Category : Articles

Thirty years ago a large recruiting firm would have employed specialists with information technology and library science degrees to identify passive candidates for difficult-to-fill positions.

Thirty years ago a large recruiting firm would have employed specialists with information technology and library science degrees to identify passive candidates for difficult-to-fill positions.

This was true when I worked for Arthur Young Executive Resource Consultants (now Ernst & Young) in New York. Today, the internet enables a typical recruiter to gather the same information with a laptop in a day instead of a week in the library with professional support. Association membership lists, conference attendance rosters and programs, annual reports and gigabytes of additional information are available to make talent acquisition a more efficient process.

Websites like LinkedIn and Indeed, which didn’t exist a generation ago, offer a large and ever-growing resume bank that includes people who aren’t necessarily on the job market. It seems like we are heading toward a scenario where recruitment could be accomplished by a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI). But that Is not the case. At least not yet.
The future of talent acquisition will include these resources and more, including artificial intelligence to comb thousands of online records for pertinent information on qualified candidates. Still in its infancy for recruiting in my experience, I believe AI will become a more effective talent acquisition tool in the future.

Other major factors in the future of talent acquisition include the now common practice of zoom meetings with clients and stakeholders, as well as first and sometimes second round candidate interviews, saving time and the cost of travel for all concerned, not to mention the cost of dry cleaning.

The trend of working from home, required by the pandemic — but now a common practice — enables an employer to seek talent across a much broader geographic range for many positions. It may also eliminate the expense and risk of family relocation, which has derailed many a good search in the eleventh hour because of unforeseen complications.

That said, artificial intelligence and video conference technology are no substitute for human creativity and connectivity. A well-designed AI should be able to easily identify if a candidate has the needed skills for a position, but a recruiter’s intuition and judgment to ensure a good fit would be challenging for a software program to duplicate. Often, an exceptional candidate needs to be courted to look at a new opportunity. Persuasion and persistence are part of the human equation, and something an AI would likely not be able to do.

Maintaining ongoing personal contact with placed candidates and cultivating a reliable network of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color, etc.) sources to meet diversity, equity and inclusion mandates are important. Collaborating with the hiring authority to open doors for conversations with industry or professional sector thought leaders can be effective tools in a recruiter’s portfolio. As technology improves, recruiting becomes ever more efficient, but with all the obstacles in the road and challenges along the way, we aren’t ready for driverless talent acquisition. Yet.

By Joe McCormack

A successful search for an executive director requires an effective partnership between a search consultant and the client. That’s a statement so obviously true it hardly seems worth saying.

The problem is that such partnerships seldom work out successfully.

I know this from experience. I’m Joe McCormack, founding partner of McCormack+Kristel, the first openly gay-owned retained search firm in the US. We’ve been assisting our clients for almost 30 years, and in that time, we’ve been fortunate to be involved with a wide range of searches.

Some clients think the search consultant should shoulder the entire burden of the search, from the identification of sources and prospects through final reference checks. In their minds, that is what we are paid to do.

Other clients lack confidence in the partnership. They often compete with the search firm and conduct their own independent outreach efforts to identify and evaluate candidates. This leads to unnecessary confusion on the part of all prospects.

What follows, however, is a story about a partnership that did work — and why.

Gearing Up for a Challenging Search

A year ago, we were retained by TransForm, a progressive advocacy organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, to recruit an executive director. We were excited to work with TransForm; we loved its mission and its long history of impact in advocating for walkable communities with excellent transportation choices for people of all incomes. But we also recognized the search for a new executive director posed several challenges.

First, we were seeking a successor to the organization’s long-serving and beloved founder. The organization was being led at the time by interim co-directors, which could add some complexity to the process if adopted as a permanent leadership structure (some organizations do that). The organization was in its last year of several multi-year grants that would have to be renewed or replaced, which would be a daunting task for the new executive director. The client, which views its mission through an equity and inclusion lens, was determined to hire an executive director (or directors) with a deep commitment to those values. Add to these factors the regional cost of living — among the highest in the country — and this was not going to be easy search.

However, what distinguished this partnership from other client relationships was the wholehearted involvement of TransForm’s board and staff — including the staff representative on the search committee — in leveraging their relationships to provide valuable sources and possible candidates for us. There were no hidden agendas, nor was there any distrust of our capabilities — only the desire to achieve a common goal of finding the best person for the job, without regard for who would get the credit for success.

When Recruiters and Clients Work Together, Everyone Wins

A mentor once told me a search consultant’s experience is “a mile wide and an inch deep,” meaning we know what to look for in a candidate, but we also know the client is the expert in its program area and strategic goals. We recognized that TransForm’s board and executive team had long-lasting relationships with funders, advocates, and sector leaders, whose recommendations were worth countless hours of the data mining we could engage in for a search. Indeed, some candidates could only be persuaded to apply with a direct approach from TansForm’s leadership, which they were happy to supply. When we needed a quick informal reference, our client could speak candidly and confidentially to a trusted source, who would likely be more open with them than with us. As a result, we decided the best course of action was to initiate open weekly communications with the client that helped us refine our focus at every stage of the process.

With the arrival of COVID-19, the work-from-home directives, and the racial justice uprisings, TransForm experienced financial and morale challenges, like many organizations. Could TransForm’s work be continued remotely? Was the organization effectively serving low-income communities? Was it practicing equity and inclusion internally? These pressing questions weighed on the client and threw a wrench into the process.

We were also being outbid for talent by wealthier organizations, like consulting firms. Our client drafted talking points to respond to the issue and distributed them to everyone on the board and staff and those involved in the search. This enabled all of us as a team to deliver a consistent and credible message to prospects and candidates. When we worked as one, we all worked more effectively.

Everyone on the board and staff played an important and constructive role in the recruiting and evaluation process. Once we were able to narrow the search down to five very capable candidate, the final round of assessment was conducted via several Zoom interviews: one with each of three staff teams, one with the board of directors, and one “ask me anything” session with the outgoing interim executive director. I was happy to see that the extra time and effort it took to set up multiple meetings with each of the finalists ensured buy-in from everyone before reaching a final decision.

When the final candidate was selected and the offer accepted, TransForm’s staff made a video recording, which they shared with us, where they cheered the hard-working search committee and welcomed their new leader with a happy dance.

It is rare to see such a joyous outcome to a lengthy search. We always do our best to add value to the search process for our clients, and we are well paid for our work. But the happy dance was a heart-warming reward and a tribute to the success of one of the best executive search partnerships I’ve experienced.

What made this partnership so different from the rest? If I had to summarize, I’d say there was a healthy distribution of work, enormous patience, acknowledgement of expertise on behalf of both partners, and an approach to problem-solving that was never finger-pointing and only constructive.

If you want to do your own happy dance the next time you hire, take a lesson from TransForm: Be clear about your intentions and goals, trust the search consultants working with you, create a collaborative environment that draws on the strengths of all parties, regularly and openly communicate with the entire search team, and welcome your new hire warmly.

Oh, and feel free to dance!

Joe McCormack is the founding partner of McCormack+Kristel.

Barbara Presley Noble
Published: June 27, 1993

CHOOSE a media source, any media source. This is what you’ve seen recently: A sea of people, stretching from a stage at the foot of Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument, cheering as a color guard and a group of uniformed gay men and lesbians march in and brace at attention… Read Full Post on NYTimes.com

The following article by Joe McCormack was featured on Advocate.com on August 22, 2013.  View the original source here.

An executive recruiter argues that education and protections are essential to combating discrimination against transgender people in the hiring process.

I met my first out transgender candidate for a corporate position 13 years ago. We had arranged to meet at a coffee shop north of Los Angeles, and I awaited our rendezvous with some trepidation. At precisely 10 a.m. a very tall and stylishly dressed woman arrived for our meeting. Ms. R, as I will call her, would not have passed easily as a woman. She had the broad shoulders and height of an athlete and a resonant voice. Before our meeting I had assumed that she would likely be a confused and unhappy person. But I found that she was confident, at peace with her decision to transition, and eager to go back to work. After an hour-long meeting — which often brought tears to my eyes as she described the struggles with her former employer, her family, and the community in which she had been a youth and civic leader — I had a new respect and admiration for her determination and courage. It was also clear that she was highly qualified for the position and deserved every consideration. I received a very important lesson about transgender people that day.

Many executive recruiters have never knowingly met a transgender person, so they have all the negative stereotypes I had as a gay man in April of 2000, and possibly more. I was once told by a trans woman that there is a deep-seated suspicion about executive search consultants like me because a great telephone interview is often followed by a personal meeting where they are suddenly disqualified, no matter how strong their credentials. Of course no recruiter who wants to stay out of court would ever tell someone that s/he is disqualified for any reason not related to the job requirements, so there is always some plausible excuse provided for eliminating the candidate.

Is this simple prejudice, or is something else at work here?

A search consultant needs to measure two things to be successful: job-related skills and degree of fit with an organization. The first set of criteria represents the science of recruiting. The second set represents the art. Fit, chemistry, and cultural compatibility are all intangibles, but essential to ensuring a successful and sustainable match. For example, a hard-driving, ruthlessly competitive candidate from a Wall Street investment banking firm would probably be a poor fit for a children’s burn center. While that may seem like an extreme example, I think you can see my point.

What is wrong with many executive recruiters is that they are uneducated about transgender issues, and, as gatekeepers, they often make assumptions about whether a transgender candidate is a good fit for their client. Yes, prejudice is a factor, but a lack of awareness about their client’s human resources policies regarding transgender employees is an even bigger one. In the briefing process between the hiring authority and the recruiter to define the requirements for the position and the characteristics needed in a successful candidate, it rarely comes up. When diversity is discussed it’s almost always in reference to gender, race, or ethnicity. Sexual orientation is seldom at top of mind, even if the company is gay-friendly, let alone gender expression or gender identity.

How do we address this? First, we have to educate and train every recruiter about the transgender talent pool as a valuable resource for their searches. Thirty years ago, the mere hint that a candidate could be gay or lesbian was often enough to eliminate them from the hiring process. Today, even the largest search firms have some openly gay search consultants. In 10 years or even sooner, we may have openly transgender search consultants as well, but until then, we have some work to do. Participation at panel discussions and training sessions for members of the Association of Executive Search Consultants, the National Association of Executive Recruiters, and the International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruiters would be good places to start. Second, as a community, we need to ensure that corporate human resources departments include gender expression and gender identity as a protected characteristic on every position description they write and that they make it clear to the recruiters they hire that this is never a reason for disqualifying an otherwise excellent candidate.

Like the LGB community of 30 years ago, the transgender community is beginning to come out of the professional closet and demand its place at the table. The more visible the transgender community becomes, the more acceptance that transgender professionals will have in the workplace, and so on in a virtuous circle. It’s difficult for most fair-minded people to stereotype or dislike people they work alongside every day, especially if they are good team members and skilled at their jobs. As a recruiter I’ve found that transgender candidates are often overachievers, and they are certainly determined or they would never have undertaken their difficult and sometimes painful personal journeys.

JOE McCORMACK is the managing partner of McCormack+Kristel, the first openly gay executive search firm, established in 1993. He is also one of the cofounders of the Association of Transgender Professionals.