Corporate headhunters - The Economist

2/26/2020

Take me to a leader - Corporate headhunters are more powerful than ever | Briefing | The Economist y rival recruiters, headhunters must ght hard for their attention. They look to breakfast regularly with high-iers, and mark their job anniversaries and dates when bonuses are due—discreet inquiries may elicit news of a disappointing payout, and signal that an executive may be looking for a change. They oer a shoulder to cry on when the going gets tough. Denis Marcadet of Vendôme Associés, a search rm in Paris, remembers humbled nanciers weeping for hours in his oce during the subprime meltdown. In interviews headhunters deploy their charms to get candidates to lower their guard. But face-to-face assessment can be “a bit of voodoo”, says one. (It can also go awry if the chemistry is wrong. In his memoir, Robert Iger, Disney’s boss, recalls his interview for the job with Gerry Roche of Heidrick & Struggles as “one of the most insulting experiences of my career” because he viewed the questions as irrelevant and, worse, there was no food.) So recruiters have acquired tools to make it more scientic. They administer psychometric tests. Questionnaires gauge candidates’ norms and values. Synthesis, an advisory rm inspired by the recruitment of elite units in the Israeli army, even has shrinks dissect candidates’ answers to seemingly innocuous questions about their life stories. Boards or headhunters sometimes outsource deeper probing to specialists such as Hakluyt or StoneTurn, two British rms staed with former spies, journalists and cops. (Paul Deighton, The Economist Group’s chairman, also chairs Hakluyt.) These corporate sleuths aim to tease out how bosses do deals, how they behave under pressure and whether they have ever crossed any ethical lines. yp y y p p , y

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