The Executive Update

It Could Be Worse...

A little day brightener, with thanks to Recruiting Nevada. Remember, it could always be worse. Happy Friday.

Winning Over the Board of Directors

I ran into an interesting article in the Boardroom section of BusinessWeek online this week,  “New CEOs and Their Boards” by Beverly Behan, managing director of the Hay Group and author of Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance. Although Ms. Behan outlines a strategy for new CEOs to solidify relations with their boards, this article also could serve as a blueprint for interviewing for a senior management position. In the article, Behan notes:

"Probably one of the sharpest revelations to any newly minted CEO is that he or she no longer has a boss but rather a board to report to. Establishing a constructive working relationship with that board is one of the most important things for any new CEO to accomplish in the first few months of taking the helm, particularly if he or she aspires to stay in the job for any length of time."

So if you are interviewing for a C-level position, you have to consider that your prospective bosses, the board of directors, will be interested in knowing how you are going to establish a working relationship with them; whether or not you will be a help or a hindrance to corporate goals. (For a dramatic example, consider the very public ouster of Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who was at odds with the H-P board of directors over the acquisition of Compaq computer, among other things. Clearly, she did not establish that smooth working relationship, and was fired as a result.)

Behan recommends three key steps for newly minted CEOs, which apply equally well to aspiring CEOs who are interviewing for an executive position:

Ask the Coach: Creating Value for Recruiters

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from the most recent session with career coach Don Orlando.

A lot of this week’s discussion centered on recruiters and their role in the job search process. Here  are some of the insights that Don shared with those NETSHARE members who were on the call.

One caller asked why he hasn’t been contacted if everyone tells him his credentials are so great? He has largely been targeting recruiters and, as Don explains, recruiters work for the company, not the candidate, and if you don’t match their exact requirements, then they don’t have time for you. The best way to get a recruiter’s attention is offer them something for their time (beyond your credentials, that is). Offer them additional contacts to help fill the position and make a commission. Help them in a concrete way that goes beyond their current search, and it will serve you better in the long run.

Networking with executive recruiters can certainly be valuable, but you need to offer them something they can use in order to stay on their radar. If you are valuable to them in a tangible (or more important, financial) way, then you are a contact worth cultivating.

Remember, too, that how recruiters work differs depending on geography. For example, in California it is acceptable to be presented by more than one recruiter, while in the Midwest, working with multiple recruiters is a sure means of getting your name struck from the prospect list.

Anonymity Breeds Contempt, Especially Online

I ran across an interesting blog entry last week that stirred some critical thinking about how the Internet has evolved as a ubiquitous, and heartless communications medium. Tom Davenport, who holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College and is a frequent blogger on Harvard Business Online, was talking about an incident at the South by Southwest conference, where a BusinessWeek Sarah Lacey was interviewing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It seemed the audience didn’t like her interview technique, so they took control of the interview with the help of Twitter:

“This idea that you should Twitter about the speaker or interviewer while they are speaking at a conference is an interesting and increasingly popular one. I certainly wouldn’t advocate trying to stop it, but I would encourage potential and actual critical Twitterers to think carefully about where this all goes. You may not like intermediaries between yourself and people like Zuckerberg, but even (presumably) socially oriented folks like him may like a little bit more control than an open dialogue with a crowd would involve.”

Why is it that the Internet causes everyone to forget their manners? Twitter is just platform that can promote Internet behavior gone wild. Yelp is another example of the power of anonymity to promote mob rule. If one patron has a bad experience at a shop or restaurant, it tends to incite the mob rather promote discussion. I recently spoke with a restauant manager who asked us if we enjoyed our meal and would we “yelp” about our positive experience; apparently he was trying to counteract an unruly group the week before who were exacting their revenge online. I have even received scathing e-mails from people who, assuming they would remain anonymous, felt free to vent their spleen online.

The Power of Collective Creativity

I recently ran across an interesting book that speaks to the power of collective intelligence, which actually goes a long way toward explaining the emergence of growth hotbeds like Silicon Valley. Smart World by Richard Ogle talks about how to combine intelligence with networking in a manner that fuels real creative breakthroughs. To quote from Ogle’s blog:

“What do jazz musician Dave Brubeck, Apple's Steve Jobs, Barbie creator Ruth Handler, and architect Frank Geary all have in common? Not just that they are credited with some of the most inventive products and innovations of the last century — the classic jazz album Time Out, the iPod, Spain's spectacular Guggenheim Museum — but their stories are unique in the way these creative leaps came about. Each used imaginative intelligence for certain, yet were able to combine this intelligence with networks outside of their own minds to reach true creative breakthroughs. This type of creativity gives credence to the idea that not all brilliant breakthroughs come from the minds of individual geniuses. On the contrary, our world is made up of intelligent networked spaces that, if navigated correctly, can lead us to breakthrough ideas.”

The truth of Ogle’s hypothesis struck me recently when I attended a luncheon at the San Francisco City Club for Colin Wiel and Matthew LeMerle, co-presidents of the Keiretsu Forum San Francisco. The Forum is an innovative network of angel investors who help facilitate deal flow for late-stage startups (companies that have developed products), helping them over humps with smaller investment amounts of a few hundred thousand dollars. People present their ideas to the collective, interested investors share information, conduct their due diligence, and the winning ideas are invited back to strike a deal.

Where Are You In Your Journey Along the Dynamic Path?

Another session from this year’s AESC Americas Conference, Focusing on What Matters, that I found especially inspiring was entitled “Beyond Professional Success: The Dynamic Path.” Based on the book, The Dynamic Path, by James Citrin, a senior director at Spencer Stuart, this session centered on the stages that leaders pass through in their path to excellence, and had a lot to offer to professionals thinking about where they are in their own life/career quest.

 

In developing his theory of the Dynamic Path, Citrin has spent hours interviewing accomplished experts from all walks of life. He has interviewed business gurus such as Steve Case and Howard Schultz, political figures like Colin Powell and Bill Bradley, and countless sports figures such as Lance Armstrong, Mia Hamm, Billie Jean King, Magic Johnson, and Tiger Woods. What Citrin uncovered is that all share some common steps on the path to greatness. By way of example, Citrin shared what he learned from speaking to Bill Bradley.

 

Bradley is one of the few sports stars to rise in the world of politics. To achieve greatness as a basketball player, Bradley demonstrated the kind of drive that would help him succeed as a politician. He amassed 3,000 points during his high school basketball career, captained the US basketball team to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and graduated from Princeton and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University before joining the New York Knicks. What made him an outstanding player was old-fashioned hard work. As Citrin tells it, Bradley practiced his shots for 10 years until it became automatic. Ever day after regular practice was over, Bradley would invest an additional three hours practicing his shots from all over the court. The result was perfect performance and flawless execution because it became automatic.

 

Ask the Coach: Be Discriminating to Beat Age Discrimination

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from the most recent session with Peter Engler, president of the Engler Career Group.

Much of the discussion during this week’s Ask the Coach session centered on ageism and finding work over 50. Peter has extensive experience in this area and emphasized that the way you approach a job search at age 50 is radically different than when you are in your 30s. Here are some of the highlights of his advice:

• Don’t try to fool people. If you try to work around the age issue it looks like you are trying to cover something up. Remember, a number of companies are looking for people with experience. Older workers come with a different set of skills and tend to stay longer, which makes them attractive to employers looking for those qualities.

• When dealing with recruiters, get down to the age issue early in the conversation. Are they looking to hire someone with experience or someone who can be molded? Use your age as an asset.

Ask the Coach: How Do You Get The Attention of Executive Recruiters?

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is a post contributed by with Kim Batson, The CIO’s Coach. 

We all know that executive recruiters prefer to ‘find you’, rather than you ‘find them.’ You rarely get a call back from a recruiter you don’t know personally, unless they have an opportunity that would be perfect for you at the time you contact them.

So how do recruiters find you? How can you make sure you are in the right place at the right time? How can you go from being the hunter to being the hunted? Let’s start by examining how recruiters find you. They have a new retained opportunity to fill, what do they do?

1. Recruiters search their own databases for possible candidates. So, first of all, are you in their databases? If not, consider doing a targeted distribution of your resume. (And note that it should be a targeted distribution to select recruiters, not a blast). Before you contact them, make sure that your resume is extremely well put together; hire a professional if need be. The recruiters may not call you right away, but if you look great, they will put you into their databases.

Don’t Wish on Falling Stars When You Make Strategic Hires

Another session from this year’s AESC Americas Conference, Focusing on What Matters, was entitled “Portability of Stardom: Myth vs. Reality.” Presented by Boris Groysberg, assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, this session including some interesting research to uncover the value of hiring super stars, and debunked a lot of assumptions that I had, and that I am sure are shared by recruiters everywhere.

 Groysberg presented his findings for a research study entitled, “Does Individual Performance Affect Entrepreneurial Mobility? Empirical Evidence from the Financial Analysis Market.” Among the key findings presented were:

• A star executive or performer delivers five to 10 times above the average worker
• In general, the performance of stars tends to decline after five years when they leave to join another company.
• When a star moves to a weaker firm, performance tends to plummet and they don’t recover.
• When stars make a lateral move, the decline to average is about two years.
• When stars move to a better firm, they tend not to decline
• Women generally do better than men when they transfer. The study showed that 18% of women were able to continue to perform for five years, probably because they are better at networking and more careful in scrutinizing potential employers.

Ask the Coach: What’s YOUR Online Identity Quotient?

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is a post contributed by CEO Coach Deb Dib, president of Executive Power Brand.

If you’re not visible, no one will know you’re valuable. And these days, the place to be visible is online. I don’t mean online via the Monsters and CareerBuilders of cyberspace. I’m talking about places where Google can find you; places where recruiters lurk seeking passive candidates and top talent; places where your target companies do their detective work.

 Have you made increasing your online visibility a priority? Most executives haven’t – they’ve been too busy doing their jobs. But your competitors are online – and if you want to be found, if you want to be the hunted not the hunter. You need to be online too.

Here’s an interesting tool – an online identity calculator from William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson, authors of Career Distinction (I like to call it the bible of personal branding and online identity). Take the quiz to see if you’re “digitally distinct,” or “digitally dissed,” or somewhere in between. You’ll quickly see if you need to just tweak your on line ID, or if you need to start a construction project from the ground up!