You can expect to keep long hours, and to spend large amounts of time on the telephone either speaking with people or, more likely, playing phone tag with their voice mail. Here is a typical day for me:
6 A.M.: a 2-hour conference call with the vice president of human resources at a client in Texas to review candidates for the manager of information systems position; check voice mail/e-mail and respond if there is an urgent issue.
9 A.M.-12:00 noon: Check references for a vice president of corporate communications candidate for a biotech client; make contact with some of the references, leave voicemail messages for return calls. Prepare for candidate visit for vice president of research and for candidate visit for vice president of research and development at a biotech firm; suggest possible agenda for visit with client to follow up on their most recent hire (vice president of clinical research). Contact a real estate agent who will meet with top candidate to discuss relocation issues. Respond to multiple calls from individuals looking for job opportunities. Follow up with committee members regarding an upcoming workshop. Meet with DHR researcher to organize and strategize plans to locate candidates for a vice president of manufacturing position.
12:00-1:30 P.M.: Marketing lunch with CEO of potential client to convince her to use DHR rather than another search firm; mention my relevant industry experience.
2-3 P.M.: Meet with client to get additional information about Software Company for writing up a position specification. Meet with job seeker to review their resume; assist with career advancement program.
3-5 P.M.: Committee meeting for industry-related networking group; American Lung Association Board conference call; business development: send letters/do follow-up calls. Return phone calls, e-mails.
5-5:30 P.M.: MIT Enterprise Forum-marketing meeting.
5:30-5 P.M.: MIT Enterprise Forum-networking and program. Presentation.
8 P.M.: Check voicemail and prepare for next day's activities.
Daily Frustration Level
As with any job, there are a multitude of things that can go wrong in a job search assignment. You may be working on five to eight search assignments simultaneously, which are at different levels of completion. I will highlight a few frustrating scenarios from my experience.
Scenario I:
You must deal with potential candidates for a client's position, who say that they are interested in the position you have described, yet do not send their resume" as promised. This makes it difficult to verify their interest, and impossible to check their background and experience. Usually, there is time urgency on a search assignment and without the CV, you cannot include them in your list of potential candidates.
Scenario II:
Your top candidate rejects the client's offer after you have negotiated for weeks and you thought you had come to an agreement. The reference checking usually is time-consuming and to come to terms regarding the entire package takes creativity and effort. If the top candidate falls out at this stage, often you may have lost the second and third choices to other positions because of the time delay. It is likely that your top choice has developed cold feet at leaving a known environment and moving on to something new and different, but it is probably because he or she was offered a higher compensation package to stay at the current position. Often, one must start the search again.
Scenario III:
The candidate you brought in to the company cannot get along with the CEO or COO. DHR has a 2-year guarantee for each search assignment. This means that if the individual does not stay in the job for at least 2 years, the search consultant must fulfill the responsibility and do another search at no charge to the client. This can happen regardless of how diligent and careful you are in the match-making process.
One of the most important elements of the search is to match personalities and corporate cultures. As a search consultant, you have the responsibility to assess the corporate culture and to bring in the key individuals who will fit into such an environment. Through no fault of your own, there may be pressures or stress that can cause individuals to react differently from your assessment. This may have a negative influence on the new candidate or on the corporate decision maker.
Scenario IV:
In completing your degree check, you find that the candidate does not have the degrees as stated on the resume. This degree check is done early in the search, so you haven't lost much time. This situation does happen and it is an important and necessary step in reference checking.
Scenario V:
After presenting three top candidates who match the position specifications perfectly, the top management of the company realizes that the position specifications need to be modified. This situation occurs because the management, during the course of the search assignment, does an in-depth assessment (often for the first time), of the existing skills, of projected growth and direction, and of the financial resources of the company. When this occurs, the job specifications are modified and there is generally a clearer vision of the needed skills for this position-but it does entail generating a new list of candidates.
Scenario VI:
After extensive interviews with the top candidate, she backs out because her family decides that relocating from the East Coast to the West Coast won't work out. Relocation is a major variable and always has to be discussed extensively, since it is a lifestyle change. Often it is a difficult process for the entire family to move, especially when they have school-age children. Sometimes the applicant must decide to be away from family until an appropriate moving opportunity presents itself.
Compensation, Experience, and Advancement
Before I discuss compensation, it is important to discuss the difference between retained and contingency recruiting. DHR is a retained search firm, which means that the hiring company retains a search firm on a contractual basis to do the search, regardless of whether a hire is actually made. A contingent search firm gets paid on a per-hire basis. The fees to the search firm typically are related in some way to the annual salary of the position being filled at the client company.
According to the Executive Recruiter News, there are more than 1859 executive search firms in the United States; 931 are retained firms, and 928 are contingency firms. Combined, the search firms gross more than $2.5 billion in annual revenues and are staffed by some 11,724 recruiters.
Advancement within an executive search firm generally is tied to the amount of money that you bring into the firm and the extent to which you are perceived as a leader in your industry. Opportunities can range from positions such as the managing director of the firm's office, the managing director of a specific industry such as telecommunications, biotechnology, and so on, or director of research on a national or an international basis. Along with advancement comes greater visibility, and hopefully, more search assignments.
The compensation in the retained search industry is related to the number of searches one completes and the compensation package that accompanies the search assignment. It is not only the number of completed search assignments that matters, but the salary that accompanies the position for which you are recruiting. In other words, it is better to be recruiting CEOs than lab techs, from a compensation point of view.
At the top search firms, the usual fee paid by the client company is one-third of the estimated first year's total cash compensation of the individual who is hired. This fee is divided into three installments-the initial retainer is paid at the start of the search, then the remaining two service charges are billed in 30 and 60 days, respectively. Often the final payment is made when the successful candidate has been identified and has a signed contract.
The search consultant earns a percentage, usually between 30% and 50% of the amount which is paid by the client to the search firm. Of course, if you own your own firm, you keep 100%! Most search consultants are paid on commission-they are paid when they make a placement-which means that the start-up period may be tedious and the early earnings may be slim. With persistence, experience, relationship building, and successful search completions, one will build a client base that can lead to a solid six-figure income. Generally, the search consultant in a contingency-based practice has a market niche and has acquired some loyal clients. The fee is still paid after the candidate is hired, but the firm has a track record with this search consultant and knows the talent this person can find. Advancement for the contingency practice is based on getting into an industry niche that is in demand and growing, and on specializing in a certain market such as engineering or focusing on a specialized industry such as telecommunications.
The Rewards of Being in the Executive Search Business
Before I entered this industry, I did a comprehensive skill assessment and thoroughly researched the field of executive search. Like many others, I have had the challenge of job hunting. I had some difficult and unpleasant experiences in the process, and I vowed that I would help people in this situation when I was able.
This brings me to one of the rewards of my job-assisting those looking for a job when I can. In most cases, the people I help are not candidates for the positions that I am filling for a client, so I can't offer a position. I usually can be helpful in revising a resume" to make it more marketable, targeting companies likely to value the candidate, offering contact names who may be of assistance, or suggesting an industry conference that would be beneficial in networking.
Besides the monetary compensation, an executive search consultant must derive pleasure from serving as matchmaker between corporations and qualified candidates. Each person who is added to the management team makes a tremendous difference in the productivity of the corporation. This desire to bring together the right people with the right company for their mutual benefit is critical to being a successful and motivated head-hunter. It is rewarding to see individuals find a position that matches their skills and their goals, and allows them to be successful.
Another reward is learning about a broad range of corporations and technologies. To sell the opportunity to potential candidates, you first must yourself understand the corporate mission, products or science, and culture. You will spend a great deal of time on location at the client company, listening to and talking with people who hold various positions within the company, and gaining a real understanding of how that organization functions, its strengths and weaknesses.
This vocation provides you with the opportunity to meet and work with other service providers who often help each other in identifying new clients. Service providers, including attorneys, accountants, public relations groups, and bankers, are all are needed by growing companies to help guide the management team and the board of directors.
In a rapidly changing business environment, search firms are taking on an expanding role within the companies they serve. The search consultant brings added value by assisting the company with other business issues, such as suggesting outside contractors, and assisting with future skill identification and compensation information.
Personal Comments
The job market is continually changing and evolving. In the small, entrepreneurial companies with which I often work, there are some key qualities that employers seek: a broad-based set of experiences and skills, project management, and a passion about the company and the technology. This is often an opportunity for people to gain experience in a wider range of areas, since employees do a little bit of everything in a small start-up.
I enjoy my work at DHR. David Hoffman, the founder and CEO, built a team of search consultants by attracting executives from industry who brought with them experience in their chosen fields and credibility with other managers in this industry. In other words, the strength that I brought to DHR was my experience and credibility in the bioscience industry. I am continually learning about this industry, but I have an obvious advantage because I have an advanced degree in science and I have experience in a variety of management roles in the biotechnology, biomedical, and medical fields. Executive recruiting is a great alternative career for people with a science degree.
