Is Your Goose Cooked if a Headhunter’s Been Hired for Your Job?

You’ve been promoted to a job on an interim basis and perhaps promised a strong shot at that role on a permanent basis.

Your company has just hired a search firm to handle the “permanent” placement.

Are you at risk?

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

That’s the situation that Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinshohn finds himself in with the news reported by Kara Swisher that blue chip executive search firm Spencer Stuart has been hired by the board to handle the firm’s CEO search.… Read the rest

Yahoo CEO’s Resume Blame Game: Is It the Headhunter’s Fault?

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson – he of the phantom computer science degree that found its way on his official resume filed with

the SEC – was either fired or resigned.

The question remains; whose fault was it that the resume mistake wasn’t caught earlier?

The now-departed Thompson said that exec search firm Heidrick & Struggles was to blame; somebody on the search firm interviewed him for a role with eBay years ago when the error originally occurred, took incorrect information, and that’s how it got in the system and on to his Yahoo resume.… Read the rest

The Trouble with Recruiters

There is trouble in recruiter-land.

Talk to any in-house recruiter and they know it. Talk to any job candidate and they suspect it.

Heck, as someone who has run small, medium, and large size talent acquisition operations I even know it.

You probably do too.

So what’s going on?

Back in the pre-online application days, circa 1996,  internal recruiters working for employers customarily carried (preface: at least the good employers who knew to balance workload with quality) 10-15 job requisitions – openings they were trying to fill – at any one time.… Read the rest

Tips for Great Communicators: Match Medium & Method with Message

You can lack efficiency and effectiveness in how you communicate.

Or you can have both. Here’s how.

As background, it always helps to be clear about what you’re trying to communicate. Simply pass on information, or engage in a discussion and check for understanding? Ask for feedback, or do a data dump and run?

Great communication starts with focus about what you’re trying to accomplish, and what you’re trying to avoid.… Read the rest

Why Will You Hire an Outsider rather than an Internal Candidate?

Who knew that hiring realities and a trip to my home state of Oregon would intersect.

But they did.

You know the deal. You’ve got a candidate or two from inside the firm to consider and candidates from outside that are in the vetting / interview hopper for the job.

You end up – surprise surprise – hiring the outsider. Only later do you come across the statistic from the Center for Creative Leadership that approximately 66% of senior execs hired from the outside fail within 18 months and that the overall failure rate for external hires within 3 years is 40%.… Read the rest