The Coming Innovations in Executive Search

I am constantly thinking about how to take my executive search game to a higher level. How can I execute assignments faster and better? How can I ensure that the client gets a better result from the “successful candidate,” as we used to call “placements” in my old firm. (Executive search pioneer Russ Reynolds felt that it was incorrect to say that headhunters ‘place’ someone in a job, so to refer to someone as a “placement” is wrong. The person who gets the job is the candidate who successfully runs the gauntlet to the end of the process thus, they are the “successful candidate.”)

But the fact of the matter is that much of the way that we headhunters conduct executive searches in the year 2023 AD utilizes processes and conforms to the same rhythms as was done 50 years ago. We conduct intake meetings with the client to develop a position specification; we research who is who in a given industry, and we begin to work our magic, making contacts, developing a long list of candidates… we then help the client whittle down the candidates to a “short list” of 2 to 3 finalists, from among whom the client makes the hiring selection.

Granted, it sounds simple, but executive search is a lot harder than that. While we utilize bigger, better databases and employ more sophisticated psychometric tools… the process is much the same as it was 50 years ago…

Until today!

Because now, ladies and gentlemen, I am introducing “Rich Perkey’s Coming Innovations in Executive Search”!

Drawing lessons from the natural sciences, astrology, and popular reality shows, I propose that you, the client, avail yourself of these new and better ways of conducting “the world’s ninth oldest profession”:

"Big Regulator": Borrowing liberally and conservatively from the hit reality TV show “Big Brother,” your executive search partner will train cameras on candidates for your job 24 hours a day for a week. Yes, you will get to know the candidate at a level of intimacy you only imagined in the past. Does the candidate methodically fold their toilet paper, or are they a “scruncher”? That will give you insights into the candidate’s task orientation! Do they slip packets of Splenda into their pocket when they leave a diner? If so, you can be damn sure your losses due to employee shrinkage (not the George Costanza variety) will increase. It may get a little monotonous that we will stream the Charlie Rich country song “Behind Closed Doors” as you watch the candidates, but you, the client, will know more than you ever wanted to know about your candidate. Hey, you will actually get to see if their “door is always open”!
"The Matchelor & Matchelorette": You can’t get enough of “The Bachelor”? Have you not cringed enough lately, given that “The Bachelorette” Charity gave the final rose to Dotun? Then you are in for a treat when 30 candidates for your CEO job descend upon your boardroom so you can take them through a simulation of what it is really like to run your company! You can watch them as they play “Candy Crush” during staff meetings… blather on about “breaking down silos,” “double clicking on that,” or say, “Let’s unpack that!” even though you didn’t even know you had packed. At the end of each night, for a month, you will send crappy candidates packing by asking the most promising prospects for your CEO job: “Shirley, will you surely accept this job offer?” and handing a beaming executive a term sheet with lots of zeros and commas. At the end of the season, on “Selection Finale Night,” David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group will host a retrospective of the entire season whereby Rubenstein will ask each of the rejected candidates a bunch of closed-ended questions about how they feel about not getting the offer to run your company.
"The Bored Room": Have you had enough of the false promises and dashed hopes that come from hiring candidates with the “It Factor”? Has your CEO’s charisma careened your company off course, of course? Then, you will be able to select your next CEO from this selection of psychometric testing flatlining dullards! These candidates only employ monosyllabic responses if you employ them! You will sleep better than ever, knowing that your CEO is sitting at home playing “Solitaire,” being a milquetoast, gumming warm milk & toast, after studying the flight patterns of moths on the back porch lights!

Of course, there are many more ideas where those came from, but I realize that I can only rile your vital humors so much.

Maybe if we change the name of this industry from “executive search” to “executive find,”… we could do a variation on “Where’s Waldo?”!