2/26/2020
Take me to a leader - Corporate headhunters are more powerful than ever | Briefing | The Economist
Senior headhunters admit the industry is sometimes too quick to recommend the safe option when boards are reluctant to gamble on unconventional candidates. Despite progress in recent years, just 38 of the bosses of America’s 675 largest listed rms are women, and 59 non-white. It has grown harder for bright young things to get a look in. The average age of incoming ceo s has risen sharply, to 58, since 2005 (see chart 3). A survey by aesc , which represents 16,000 search professionals, ranks “attracting diverse talent” as the seventh- most-pressing issue for their rms in 2019, behind such things as “attracting digital talent” or “creating a culture of innovation”. The search within Growing doubts about the value headhunters bring has led some clients to take the work in-house. An expanding list of corporate titans, including all of the tech giants, are building private squads of headhunters—often by poaching from the Shrek rms. Having focused at rst on junior hires, these are working their way up to the c -suite, says Ms Garrison Jenn.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/02/06/corporate-headhunters-are-more-powerful-than-ever
12/16
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