The Companies Headhunters Avoid

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_37/b4146042031508.htm

by cwan • 17 years ago

40 24 17 years ago

sunkencity• 17 years ago

Amazing article! Short version: Recruiters dont want to recruit from large successful companies, because they either breed incompetents (it doesn't matter if you suck when you work at Coca Cola business is good anyway), or psycopaths (The take no prisoners culture at Oracle, EMC), or paranoid politicos (Intel)...

ShabbyDoo• 17 years ago

It's interesting that the executive recruiters seemingly were concerned with the success of the winning candidate. I've had countless IT recruiters take more interest in the sale-ability of a person vs. the result of the placement. I guess the high-end recruiters make their money through reputation (in the eyes of both execs and corporate boards).

tptacek2• 17 years ago

At the upper levels of recruiting, the amount of effort that probably goes in to pushing a single candidate might make a recruiter think twice about pushing someone who'd be negged as a culture mismatch. Executive recruiting isn't like normal recruiting.

edw519• 17 years ago

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?" Steve Jobs to John Sculley

History suggests that he should have stuck to selling sugared water.

tc• 17 years ago

History also suggests that Jobs would have been better off not asking him that question.

dmoho• 17 years ago

Not necessarily...here's what Steve Jobs had to say about it (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html):

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together."

marchdown• 17 years ago

The success of NeXT isn't really a reason enough to think that Apple would fare better under Jobs instead of Sally. After all, it was Jobs' decision to bring Sally onboard, and there were some pretty smart people on Apple's board of directors when they cut Jobs out, it was not all empty intriguing. If there were no NeXT, Apple could have easily been ripped apart by pink/blue debate, or shrivel and die, were the engineers involved ostracized by the management.

But what do I know. That's all pure speculation.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

I've heard similar things said about (non-developers) from Microsoft. A dev job at MSFT is probably as challenging as any equivalent dev role anywhere, but project, program, and product management at Microsoft is heavyweight and idiosyncratic.

mmc• 17 years ago

Very interesting. This was about managers and executives, but are there any companies out there that are known to have a poisoned technical or design culture?

gaius2• 17 years ago

It's rare to meet a strong candidate from any large outsourcing firm, esp. if they've been there a long time, and/or it's the only job they've had.

gehant2• 17 years ago

I think it's sad/funny there is no mention of how a middle aged white man (with C-level experience of course) is best qualified to revitalize and revolutionize a makeup company.

How many female product/service industries are "lead" by middle aged white men...scary when you think about it.

aristus2• 17 years ago

Why would a man be less qualified? Should a female be automatically assumed unqualified to run a men's magazine or or a cigar manufacturer? Why are either of those scenarios scary?

lucumo• 17 years ago

> Should a female be automatically assumed unqualified to run a men's magazine

Well, history has at least shown that making that assumption would be dumb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Hefner

gehant2• 17 years ago

This is what's scary: women still face a very thick glass ceiling in business (not men - the flip scenario comparisons are baseless and for the most part insulting to women, including those who smoke).

More importantly, is it OK that women make up less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEO positions? That's not sad?

To clarify, there's a huge difference between unqualified and less qualified. I would never say men/women are unqualified to do anything...

Fact: There are women who are qualified to be CEO of Fortune 500s.

Assuming selection from the above, she would be more qualified since she would be more likely to 1) be passionate about the product, 2) be an actual consumer of the product, 3) be able to empathize with users of the product, 4) better understand internal value tied to the product...the list goes on.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

I've said this often and I will say it again here: You want leaders, go military. Combat facing only.

Why?

Despite the (incorrect) Hollywood caricature of military leaders being shoot first ask questions later seim-psychotic blowhards, the military rewards everything you want in a leader and at the same time aggressively weeds out all but the strongest performers.

A good military resume will almost without exception create the following person:

1. Analytical observer - the fog of war keeps these people asking "what don't I know" even when it seems clear that they have all the information about a decision point.

2. Good Planner - Data gathering is important in order to make the right calls.

3. Decision Maker - These folk are always able to make calls - yes sometimes the wrong one - without knowing certain details.

3. Decisive Action Taking - Once the call has been made, these folk see that the Action is executed immediately, and attempt to gather information regarding the effectiveness of the action as soon as possible.

4. Results focused - These people appreciate and reward high quality results, which means they tend to breed people like them.

However, the most important quality is:

5. "In contact leadership" - Combat leaders tend to have a significant ability to think on their feet in reaction to the changing environment. In my experience, this never seems to be properly learned in a civilian in the same way. I suppose it has something to do with the magnitude of the choices being made, but even non-combat military folk seem to be better at this than the average manager.

Yeah, I'm a veteran. But I spent five years working in uniform, and have spent about 15 out. Based on my observations, and excluding outliers, the difference is noticeable.

zupatol• 17 years ago

In Switzerland it used to be the case that a career in the military helped having a career in the private sector. I don't think this is true anymore.

At the same time, no one ever needed all the qualities you mention in the swiss army. It never fought a war.

gaius2• 17 years ago

"To win and conquer in every battle is not supreme excellence. Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's will without fighting" -- Sun Tzu

Judging by how often Switzerland gets invaded, they must be doing something right.

btilly• 17 years ago

That's perfect if you've got a top-down command-and-obey culture. However many organizations do not look like this. Veterans that I've known often have not developed their abilities at building a consensus, getting people to buy in, or pushing responsibility and decision making down to the people in the trenches. In some environments that can be a real problem. (Ironically the problems seem to be invisible to the people causing it.)

This is not a slam on veterans. My point is that many different corporate cultures work well. However a mismatch between employee and culture tends to fail badly. And graduates of the military culture are not going to work in all corporate cultures.

It is worth re-reading the article with this in mind. Many of the companies listed that recruiters avoid are great companies. Companies like Oracle, Coca-Cola and Intel are world class and clearly work very well. But they breed people who don't fit into most other US corporations.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

That is certainly true.

Veterans that I've known often have not developed their abilities at building a consensus, getting people to buy in, or pushing responsibility and decision making down to the people in the trenches.

You're right on the first two, completely off on the last one. Military leaders will view building a consensus and getting buy in as politics, and avoid it. They will most certainly delegate properly, especially if surrounded by proven performers. In fact, you can pretty much observe what they think of their colleagues by observing who they delegate to. If they don't delegate at all, odds are likely that they would also consider their staff lacking in skill if asked.

That being said, without being too draconian, I'm learning more and more that assessing the first two items as politics is accurate. Sometimes necessary, but not fun.

Employee/Company culture matching is tremendously important as you point out.

plinkplonk• 17 years ago

"You want leaders, go military."

There are as many bad "leaders" in the military as in any other organization. Viewing military experience as providing some kind of extra leadership credentials is naive. Veterans like to think this is true. There is no real evidence it is. (feel free to provide some).

Your list provides a handful of characteristics good leaders have, irrespective of field of activity. Such leaders exist in all fields where competition among groups of people exists. Military history is full of incidences where rigid, dogmatic commanders led their men to disaster, alongside many instances where inspired leadership made a difference.

As btilly pointed out above, the military "leadership" style depends on a command and control organization where orders are (ultimately) obeyed even when they seem senseless.("take that hill", the charge of the Lighr Brigade). Hardly good training to lead a group of free thinking professionals.

At least in the software industry the best leaders by and large don't have military experience. For good reason. Leading people who can "vote with their feet" anytime is a very different kettle of fish from leading a group of people who are duty bound to obey you even at the cost of their lives. Good hackers in particular don't "take" well to military style command.

"You want leaders, go military." makes about as much sense as "You want leaders, go politics.".

In both fields there are good leaders and bad leaders and there is a "ruthless weeding out process". (As a reductio ad absurdum argument) A case could be made that people who've been successful in politics (sure, frontline only, if you want it that way - in this case people who've stood for elections and been elected to office) are much better placed to lead a team than people who've been successful in the military. After all they know how to listen to people, harmonize interests, evolve a consensus, communicate decisions and so on.

"A good military resume will almost without exception create the following person:"

replace military with "sports" or "community organizer" and the list remains unchanged wrt to the leadership qualities required (though their expression will change depending on the filed of activity).

The key word in your sentence is "good" not "military".

"A good X resume will exhibit leadership qualities" where X is any group activity with a competitive element.

The Companies Headhunters Avoid

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