Position: Vice President of Marketing and Enrollment

Management

Reports to: President

Location: Manchester, NH

“Southern New Hampshire University trains intellectually and culturally enriched individuals to be successful in their careers and contribute to their communities.
SNHU’s educational philosophy challenges students’ intellectual potential and prepares them for professional lives in an ever-changing and increasingly interconnected world. It provides a supportive and close-knit learning community, delivering engaging instruction in a flexible variety of formats. Students develop the knowledge to understand a complex world, the skills to act effectively within that world and the wisdom to make good choices. They do so within a community of teachers, staff and peers that is encouraged to add its scholarly, creative and pedagogical contributions to the larger social good.”

THE COLLEGE

Founded in 1932 as the New Hampshire School of Accounting and Secretarial Science, Southern New Hampshire University was granted its degree-granting charter in 1963 and conferred its first bachelor’s degrees three years later. The college became a nonprofit institution under a board of trustees in September 1968; in 1969 its name was shortened to New Hampshire College.
Throughout the next three decades the college continued to grow through the addition of its Schools of Business, Community Economic Development, Education, Liberal Arts, and Professional and Continuing Education. During the ‘90s the college opened off-campus centers to better serve adult learners. Programs now are offered in Laconia, Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth and Salem, N.H., and in Brunswick, Maine, as well as internationally through such schools as SIT in Malaysia.
A recent article in the Boston Globe describes SNHU’s efforts to lower the cost of high-quality education by offering a “low-frills”’ alternative to the campus-based experience.
SNHU Students Forgo Frills to Save Thousands
Today SNHU boasts a full- and part-time student enrollment of more than 6000 and a full-time faculty of 130; 40 degree-granting programs; a 300-acre campus on the Merrimack River; one of the largest and most dynamic online offerings in New England; and programs as diverse as culinary arts, public economic development, and language education. Students come from more than 23 states and 35 countries, with 80 percent of undergraduates living on campus. More…

VP Sales Americas, Commercial Division

The Company

Becoming the leading content provider of geospatial imagery for mapping & monitoring applications

Our client has its roots in rocket science… literally.   Since the first image was collected from space over 30 years ago by classified government imaging systems, only a limited number of people have been permitted access to highly detailed photos of the Earth, and the industry was tightly regulated.  Since its deregulation in the 1990’s, our client is changing this historical usage of Earth information through the commercialization of high-resolution satellite imaging and an innovative approach to conducting business with customers, partners and resellers. The company was founded in 1992 to launch satellites into space for the purpose of taking high-resolution photos of the earth for defense and intelligence, government, and commercial use.   In early 2000, the US government awarded its first significant contract for satellite imagery to the firm.  Currently, the company offers the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite imagery, the largest image size, and the greatest on-board storage capacity of any satellite imagery provider.  In addition, the company’s comprehensive ImageLibrary houses the most up-to-date images available.

In 2004, our client struck an exclusive portal agreement to supply much of its satellite imagery to Google’s new product launch, branded Google Earth.  This deal served as both validation for a broader explicit push as well as anchor tenant into the non-federal government, commercial sector.

The company is headquartered near Boulder, Colorado, with other offices and facilities in key geographies throughout the world.  Commercial division headquarters are in Needham, MA. More…

Opportunity Overview

Head of Business Process Outsourcing Products

The Company

Our client is a privately held venture backed test engineering firm.  The company provides three essential test-related offerings: test systems, engineering services, and software solutions which form the basis of its Quality Lifecycle Management (QLM) approach.  Our client is differentiated from its competitors by bundling together its value-added services and by its international presence: the company maintains operations in North America (including Mexico), Europe and Asia.  The firm’s customer base includes some of the most respected blue-chip companies in the world and continues to attract additional world class customers due to its unique ability to support their global operations.  Its most significant engagement includes the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, wherein 30 people were deployed in China to develop the overall test strategy, design the test systems and manage the production of 1,200 test systems.

The Company’s solutions are used primarily in the Automotive, Industrial, Computer, Telecommunications, Consumer, Medical and Military / Aerospace markets.  While the Company’s initial focus was on the Automotive vertical, the firm has diversified its customer base and now has a broad portfolio of customers in a wide variety of industries.  Our client has designed and deployed over 6,500 test systems across a range of industries and product groups.  Its engineering services cover all key engineering disciplines required for the design, manufacture, integration, delivery, installation and servicing of automated test equipment, including mechanical, electrical and software design, mechanical and electrical assembly and systems Support.  The company’s software solutions include Magellon a set is comprised of three major modules; Supplier Quality Management (SQM), Test Data Management (TDM) and Warranty Management (RMA). These modules can be deployed in either stand alone or fully integrated solutions.

The testing services, whether provided individually or bundled as a solution, allow our client’s customers to improve product quality and increase production yields in an outsourced global manufacturing environment.  From the manufacturing of quality test solutions built to OEM standards and specifications, through to delivering real time visibility and predictive analytics, our client enables major electronic OEMs to reduce labor, material and warranty costs.  The firm’s customers have reported millions of dollars of cost savings, decreased time-to-market for new product introductions and improved product quality.

The company’s US office (where most of the senior management team is based) is located in Needham, MA.  The company’s 36,000 square feet principal engineering and manufacturing facility is in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. More…

Below is the final tally on top metrics for measuring executive success in the C-level and VP level team CEOs bring on board to help them executive on their businesses.  Thanks to the CEO input of more than 60 poll responses to this latest venture-backed company CEO survey.

The question we framed was phrased as follows:

“In evaluating the success of an executive hire after 12 months, what would be the top 3 criteria that you would use?”

The first choice from the poll results is somewhat self-evident– that the executive has exceeded performance expectations (goals, milestones, objectives, etc.) for the specific role from the CEO’s perspective.

However, the second most popular metric was “established internal and external reputation as functional expert.”   Essentially, this means that the executive has built his or her own political/social capital with internal peers and external influencers, customers, vendors, or other external relationships key to the success of the company.

The third most important metric was “culture fit.”   This was selected over the other 4 remaining metrics offered by a more than 2 -to-1 margin.

The question that pops up is how a CEO might best measure the  #2 and #3 metrics.  For both of these metrics perhaps a 360-degree review at the end of 12 months would be beneficial.  There are tools offered by the likes of the Hay Group and others that do an online version of this contextual employee review that can be quite useful to determine an objective read (see http://www.haygroup.com/tl/Questionnaires_Workbooks/Emotional_Competency_Inventory.aspx ).

Perhaps it would also be interesting if an executive search firm who brought a candidate to an organization also made this part of their fee structure.  And facilitated the process/offered the tools to make it happen.  Food for thought.  The goal of the executive recruiter would be to serve as that often mythical “trusted adviser” of executive talent, facilitating as much objectivity around executive team-building and talent assessment as possible.

Worthy of note is the fact that “integrity” ranked near the bottom of the list of success criteria.  No doubt CEOs assume perhaps that this is a given in any candidate.

We get hired to build early-stage executive teams by our clients every day. So we’ve seen our fair share of “team-building,” and much of what follows is likely intuitive to many.  It is a combination of our experience and the collective wisdom of more than two dozen early-stage venture capitalists in the North East who we asked the question, “What does a ‘bankable executive team’ mean to you?”

Consider these criteria common denominators, or universal norms for investability. They are by no means exhaustive or complete, as each investor has his or her own individual criteria he or she leverages in selecting portfolio companies.

First, some qualifiers.

¨      Different stages require bankable teams with different profiles: angel versus early stage versus later stage mezzanine/pre-IPO.

¨      Different value kernels drive greater emphasis on one part of the executive team or another.  For a deep science company in biotech, the chief scientist is going to carry greater scrutiny by investors.  This also holds true for a software or hardware company where the technology leader will carry a greater weight.

¨      Investors tend to look at where the risks lie-technology risk or market risk for example.  Something referred to as “execution risk” is all about the team being able to execute on the plan.

¨      Almost all VCs want to see a strong core team consisting of a serially successful CEO, a chief technologist with domain expertise in the area of the company’s product focus, and a veteran sales leader with a relevant rolodex and experience building a team that can score early customer wins.

¨      A strong board of directors, advisors, or scientific advisory board can help immeasurably, although won’t make up for significant lack of experience among the rest of the team.

However, the above is like describing human anatomy as two arms and legs, a head and a torso.  To drill down to more specific details, the grid below outlines the bankable team by function, team, and other characteristics.

The overwhelming preference by investors regarding “bankability” is an “experienced team.”  The majority of VCs we talked to cited their number one concern as experience; those deals that get a ‘hard look’ have this fact in common.  When asked what percentage of all business plans they receive have requisite experience on the team however, the number is well under half.   And we all know that deals get done with first-time teams, even in this difficult financing environment.

Some of the other characteristics-when combined in the right amount and order-that are considered important criteria when an investor looks at financing a start-up team are listed below.

One VC actually tried to capture the essence of a bankable team with a mnemonic-FIRVOC: More…

One of the big questions clients, executive search firms, and even executive candidates often try to answer is, “Was the executive I hired a successful hire?”

Metrics might include:

•     Are they still in the seat 6, 12, 18, 24 months in?

•      Or, have they been promoted within X months to a position of greater responsibility?

•     Or, would it be better to measure them against other metrics more specific to the role for which they were hired, like an executive’s MBOs (management by objectives list) or how much of their bonus potential they earned in the first year.

In the book,  The Wisdom of Crowds (http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/ ) , the assertion is made that if you get 100 or more individuals knowledgeable about a certain area to weigh in, there is predictive intelligence created.  The poll below aims to achieve that, and share it back as “leadership catalysts” in our role as retained executive search practitioners.

Please pick 3 from the below that are the most important to you as leader in your organization.  Perhaps picking the #1 or #2 appears self evident, but the #3 might be a bit more interesting to figure out and share with others.

The last time I saw some confusion around why an executive was making a change in industry was back in 1997 to 2000.  This was the dawn of the “internet age.”   Executives were leaving traditional industries like financial services, management consulting, retail, and even manufacturing, because there was a new thing called the Internet that was going to “change the world.”  In the earliest of those  years of 1996 and 1997, there were the early adopters.  These executives were truly missionary.  Money hadn’t been made yet in the Internet sector, and trails hadn’t been blazed.  Those early pioneers had caught a glimmer of a powerful disruptive technology, and were keen on experimenting with it, with the aim of changing the world as we know it, and how things get done.

There are some industries that have always been missionary, and have attracted a consistent flow of executive talent toward them.  The education industry attracts innovators who want to find a better way to sculpt and expand the minds of our children and young adults.  The  medical devices industry wants to help innovate tools and components that will allow us to repair our bodies, or extend their useful life.  The biotech industry wants to find new ways to pinpoint the reasons and sources of disease and develop novel ways to cure them, whether seeking the cure for cancer, cure for Alzheimer’s, or other terrible human disorders.  Cleantech is likely the newest addition here.

The reasons executives decide to change industries are many.  One popular reason is “I’ve done well, now I’d like to do good.”  You see this often in the investment banking industry, where wealth can be made, but “doing good” is rarely part of the equation.  Therefore, frequently these and other similar executives achieve doing well and doing good in a “serial” fashion, when Maslow’s hierarchy of needs kicks in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs ).

Back to our comparison of the Internet craze and today, and how this impacts why executives decide to change industries, during the Internet craze, we were in an economic upswing.  Yet, it wasn’t such a stark contrast as we see today in our current state of economic adversity.  Then, in the late ’90s, there was a much smaller difference between an ability to earn a good living versus create an insane “wealth creation event” via a dot-com IPO in less than 2 year’s work.  It’s wasn’t perceived as binary, “if I’m not in Internet, I’m at risk of being unemployed.”  In today’s market, this is often the reality.  Is the motivation, drive, or reason to look at the cleantech industry altruism, or self-interest in the executive’s value system?  Or, is it possible and desirable to have “enlightened self interest” in a leader who is changing from one industry into one more in vogue like cleantech?  One where the sheer proliferation of terms to alternately describe the industry is an indicator of its popularity–  greentech, renewables, sustainable energy, and other popular terms used interchangeably today.

Now, the vast majority of both growth-stage and mature-stage industry sectors are suffering.  As a result, it pushes our challenge as executive recruiters-or for anyone who’s assessing talent to add to their teams-to determine how much missionary versus mercenary is driving an executive’s decision to make a change.

This teeter-totter of altruism versus self-interest John Doerr popularized in the late 1990s as a Partner at well-known venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.  For a good snippet from Doerr’s thinking, go to blog post http://constructiveventures.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/mercenaries-vs-missionaries-the-next-wave-of-entrepreneurs/ .  For a deeper dive, you can see Wharton article, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=170 .

Today’s executive assessment challenge is to first determine what the mix of mercenary (M1) and missionary (M2) is in the executive’s motivation to change career focus from their current industry to cleantech.  We need to make sure that there is a healthy enough balance, 5X% missionary, 4X% mercenary, and then make sure that this DNA matches that of the existing executive team to maximize the probability the executive will stay through good times and bad.

A derivative question arises at this point-Is it best to mix M1s and M2s together in a team, or select for homogeneity?  If you had a subset of executive team members who were missionary, and another faction who was mercenary, the cohesion of the entire team is likely doomed.  Offsetting too missionary a culture by counter-balancing with a few mercenaries is not a recipe for success.  Rather, there should be a balance within each individual.

The risk of missed assessment?  A fair-weather executive.  Someone who-when the going gets tough, or when a more lucrative, safer, or easier role pops up on the radar-will fledge the existing nest for what they perceive as a more attractive roost. What the next more attractive sandbox will be is hotly debated.  However, in this economy, other than government and eHealth/healthcare IT, cleantech is the new land of opportunity, and it will attract both missionary and mercenary entrepreneurs.   If you agree with any of the above, the challenge is to figure out how to tell them apart.

Footnote to assessing “motivation“: In assessing this decision to make a change, there is sometimes confusion around the use of the word “motivation.”  At times, executives are assessed for their “motivation,” which is referring to drive, not motive for seeking a new role.

Is executive retention a problem one might ask?  From our own experiences in search, we felt it was.  Educators and consultants alike have taken a more objective and statistically relevant approach to outlining the problem. A 2001 study of executive failure done by Executive Search Information Exchange pegged the average failure rate for recruited executives in their first year at between 40% and 50%.  More recently Michael Watkins,a recognized thought leader in executive leadership and author of The First 90 Days, has revealed from his research that a staggering 58% of new executives hired from the outside fail in their new position within 18 months.

The cost of executive failure? A Mercer study estimated that it's often more than $500,000 or 2.5 times salary. And this doesn't include organizational, opportunity, productivity, and transitional costs for the new executive (Mercer et al, 1999). Including these other components of executive hiring, the calculus for fully loaded cost to the organization per failure at the executive level can top a million dollars (Fortune Magazine).

After spending a decade or more as an executive recruiter working on early & growth-stage CEO searches, it seems worthwhile to take a look-back on some of the reasons CEOs seem to fail.  In fairness, we’re a boutique firm, so the sample set isn’t hundreds of searches.  However, it’s also more than anecdotal, as for every CEO search we’ve done, there was a high probably that there were several CEOs who had already come before our search, and in doing a thorough CEO replacement search, we are students of why predecessors failed in order to ensure we don’t repeat others’ past mistakes.  Another macro observation is that these failures don’t seem to be different from practice area to practice area, or geographic region to geographic region.  We’re a multi-specialty firm, yet we don’t see that software/ Internet/ media CEOs fail for dramatically different reasons than medical device CEOs or cleantech or biotech CEOs.   Nor is there great variability when you look at CEO searches in one innovation center versus another. With presence in Boston and New England, New York and the Tri-State area, Silicon Valley/San Francisco, and London/Cambridge, England, we’ve been able to test this and haven’t witnessed much foundational difference one area versus another.

The following 7 reasons below cover the vast majority of CEO executive failures we’ve seen:

1.      Failure point #1: Founder “Peter principle.” This has been well-documented by others, most notably by John Hamm, venture capitalist at VSP Capital and leadership development coach who authored a Harvard Business Review article a few years back, titled “Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale.”  To set up John’s observations, most of our time as executive recruiters, we focus on helping early-stage companies jump the leadership chasm from entrepreneurial to professional leadership.  More often than not, there is absolute certainty that a casualty will occur– the only question is whether that casualty will be the founder(s), or the company.   Where venture capital or private equity is involved, all is done to avoid the latter in favor of the former.  Regardless, it is too rare an occurrence when this collision between founder CEO, growth mandate, and outside investors ends positively, and if the company survives, it has to deal with the emotional baggage of shedding this first founder layer and all the pain this brings with it.   John outlines four management tendencies that work for smaller-company environments but become Achilles’ heels as these CEOs try to scale their companies. The first tendency is loyalty to founding team mates. In entrepreneurial mode, you need to lead as though you’re in charge of a combat unit on the wrong side of enemy lines where anyone on your team is a keeper. However, in larger company growth mode, blind loyalty can become a liability.  At some point, it may be required that the rest of the team that started the company with the CEO may need to be changed out for an executive team with experience at the “growth-stage” versus just the “start-up” stage.   The second tendency, task orientation, is critical in driving toward a big initial product launch, but excessive attention to detail can cause a growing organization to either suffocate under such leadership–one that can’t generate creative ideas or momentum without being instructed by the CEO–or lose sight of its long-term goals. The third tendency, single-mindedness, is important in a visionary CEO who is unleashing a revolutionary product or service on the world.  However,  this can limit the company’s potential as it grows, as all good ideas aren’t always born from one person.  In addition, often a lack of self-awareness or “emotional intelligence” can create a large blind spot around what isn’t working with the original idea, and instead of an ability to iterate to a better but related idea for the marketplace, the founder CEO can become caught up in the initial “vision” and stick to it regardless of external market input that would indicate changes to the initial value proposition are needed to capture broader market adoption. The fourth tendency, working in isolation, is fine for the brilliant scientist focused on an ingenious idea, technology or science. But it’s a non-starter for a leader whose expanding organization increasingly relies on people other than the CEO. There is also a significant difference in skill set required when the company grows beyond a single layer of management, requiring, VPs who manage directors, who may manage managers.  Managing through a multi-layer management system requires a very different managerial toolbox.  As the summary for the article outlines, “Leaders who scale deal honestly with problems and quickly weed out nonperformers. They see past distractions and establish strategic priorities. They learn how to deal effectively with diverse employees, customers, and external constituencies. And, most important, they make the company’s continuing health and welfare their top concern.”

2.      Failure point #2: Unable to “imbed” with the existing team. This is all about forging meaningful bonds, trust, and a following with the existing executive team/staff/employees as the “newcomer.”  This is most often the cause for CEO failure when an outside CEO is brought in as the first successor to the founder CEO.  We refer to it as “organ rejection.”  The host organism (the company) has a high degree of the founder CEO’s DNA in it.  That founder CEO has proven that they are a miracle worker, coming up with the idea, building it out through proof-of-concept on a shoestring budget, getting venture or other funding for the idea, that the rest of the employees who imprinted on the founder CEO “reject” the new CEO as an “imposter” or “foreign matter.”

3.      Failure point #3: Getting sideways with the board. As executive recruiters, we hear this often.  A CEO, whether founder or non-founder, doesn’t gel with the Board of Directors.  In the case of a growth-stage company, there is often outside capital involved, and investors who serve as part or all of the board of directors.  A CEO’s inability to quickly understand the drivers of each board member, and inability to build a communication bridge that may be unique to each board member, is very likely to fail, regardless of whether growth milestones are being hit or not.  One a board member loses faith in a CEO, it’s very hard to win that faith back.  Activities that often alienate a board include hiring issues (holding on to existing employees too long, or holding off on hiring into a key role, board communication issues (not sharing the bad with the good), lack of realism around budgets and burn rate and unwillingness to make the tough decisions, etc.)

4. Failure point #4: Inability to balance revenue/burn rate There is always a constant struggle between CEO and investors if the company has a net burn rate (spending more cash than revenue coming in the door).  Just last week, I heard from a venture capitalist who said that a CEO, during a board meeting, said that he was unwilling to cut the burn rate for fear of being unable to scale fast enough to meet demand once the product “got traction.”  The VC then said, “After the board meeting, I got a call from one of the other investors, expressing concern that the current CEO just didn’t understand the realities of the situation, and he felt it was time to start a search for a new CEO who did.”  Often, this is a circumstance where the CEO has come from a larger company environment, and has rarely if ever faced a situation where “out of cash,” is a literal term, versus just a euphemism for asking the parent corporation for some more capital.

5.      Failure point #5: Inability to hire well. There is an expression, “the first time, shame on you, the second time, shame on me.” This is what the board of directors often employs when a CEO can’t find the right VP level executive to successfully fill a key seat on the management team.  Often, it’s the VP Sales.  When the product is still in development, it’s often the VP Engineering.  However, if the CEO churns either of these positions with several candidates that don’t end up meeting board expectations, ultimately the board feels it’s perhaps not these VPs, but rather the CEO who needs to be changed out.  When a VP Sales commits to a revenue target, and then misses it repeatedly, often the CEO and board decide to make a change in the VP Sales.  multiple replacement in a single role, VP Sales, or VP Engineering) (blaming someone else

6.      Failure point #6: Change of business model. Part of emerging & growth stage company building is the iterative approach to finding the magic business model that takes root and thrives.  At times, founders, investors, and early team members develop a thesis on what model they’re going to chase first, and hire a CEO into that thesis.  However, as often as not, the early iterations miss their mark, and the ultimate business model that evolves as the winner is one that doesn’t play to the strengths of the earlier CEO hired.   In this eventuality, it’s much like “no fault insurance.” Neither driver is at fault, but in the best interests of the company, the earlier CEO hired needs to be changed out to make room for one better tailored for the market approach the company finally settles on as bedrock on which to scale the company.

7.      Failure point #7: Leadership fatigue.  At times, running a company turns into a grind.  The company doesn’t grow as fast as anticipated, or the magic formula for business model doesn’t materialize.  Or the executive team doesn’t come together as all wished at the beginning.  At this point, the company doesn’t fail or flame out, but nor does it continue to show healthy growth and positive direction.  Sometimes, a company grows for a bit, then plateaus and efforts to move the proverbial needle continue to fall short.  One of my favorite expressions comes to mind, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result.”  If most all other variants and permutations have been tried, no doubt it’s possible that leadership fatigue has set in and the company is in need of a fresh horse.

There certainly are other subsidiary reasons that less often cause failure-a CEO not being technical enough to shepherd a pre-revenue start-up through early product development stages into successful commercialization, or not enough industry domain expertise in an area where a Rolodex of relationships are critical to obtaining early customer wins or market credibility.  However, for the most part, these and many other one-off failures function as exceptions to the larger CEO failure points outlined above.

One of the questions that naturally follows in exploring the most typical reasons for failure is what steps, actions, or changes can be made to optimize the probability for CEO success?  Is there “another way of doing it?”   One of the best ways we’ve found is to split the Chairman and CEO roles.  However, this is a topic for another discussion.  It’s something that’s actually done in the UK as SOP, and even out in Silicon Valley more than in Boston or New York.  We’ve executed our fair share of executive searches in each, and comparing the perspectives around leadership-sharing held by venture or private equity investors is interesting grist for further analysis.

How are retained executive search firms assessed?  And how should they be measured?

This is a funny question. And one that can be asked at two inflection points in the search process–

• BEFORE picking a search firm

•    And AFTER a search has been executed/completed

Focusing on the “before” part for now, for most companies the 3 most popular decision factors used to help pick a winner in the “shoot-out” or “bake-off” process today are typically:

• “Relevant Rolodex” or domain expertise. Has a search firm done a similar search in a similar sector recently?

•    Familiarity. Has a search firm worked with a client before?  The implicit assumption is “devil you know is better than the one you don’t.”
•    Price.  Depending upon economic conditions, search firms are as often as not considered “about the same,” and only price is the perceived differentiator.

However, I think there should be a shift in search firm selection criteria.

Let me digress for a moment and talk about the traditional value proposition of retained executive search.  Historically, there have been 4 pieces of value that the search firm delivers on:

1)    Finding or “hunting” the candidate.  In the industry, we refer to it as “candidate identification.”
2)    Selling the client opportunity to the “hunted” candidate
3)    Assessing the candidate for hard skills and soft skills “fit” for the search
4)    Closing the final candidate once s/he has been selected by the client company-the end game, including compensation negotiation etc.

Now, back to how search firms are selected.  The above criteria emphasize and value things like candidate identification.   At one point, this was a very important selection criterion to make sure the right search firm was picked for a search.  At one point in the history of executive search, headhunters would spend decades amassing a proprietary Rolodex, mapping the industry and what talent was harbored where.  This was hard-to-come-by information, usually only amassed via “gumshoe” work, calling and talking to the industry on a constant basis.  However, in the last 10 years, and 5 in particular, there has been a huge shift at the executive levels.  There has evolved a set of technology tools that has allowed unprecedented transparency into who is where at any given point, tech tools like ZoomInfo and LinkedIn to name just a few.  So, with access to these tools and the modicum level of investigative interest and time, finding as a value proposition for executive search selection has become commoditized.  The “black book” that recruiters worked hard to build and protect has effectively been published on the Internet for each and every executive level in virtually every industry.

So if “finding” is no longer the lynchpin for search firm selection, what does that leave? There are still the other three values a search firm brings-ability to sell the opportunity, assess the candidate, and ultimately procure the candidate of choice the company selects via the final interview processes and endgame negotiating.

It would be really interesting to see a search firm selection process be shifted to an evaluation of two of these three areas, plus an addition of three new metrics:

• #1: How does a search firm “sell” the search to prospective candidates? What is the search firm’s “pitch,” how well does the executive recruiter present the opportunity, its nuances, and a compelling story. Good talent is usually not looking to move. And good talent is usually fairly happy where they are, and valued where they are. So, a good headhunter needs to present an even more compelling reason to persuade an executive to look at a new opportunity. A prospective client could ask the search firm for the marketing documents the executive recruiter has written and used from past searches and evaluate them as to their compelling nature. A client could even ask for samples of emails or voicemail “pitches” that have been used in the past, and what tools a search firm uses that uniquely differentiate a company’s executive need.
• #2: How does a search firm “assess” candidates? We feel that assessment is the new “black book” value proposition of executive search. Prospective client companies could ask search firms for how they assess candidates? What tools do they use, what key success factors does the search firm interview for in all executives, and what unique success characteristics would they interview for specific to a given position and company profile. What assessment information is passed along to the company? What does a candidate interview summary “write up” look like? And how much assessment is really delivered in the write-up, versus a simple repackaging of resume and background information? Also, how are references done, and samples of references completed to get a sense for what the search firm is looking for in its referencing process. A really interesting article written about how search firms work, and in particular, how search firms assess candidates, can be found in the PhD research of Monica Hamori, PhD candidate at Wharton. It’s a very interesting read — http://www.allbusiness.com/specialty-businesses/332669-1.html. Unfortunately, Ms. Hamori’s conclusion is that candidate assessment is done very differently from search firm to search firm. Most notably, she identified that candidate assessment is done differently from partner to partner inside large search firms, with no assessment standards or processes.

As for the three new search firm selection criteria, I’d suggest clients add these three to the two above:
•    #3: Pre-search “discovery” process.  What does the search firm do to uncover all there is to know about the company, the culture, the position, the internal and exogenous factors, and most importantly, the chemistry success equation with the hiring authority within the company to whom the position with report.

• #4: Post-search onboarding and “stick rate.” What does the search firm do to ensure success of the candidate in their new role? And what is a search firm’s “stick rate,” or success rate in placing executives in new companies who then stayed for some period of time rather than bouncing off, suffering organ rejection from the host organism company who hired them? This could even include a redistribution of the executive search fee structure. Wouldn’t it be far better alignment between client company and search firm if both were incented to nurture a new executive’s success in the role? Perhaps a deferment of part of the fee for service if onboarding coaching were employed, with a delayed “final payment” at the end of a year of service, on actual bonus paid “above targeted compensation,” rewarding the search firm for above expected performance achieved by that executive.
• #5: References. Client companies should do a better job referencing the search firm. So much can be learned from how a search firm performs references. Who they check references with, how references are performed, what questions are asked, are references aggregated or attributed to specific reference givers, or? How many references are performed? Are any references performed with those who were not provided by the candidate? Are background and credentials checks performed on the finalist candidate(s)?
  Somehow, if these 5 selection criteria were used to evaluate potential search firms, my hunch is, as often as not, a different firm would be selected. And a better ultimate executive candidate for the retained search in question.