Philip Randerson, European Leaders: It is incredibly different
being a CEO, very lonely
It’s getting harder than ever to find people with the right set of skills to lead telecoms operators. Headhunters and the boards who commission them have a small pool of people to hire from — and the changes in the industry mean that companies are looking for expertise that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.
At the same time some leading recruitment agencies are recognising that they have a role in mentoring industry leaders as they move into those top positions — not only advising them on opportunities that are coming up, but helping them in their current roles.
“It is incredibly different being a CEO, very lonely,” says Philip Randerson of headhunting group European Leaders. “The role is harder than it’s ever been.”
The board, he reminds recruits, is there for the shareholders’ benefit, not for the CEO’s. And companies he works with — globally, despite the European name — are more demanding than ever. “Once they would have been happy with certain skills gaps,” he says. “Now a CEO needs commercial and financial skills as well as vision and management. That’s why the turnover of CEOs is high, because the chances of success are slim. You’ve got to be a fully rounded superhero.”
Sean Arnold, Korn/Ferry: Companies are looking for skills
that didn’t exist two years ago
Sean Arnold, senior client partner at one of the biggest headhunting agencies, Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann, agrees. Companies that once focused on a specialist activity such as telecoms, software or professional services now want someone who can cover the range. “That’s meant quite a change of profile of the people,” he says. And companies also demand someone who knows about social networking, “expertise that didn’t exist two years ago”, he notes.
That means companies often believe they have to look outside for the expertise “as they don’t believe they’ve got it internally”, yet “the qualified candidate pool is very small and geographically dispersed”.
Erik Aas, Axis: You need people with understanding of
technology and social networking
Erik Aas, CEO of mobile operator Axis in Indonesia, agrees with Korn/Ferry’s analysis. “It’s different from the past,” he says. “You need people with understanding of the mobile broadband business from the technology point of view and of the social networking business. It’s not enough to sell a phone and some minutes.”
The industry is “fundamentally different from a few years back”, says Aas, a former Telenor executive who has been running Axis since October 2007. “You can never walk around the industry and believe it’s the same as five years ago. People don’t use SMS any more — they put their messages in Facebook. The management team needs to understand what’s going on.”
So where do companies find their new C-level executives — and how well do headhunters help them?
Sometimes not very well, according to Garrett Johnston, who is a former chief marketing officer of Russia’s MTS group. “In one company I worked for we were looking for C-level people for Latin America. The headhunters sent people who couldn’t speak Spanish,” he recalls. Johnson speaks 11 languages so is in a position to check. “They didn’t even have a chat with local management to see what challenges [the new person] needed to fix.”
Cynthia Gordon, Orange: Many headhunters for junior roles
seem to work off LinkedIn
Former MTS colleague Cynthia Gordon, now the executive at France Telecom Orange in charge of the company’s relationship with Apple, is also sceptical about some headhunters’ claims. “Some agencies say they have international experience, but sometimes it can be focused on western European markets rather than the CIS area or Africa,” says Gordon, noting that she is speaking on a personal basis rather than as an official of Orange.
Irish-born Johnson agrees. Agencies “are still very biased towards Anglo-Saxon candidates”, he says. “They are overweight with people whose experience is Middlesex and Edinburgh not Shanghai and Djakarta. Consultancies don’t go to the global pool.”
At Korn/Ferry, Arnold points out that there is a global market for CEOs, though not in all countries. “The US tends to hire US domestic people, and [it’s the same in] other European markets”, except for the UK, which is “amenable to looking around the world”. It is “the most international telecoms market in the world by a long way” for hiring executives. In addition, operators in the Middle East and Africa tend to go outside their countries, so they have “an expat top team”.
Mark Rigolle: When you use headhunters to look for a job, you
are not the customer
Mark Rigolle, the former Belgacom executive is working in the opposition direction — trying to find a new position after leaving a senior role with Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES.
“I’ve been on all sides of the equation, having used recruitment consultants to fill positions, both at senior and less senior levels,” he says. “Over the last six months I’ve been using them in my search for my next job.”
He has a warning for other executives planning their next move in the industry: “When using headhunters when you are looking for a job, you must understand you are not the customer, companies that award the contracts are,” he says.
“Their business is not to place executives who happen to be available; their business is to fill positions with the right candidate, whether or not that person happens to be available at that particular time or not. To put it perhaps harshly: You are simply an input into a process through which they earn their fee.”
That fee can be substantial. “One third of salary — that is pretty much industry average,” says Randerson at European Leaders. “That is what we aim to get.”
The process can be long and should be detailed. Arnold at Korn/Ferry says six months is “unduly long”. Gordon at Orange, though speaking personally, warns that in her experience of recruiting senior executives “to get someone for a senior role it’s six to nine months”. That’s because “people are mostly on six months’ notice, but you can negotiate down”.
That’s the typical notice period in European companies, though in can be much less — perhaps a surprising two weeks — in the US, said an international executive who prefers to be anonymous.
What is the client paying for? Knowledge, suggests Aas at fast-growing Axis. “When you recruit at C-level I want the headhunter to really know the candidate. I do expect that at that level.” Of course that means “it’s more expensive”, he adds.
One client, in the process of building up a new company in the industry, gives headhunters “three or four weeks to put a long list together of 15-20 people”, and this executive, who did not want to be named, agrees that personal knowledge is important. “The headhunter should have spent time talking to them, know they are interested and have sufficient information about them. I would probably choose four or five to interview.”
Earlier in the process, the headhunting company should talk to the client and agree where to look to draw up the shortlist. “The recruiter will want to know which companies are off limits and which people off limits” — and which companies to look at as targets. After that, the headhunter should provide telephone feedback to the client every two weeks during the process on who they’ve seen.
Arnold at Korn/Ferry offers weekly feedback, he says. “You produce a shortlist for the client to meet”, followed by “meetings with the board”. The whole process takes the agency “100 days from start to finish when they know who they want”, but that “depends on each side keeping up the momentum, moving the process forward”.
Rigolle agrees on the need for reports. “As a company executive using a headhunter, demand detailed and regular feedback,” he says. “The best process I’ve ever seen — a great service from a small boutique — was a sequence of weekly progress report calls. We started with the long list, narrowed that down to a shortlist, then did further candidate research and then set up a series of interviews.”
That allows the client “to guide the consultant continuously in the right direction, saving valuable time for all”, he recommends. “I would insist on weekly 15-20 minute phone calls to keep abreast. Otherwise you hardly know what’s going on except through a written contact report.” That helps build satisfaction “in what is otherwise all too often is a murky process”.
Walter Vicente, CSL: Agency must understand the role and the
culture of the organisation
Walter Vicente, the CFO of Hong Kong mobile operator CSL, insists that it is vital for an agency to “understand not only the technical and functional elements of the role being filled but, perhaps more importantly, the culture of the organisation and the profile of person that CSL seeks in its team members”.
A culture clash is the biggest problem for failure in a new C-level appointment, says headhunter Randerson: “It’s the number one reason why it doesn’t work out — it’s the culture,” he says.
Johnston agrees on the importance of culture. “All the consultancies do badly at a cultural fit,” he says. “You take the competence for granted. Will it be someone who can motivate a big organisation? My experience on the recruitment side is they do not take the time to imbibe the corporate culture and the business strategy. What kind of people are needed?”
Vicente has a particular challenge because “Hong Kong has been a very buoyant market for finance professionals over the last few years”, he says. “Competition for top talent is very tough and I think this has somewhat complicated the job of our recruiters at times. Generally, we have received at least one or two suitable candidates for key roles but the time it takes to achieve this can vary significantly.”
He looks for agents that “are prepared to invest time, and their best recruiters, to work with us in developing a business partnership that is stable and effective over long periods”.
A long-term relationship is important in the other direction too, in the personal view of Gordon. “They’re useful when I’ve had to make a decision [about my career]. I ask them to evaluate my experience, seeing what I’m missing and what has been important at various stages — for example, getting international experience, not just working abroad but also living in very different cultures.”
As a result, “this has helped to give me fresh perspectives on myself and I believe the top people are very open to these sorts of discussions”, she adds.
At European Leaders, Randerson and his colleagues have taken a step further in building relationships with executives by setting up an academy for CEOs and other C-level executives. “Most of them are in the role for the first time,” he notes. “Where do you go to learn? It’s very difficult to talk to the board and there can be an experience gap or a skill gap.” About 150 executives are members of the academy, which meets in groups of 15 to 20 four times a year each.
“It gives them an opportunity to learn from their peers. It’s the only way you can do it.” Randerson and his colleague in the company, including Ashley Ward, former CEO of OSS company Orchestream and then of mobile payment company Upaid. “We really know what it’s like to be a CEO,” says Randerson.
Some will ask why anyone should need headhunters these days, when most executives are on LinkedIn. Gordon raises an eyebrow: “A lot of headhunters for more junior roles seem to be working off LinkedIn and the internet,” she says. “To me that seems to be not the best way to recruit someone. I believe a personal recommendation is much more vital — and that is just as true for internal recruitment.”
At Axis in Indonesia, Aas makes a positive use of the business networking site. “Internally in a company I see candidates coming to me via LinkedIn, though maybe not at C-level,” he says. It is “a place where people find each other. That’s a bit of a challenge for headhunters.”
And Axis is also positioning itself on LinkedIn, he says. “I want people to want to join Axis, to see what sort of culture we are, and what sort of leaders we are — so the top management is visible there. And people can come to me via LinkedIn.” GTB
Further reading from Global Telecoms Business:
What's holding women back in telecoms? 11 Nov 2011
GTB announces this year's 40 under 40 22 Jun 2011
Interview: Erik Aas of Axis 02 Feb 2010
DT to boost trainee recruitment 01 Sep 2009
Courage and determination needed if women are to succeed ... 01 Apr 2008
Marketing in Moscow 01 Oct 2007