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

Embrace Your Critics – or Fail

Bud Tunt, one smart exec with whom I worked at Fortune 15 McKesson, told me that the savviest thing you could do in business was to take away all the excuses.

Bud was on so something.

There are three camps; people who care and support you or your ideas, people who care and have criticism about you or your ideas, and people who don’t care or support you and sit on their hands.… Read the rest

[Life Back West] May 2012 – “Bring Your Whole Self”

We all have many “parts” that sit within our one self; father, daughter, employee, leader, neighbor, worker, religious believer and maybe even a baseball fan. You get the idea.

Here’s another idea; what if you brought them all together in whatever you did – like your day job? One unified whole, not just a part you pull out of some trunk when you needed it and then tucked it back away after use.… 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

When Do You Fire Someone for a Resume Error?

This month’s Yahoo kerfluffle – a company that desperately needs this type of stuff least – involves the misstated resume of new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson.

You’ll recall that Thompson replaced Carol Bartz several months ago. Bartz was fired via a phone call from Yahoo’s chairman. Candor and accuracy was and is never an issue with Bartz, something that probably did not advance her career with the Yahoo board.

Read the rest

What Works: Employee Onboarding Starts Before You Hire

Most companies and many other organizations sweat the details of how you do onboarding – also known as new employee orientation. With the bounce rate (who gets fired or leaves, who stays) at around 40% at 18 months for execs hired from the outside it makes sense to pay attention to getting people traction early and fast.

Great idea, but there’s one small flaw; effective onboarding for a new hire starts even before that new hire walks through the door.… Read the rest