“I always say this to the people I work with….finding stars should be difficult.”
Simon Cowell - Television personality, record executive.
When it comes to finding quality executives and talented senior managers in the executive search business, no truer words have been said.
Our company has psychologically assessed about 70,000 people in the last three and a half decades – virtually all of them have been in the corporate arena. Of those, exactly 6 individuals are what we call ridiculously gifted operators of companies. Not 6%! Six. That’s less than one person in 10,000! Yikes! Of the remaining individuals, about 90% have peaked in mid-level management positions (or less) by age 45 – for any number of reasons. And of those remaining, according to HBR and other research, about 40% of newly promoted managers and executives fail within their first 18 months. (By the way, our failure rate in Simpson Associates, our executive search division, is, effectively nil – please forgive the shameless plug lol)! And, of course, it is no surprise that corporations are doing everything they can to “handcuff” their real stars.
With all of the above in play, it is our view that, when possible, the best approach these days is to find those talented individuals (for any and all roles that are critical to your company) who have tremendous “runway” and let them come up the curve, as it were. Yes, it takes “nerve” to hire someone who has not “done it all before.” But it is often the best way to go.
And one last point. Given the degree of difficulty in finding these types, give yourself more time in the search process.
