles
4. Russell Reynolds
5. IIC Partners
6. Boyden Global Executive Search
7. Spencer Stuart
8. Odgers Berndtson
9. DHR International
10. CT Partners
11. Stanton Chase International
12. Signium International
13. Hunting Heads
14. SVS Group
15. Steinbach & Partner

The above list was based on sources within the headhunter industry and research. Not all requests for response were honored; in these cases other available sources were used. For the largest listing of headhunters with global activities visit www.allheadhunters.com.

Most business leaders at CxO level neglect to consistently evaluate and review the quality of the decisions they make within their organizations. A lack of time is what is most commonly given as excuse, and the results of their decisions are often inconclusive, even when looking back.

According to the New York Times, the CIA can teach Chief Executive Officers a lesson or two regarding employee evaluation, understanding customers and forecasting and anticipating the competition. Failure in the gathering and evaluation of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, forced the CIA to completely overhaul the agency’s decision-making processes.

This organisational change brought along these tips:

• Evaulate information skeptically – Make sure to understand the source of specific information, this helps to consider its accuracy and relevance. Decisions are frequently made with faulty data, leading to unwanted results. Tackle this issue by asking people to source information on major assertions.
• Don’t overcompensate past errors and experiences – The main lesson here is to learn from your mistakes. Business environments change continously, so challenge what you think you know. But don’t let your analysis linger on for too long, once a decision is made: go with it! As Thomas Fingar, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said: “Learning from past mistakes is imperative, worrying about them is pointless.“
• Draw conclusions carefully – A piece of information can be interpreted differently by different people. Challenge your organization to come to conclusions from more than one viewpoint. The CIA works with ‘red teams’, which are specifically looking for weaknesses, errors and bias in conclusions.
• Avoid ‘top-down’ influence – Employees that know the desired outcomes of the decision-making process tend to look for conclusions that match with the vision of management. As employees feel their personal career is linked with the outcome (not matching the desired results will have a negative impact), this renders the eventual results pretty much useless.

Is the CIA kicking in open doors, or are these suggestions valuable to the leaders of today?

Trying to gather some competitive data on salaries for a particular job function? Here are six strategies you can use to gather important salary information. Knowing your market value before you start interviewing will help you craft a sound negotiation strategy later on if you are selected for the position.

1. Speak to industry contacts. They may be able to shed light on salary ranges for positions in various industries and at various professional levels.
2. Review job postings. Many job boards list salary ranges; this information can help you decipher the going market value for similar jobs.
3. Contact recruiters and professional associations in your field to benchmark positions. Recruiters will know what the market will bear based on recent placements. Professional associations may have survey data to help you better understand your market value.
4. Refer to salary sites
5. Be aware that every job has unique factors such as geography and industry that influence salary level. If you are an IT professional in financial services and you are seeking an IT position in a not-for-profit, chances are the salary range will be lower. If you were working as an analyst in Columbus, Ohio, and you are now seeking a similar position in Boston, Mass., chances are salaries will be higher.
6. Try to determine the flexibility of the employer you are dealing with. Is it a large company with strict salary ranges or a smaller company that determines salaries on a case-by-case basis? Knowing this ahead of time can help you figure out how much wiggle room you will have during the negotiation phase.

Source: Careersolvers

Knowing the job description is a good first step for a CEO, but to know how she’s doing, she needs to design her own measurement system.

Unlike inconvenient lower-level jobs, no one tells the Chief Executive how she’s doing. Do managers let her know she’s undermining their authority, making poor decisions, or communicating poorly?

Not likely. Even when a CEO asks for honest feedback, the fear is there: non-flattering feedback may stall a promising career. Even when a company uses 360-degree feedback, no one penalizes the CEO if she doesn’t act on the feedback.

The Board of Directors supposedly oversees the CEO, but they are far removed from day-to-day actions. Over time, they can evaluate performance, but they look mainly at share price and company strategy. They are rarely interested in—(or qualified to comment on!)—the CEO’s daily behavior.

But the CEO’s daily behavior will make or break the company! The CEO’s duties don’t change because they are unmeasured. Indeed, lax measurement makes it easy for the CEO to feel confident, even when she shouldn’t. Good feedback is the only way to know what’s working, but share price simply doesn’t do it. External measures measure the company, not the link between the CEO’s actions. A low share price tells her something’s wrong, but it doesn’t help her figure out what.

By measuring her performance based on her duties, a CEO can learn to do her job better. The CEO’s job is setting strategy and vision, building culture, leading the senior team, and allocating capital. The last of these is easy to measure. The first three are more of a challenge.

How does a CEO know she’s doing the vision thing? It’s hard. Having vision isn’t enough—that just takes a handful of mushrooms and a vision quest. Communicating the vision is the key. When people “get it,” they know how their daily job supports the vision. If they can’t link their job to the vision, that tells a CEO that her communication is faulty, or she hasn’t helped her managers turn the vision into actual tasks. Either way, a CEO can monitor her success as a visionary by questioning and listening for employees to link their jobs with the company vision.

Culture building is subtle, the culture a CEO sees may be very different from the culture of the rank-and-file. One company had a facilities policy that all equipment within 450 feet of the senior management offices was kept in top working order. Senior managers saw a smoothly running company, while everyone else saw neglect and carelessness.

Surveys about openness, values, and morale can be used to develop a measure of culture. The questions to ask aren’t rocket science. The book First, Break all the Rules gives a great questionnaire for measuring overall culture. Also, check turnover. When 95% of your workforce says they can’t wait to get to work, something is going right. If people rarely leave, and if it’s easy to attract top talent at below-market prices, you can be sure the culture plays a large role. If people leave (especially your top performers), again—look to culture. And don’t underestimate the power of walking around and counting smiles. If people are having fun, it will show.

The CEO’s success at team-building can often be measured through the team. Teams usually know when they’re effective. They can also rate their team using assessments that measure specific behaviors. For example, “I can trust my teammates.” “My teammates deliver their part of the project on time.” “Every member knows what is expected of them.” Regular team self-assessments can help the CEO track the team’s progress and hone her abilities to keep the team running smoothly.

Easiest to measure is a CEO’s capital allocation skill. In fact, financial measures are the ones made public: earnings and share price. But how can a CEO link those to her actual decisions? Working with her CFO, a CEO can devise financial measures appropriate to her business. Sometimes traditional measures are most appropriate, such as economic value added or return on assets (for a capital-intensive company). Other times, the CEO may want to invent business-specific measures, such as return on training dollars, for a company which values state-of-the-art training for employees. By monitoring several such measures, a CEO learns to link her budget decisions with company outcomes. Ultimately, the CEO’s should be creating more than a dollar of value for every dollar invested in the company. Otherwise, her best bet is to return cash to the shareholders for them to invest in more productive vehicles.

In startups, earnings begin low to nonexistent, and share price is more about salesmanship and vision than earnings. So the CEO gets almost no useful feedback about her capital allocation wisdom. She doesn’t know whether a dollar spent on a slightly nicer-than-necessary copy machine is wasted or is a wise investment in a long-term. Careful attention to the design and tracking of financial measures can help her prepare for the transition to an earnings-driven company.

In his 1988 Annual Report, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett included an excellent essay on CEO accountability.

Source: Stever Robbins

It’s coming up on six months since Dirk Meyer was forced to resign as CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and the search for Meyer’s successor plods onward.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that four executives—longtime Intel Corp. exec Pat Gelsinger, Apple Inc. COO Tim Cook, former Hewlett Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd and Carlyle Group Managing Director Greg Summe—all rejected overtures from AMD regarding its CEO vacancy. The Bloomberg article cited anonymous sources, but also included direct quotes from Gelsinger stating that he rejected AMD’s advances because he would prefer to become CEO of his current company, EMC Corp. (EMC’s current CEO, Joe Tucci, plans to step down next year).

“We aren’t commenting on any of the rumor/speculation that Bloomberg is reporting,” an AMD spokesperson said via email last week. “The search is obviously a priority and the board is moving the process forward to ensure that we select a person with the right vision, experience, and track record to lead AMD into the future and create increased shareholder value over time. We do not plan on communicating further until the search process is concluded.”

Thomas Seifert, AMD’s chief financial officer and interim CEO, said back in April that the company was actively interviewing CEO candidates (one would hope so) and that the search to fill Meyer’s seat was progressing. “The board is very happy with the interest we have received and is actively interviewing candidates,” Seifert said at that time.

Meanwhile, with Seifert—who has said he doesn’t want to be considered for the permanent CEO position—running the show on a temporary basis, AMD has been humming right along. In April, the company reported first quarter sales and income that beat Wall Street’s expectations despite lower shipments for microprocessors and graphics chips.  Last week, highly regarded semiconductor industry analyst Craig Berger of FBR Capital Markets upgraded AMD while simultaneously downgrading Intel, saying that AMD might be poised to pick up a few points of market share at Intel’s expense from customers like HP, Dell and Acer. Maybe the position of CEO is overrated.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that AMD’s stock price, which closed at $6.89 Monday (June 20), is off about 25 percent since Meyer’s resignation, (although Berger says AMD’s stock is “depressed” ahead of a possible boost in the second half of 2011 from sales of the company’s Fusion accelerated processing units).

“Fifteen to 20 years ago, this search would have been wrapped up in six to eight weeks,” said Harry R. Sacks, a veteran recruiter who runs a boutique semiconductor executive search firm, Harry R. Sacks Inc.

Sacks, who is not involved in AMD’s CEO search, said there could be any number of reasons why AMD is still searching for its next CEO. For one thing, he said, the number of people qualified to run a high-profile chip company is not that large.

“The way the industry has grown for the past 10 or 20 years, at that corporate management level, there’s not a huge talent pool,” Saks said.

According to Saks, IBM’s CEO search in 1993, which ultimately resulted in Big Blue naming the first CEO in its history to come from outside the company, Lou Gerstner, took around six months.

Gerstner is widely credited with pulling IBM out of a downward spiral. Despite the company’s relatively strong performance in the first half of this year, AMD’s next CEO faces daunting challenges as well. He or she will be charged with improving AMD’s performance in the perpetual battle with AMD while simultaneously positioning the company to face fierce new rivals by going after new markets, including media tablets (many believe that the lack of a timely AMD offering for the white hot tablet market is what led to Meyer’s demise). Given the magnitude of these challenges, perhaps it’s no wonder that AMD’s CEO position remains vacant.  

Source:  EEtimes

September 17, 2010 – International companies are expecting to post many more executives abroad in the next five years. According to a report, Up or Out: Next Moves for the Modern Expatriate, from the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Regus, four out of 10 (39%) of companies plan to increase their expatriate staff over the next five years, according to the survey of 418 senior executives with responsibility for overseas offices.