At the time we coined the phrase "continuity recruiting," back in 1997, we had no idea how much the recruitment industry would change over the next decade. Back then recruiters were viewed as highly paid bounty hunters-responsible for sourcing candidates, doing some cursory vetting, and laying "qualified" candidates on the doorsteps of grateful clients. What happened afterwards was not the recruiter's concern. If the new hire failed to take, well, don't shoot the mailman.

At BSG Team Ventures we believed that clients had the right to expect more for their investment. We believed that the "holy grail" of executive search was not finding great resumes. It was establishing a process by which candidates could be evaluated in context with a client's culture and with the particular demands of the position. In other words, we believed that we had to excel at both candidate and client assessment. We had to be good matchmakers.

Accordingly, we created and evolved a BSG Team Ventures search process that integrated several assessment strategies --some online, some face-to-face.

• We took time to get to know our clients, and to truly understand their culture, their internal dynamics, their challenges, and their needs.
• We launched each new search with an in-depth questionnaire and educated clients on its value.
• We created Venn diagrams and other schematics that allowed us and our clients to visualize the intersecting requirements of the position.
• We formalized the use of motivation, self-awareness, and personality assessment tools to evaluate candidates.
• We instilled in our recruiters the techniques of behavioral interviewing--with an emphasis on what candidates have actually produced (how they performed) rather than on what roles they have occupied.
• We taped all candidate interviews, including videoconferences, to use for staff instruction and to speed the client interview process.
• We learned how to make referencing more than a rote exercise in rubber-stamping by integrating performance-based questions.

We also took a fresh look at what happens from the time a candidate says "yes" to a job offer to the time that candidate becomes a fully acculturated, high-performing executive. Working on the premise developed by Michael Watkins of the Harvard Business School--that more than half (58%) of leaders brought into a new organization fail in the first 18 months, at a cost to the organization of more than $1M per failure-we began working in partnership with the Hay Group and others to offer "onboarding" services to our clients. The results are a "stick rate" of better than 80%.

Today no search firm worth its salt sees candidate sourcing as its core competency. The Internet has changed the recruitment landscape, and the rise of both email and job boards has vastly simplified the task of identifying candidates whose paper qualifications fit the task. Finding candidates is no longer the challenge. The challenge is finding the right candidates, then making sure they receive the right coaching to become quickly effective.

Little did we know that "continuity recruiting"-a process that starts before any candidates are sourced and ends months after one of them is hired-would become the industry standard. And that BSG would be among its beacons.

Do we feel that we have perfected our search methodology? In short, no. What began as a feeling that the executive search model could be enhanced has now become a quest for continuous improvement in the processes, tools, and people we leverage to help make our clients more successful.