Top Guns: Sourcing Senior IT Execs In The Internet Age
By Martha Frase-Blunt© IT Recruiter. January 2000.
The job of the CIO has never been more complex or expansive. Today's senior technology officers exist in an environment fueled by speed, change, spiraling budgets and wholesale integration. "Demand for top IT executives would be impressive in any case, but now e-commerce is adding to the hiring boom," said John Davis, president of the executive search firm John J. Davis & Associates.
According to Davis, senior-level IT hiring has grown 10 percent annually since the mid-1990s. "There are many reasons, but high turnover among CIOs is key. Aside from the CEO, the CIO's job is the most challenging and stressful in America-and it's a trend that will intensify with the Internet and e-commerce."
Information Week reported recently that, according to its National IT Salary Survey, 91 percent of CIOs said what matters most in their jobs is challenge and responsibility, while only 86 percent said achieving company goals is most important, and just 76 percent indicated that understanding their company's business strategy was principal. These findings are undoubtedly frustrating to business executives, who increasingly rely on CIOs to move the organization's mission-critical projects forward. "CEOs want to move faster and often don't see their CIOs as change agents," asserted Davis. "E-commerce is putting enormous pressure on cycle times and pushing IT closer to marketing and sales."
Evolving, Singular Roles
"These days, it's important for senior IT executives to grasp rapidly changing technologies, but that's just number three or four on the list," said Bob Medrano, director of HR for Syncor International in Woodland Hills, Calif. In his long recruiting career, Medrano has placed several CIOs, and acknowledged that the job has been transformed almost unrecognizably in recent years. "Now a CIO candidate must have sound business knowledge, must be fully conversant about the company's growth and direction. If you think about it, every time an organization undergoes change, there will typically by IT implications."
The explosion of user-focused, Internet-based business functions has clouded the traditional role of the CIO. With so many hands within an organization touching and manipulating the technology, what is the true function of the IT department? In this respect, every CIO's job falls somewhere different on the continuum between traditional hardware/software guru and full-fledged corporate "knowledge master." Much depends on the personality of the CIO-they could end up running the company, or their role may be simply maintaining functionality.
Therefore, the CIO's personal style and that of the corporate culture must mesh perfectly, and that's the principal challenge of recruiting them. The rule of thumb states: Find a company that is the clone of yours in every way, and entice their CIO over to your side. In essence, CIOs are the ultimate passive candidates.
Networking vs. The Net
For this and other reasons, said Gary Kaplan, of executive search firm Gary Kaplan & Associates, it's likely that you won't find your next CIO on the Internet. Few senior executives are using online job-posting services, with the exception of those actively looking or currently unemployed. "Most aren't using the Web as a tool to advance their careers; they're too busy, or don't believe their dream job will be found there. And there's a certain panache about being headhunted."
Tom Burnham is VP for human resources at specialty pharmaceutical company Allergan, Inc., in Irvine, Calif., and a former executive recruiter for Korn Ferry International. In his experience, positions paying $125K and more are not found in abundance on the Internet-yet-and part of the reason may be the highly specialized nature of these jobs. "If I were looking for a CIO, I would want to target successful companies with a similar environment and global presence as my own. "Sifting through online resumes and bios probably won't yield a close match, he believes.
Medrano said his firm uses the Internet primarily as an advantageous research tool to uncover passive candidates, look at target industries and explore like organizations, "who are doing creative things that might have implications for your needs." He also uses it for surveying IT affinity groups for members who might fit within his organization.
Choosing To Outsource
But the hard work of sourcing senior IT execs goes on constantly in the old-fashioned form of networking," said Kaplan. "We have a very sophisticated research capability, which involves gaining entry into companies that meet our parameters, building a source list, making friendly calls and doing what we call 'candidate development'." As part of that process, Kaplan can also return to his client with market intelligence on industry and hiring trends. "For example, I can give them insight on their reputation as an employer, or inform them that their compensation packages aren't stimulating the best people, or that their location is a turnoff."
Burnham agreed that the traditional route of hiring an executive search firm still seems to be the preferred strategy for the top guns. "We can and do use the Internet for researching companies, but for recruiting, it adds value to do a retained search. I can do everything the executive recruiter can do, but it would be too time-consuming for me to do it as well. I'm not going to cut corners on an important strategic assignment, such as a CIO, over a fee of $60,000."
Medrano, too, said those most qualified to take on the artful task of large-scale networking are executive search firms. "If I wanted someone within the pharmaceutical industry, I could put out a lot of feelers and allow my network to surface candidates-and they will come up. But I'll receive resumes for everyone and their brother-in-law, which leaves me with a time-consuming screening process. A more precise way is to let an executive search firm take it on."
Good firms are worth their weight in gold, he said. To determine who's the best, "Look at their record, client base, retention rates of people they place and how much repeat business they get from their clients-it should be 50 percent or more of their business."
Bringing the Exec Search Home
The senior management of the burgeoning Internet start-up Carstation.com values the executive search function for all the same reasons, but it took the unusual step of bringing it in-house. The e-commerce company, which enables automotive businesses and consumers to communicate, transact and manage the entire car repair process via the Internet, hired Stuart Staffing to handle all of the HR needs of the developing company. Tracy Stuart and her team of five act as retained search consultants to fill the company's 80 or so open positions, and recently placed Carstation's new chief architect, Bill Gimbel.
So would an Internet company be more likely to use the Internet for recruiting senior staff? "They are not there on the Net," Stuart claimed. "We have found resumes and bios for top-level candidates online, but networking is still the biggest activity for us. We do heavy cold-calling into companies to get valuable information from people working there; that's how it goes in this business."
The successful placement of Gimbel was a combination of both, she explained. "One of our contractors got Bill's name while cold-calling into his former company. Then a search engine located his bio on the Web, and from that we knew he was a promising candidate for the CIO position." From that point, the Internet continued to play a large role in wooing Gimbel to the young company. "Much of our initial screening was done via e-mail conversations," she recalled.
As per the executive sourcing credo discussed above, Stuart was looking for a candidate whose experience and background closely matched the new position he would hold. "He had built an engineering department, so he had direct knowledge of starting an operation from the beginning." Even more attractive for Carstation.com was the fact that Gimbel brought with him an engineering team, ready to plug in.
What Do Top Guns Really Want?
The vast majority of CIO candidates are passively recruited, so what does it take to attract them away from a comfortable position?
"As far as money goes, the long-term picture has to be substantial," said Medrano. "Stock options are essential, and they also look for equity and other long-term incentives." Many CIOs are in mid- or late career, and so have an eye on funding their retirement.
But perhaps more than money, CIOs are looking to become strategic players within an organization, said Kaplan. "Most want to be viewed as business people who happen to function in the technical world. If you really want to appeal to the crème de la crème, give them the opportunity to sit at the table as a member of the management or executive committee, as opposed to being a servant of line management."
CIOs will also be looking for an environment where they get adequate support from senior management. "Their role is very visible within an organization, and they're usually effecting change. They want to know that when things go wrong they won't be left hanging out there."
Your CIO candidate may also have advancement on his or her mind. "Many are turned on by the opportunity to transcend the IT function, and may be more interested in a position that offers a shot at other roles within the company, like the COO," noted Kaplan. "Some don't want to be pigeonholed into technology. Look around and you'll see a lot of CIOs who have come from non-technical backgrounds as well."
Finally, he added, CIO candidates will be looking carefully at the state-of-the-art of the company's technology, and at how the IT function is viewed by other staff. "No one wants to step into a quagmire of disorganization or neglect."
But be aware that not every candidate will be attracted to an environment of bleeding-edge technology: "Some may want the challenge of building."
Sourcing Senior Talent Online
As Kaplan noted, CIO talent is not found in abundance on the Internet-yet. But recruiters and CIOs we spoke with agreed that this is a growing area for recruiting top guns. They shared with us the Web sites they might surf to find prospects or to post a resume. The most frequently mentioned were:
- www.monster.com
- www.dice.com
- www.cio.com
- www.headhunter.com
- www.CIOwanted.com
- www.6figuresjobs.com
- www.execunet.com
- www.netshare.com
A Caution About Ethics
Kaplan and others are concerned about the growing assumption among some recruiting organizations that resumes and leads downloaded from the Internet somehow aren't subject to the standard two-year "off limits" policy-the agreement that prevents executive search firms from recruiting employees of their client companies for at least two years after filling a position for that client.
"In the executive recruitment arena, this hands-off rule has been honored almost universally until recently," he asserted, but companies using the Internet to source are ignoring this convention. And now some large executive search firms are trying to bypass the rule by spawning separate offshoot Internet recruiting companies, freeing them to recruit individuals from companies they're already serving. Kaplan claimed-"Not an appealing prospect when you're the company enjoying a confidential client relationship with a search firm, only to find your executives are being recruited through the same firm's Internet 'back door'." He added, "If an online resume comes to our attention from an employee of an existing client, we won't touch it, and we'll let them know why."
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