From the May ‘09 issue of IR Magazine

In last month’s column, I addressed the issue of career management in a recession from a macro perspective as well as from a conceptual standpoint.  In this month’s column, I thought I would delve into some of the career fundamentals that help all of us throughout our careers…

A Headhunter’s Call

While recruiters typically are used to fill positions at the mid and senior levels, you never know in today’s market when a recruitment firm may be used to fill a role… hence, the need to know more always. Whether you are interested in changing jobs or not, developing relationships with recruiters will definitely benefit you at some point in your career.  In an economy like the one we are in today, if you have built credible relationships with recruiters, then you have a resource to call upon should you either: a). decide you want to change jobs; or, b). have to change jobs due to a layoff.

A couple of tips about the style in which you communicate with recruiters – always be honest with a recruiter about your interest level in a position they are searching to fill.  If you have no interest, that is okay, however, offer to serve as a source of candidates – after all, their goal is to identify appropriate candidates to fill their clients’ positions. Be candid about such factors as: relocation (can you or not); industry preferences; size of company; personal challenges that may preclude you from considering certain jobs such as a working spouse who would need to identify a new career opportunity if relocation is a part of the situation, or children with special needs.

Changing Industry Sectors

While this is not a new topic in my column, it is worth repeating in this one. I believe that the investor relations professional is very well suited to changing industry sectors by the very nature of the role you serve in – that of a company knowledge purveyor, meaning a key part of your responsibilities is to immerse yourself in the business of the company you work for.  As a result, part of what I consider to be a hallmark quality about investor relations professionals is their ability to advance their careers across multiple industry sectors, leveraging their curiosity about new businesses as well as their thirst for knowledge acquisition.

In a recession, however, it may be a bit tougher to move outside of the current or most recent industry sector in which you worked, however, if you delve deep into understanding a new sector and are extremely well prepared for an interview, it can happen. Throughout the years I have found that most clients, with the exception of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, are quite open-minded about this issue.

Your role as a professional seeking to compete for a position in a new industry is to demonstrate your ability to understand many of the industry-relevant issues, have an understanding of the historical/macro view of how the industry has evolved, and understand specific issues related to the company with which you are interviewing.  Investor relations professionals have easy access to analysts (and other resources), so you should leverage that access to glean critical information that will allow you as an outsider to a particular industry, to have an intelligent and credible conversation with both a recruiter and specific employer — you must determine how to “build a bridge” from one industry to another that will allow these  individuals to easily understand how you would be able to be successful in a different sector than your previous experience may initially convey.

Tip of the Month:  No matter the reason you are seeking a new position, allow yourself to view the process as a learning journey and be open to all possibilities – that is, in part, the purpose of the chaos of turbulent times.

From the April ‘09 issue of IR Magazine

When the economy is good it is easy to know how to manage our corporate roles, be viewed as an expert, and, frankly, know when and how to change jobs.  In today’s world, with an economy that feels as though it is on its last breath, knowing how to manage your career and when to make which move is almost daunting.

Most professionals in years past have not even thought about “designing” their career path – career management wasn’t even a part of our professional lexicon, and in the past handful of years it has become the latest critical strategy to have in our arsenal of survival skills. When, how and why should any of us change jobs? What is the strategy behind our entire career? Should every job change make “perfect” sense?  And if they don’t, how does that reflect on us as professionals?

I have been an advocate of smartly created career brands, as I call them, for nearly two decades.  It is called creating career leverage.  And, while in an economy like this one many professionals might contemplate abandoning a career strategy for the sake of simply getting a job, I think career leverage is especially relevant.  

Remember, right now there is more unemployed talent available than in years past – that does not necessarily mean that the talent on the street is appropriate talent, nonetheless, there are eager professionals seeking work which means competition for you. One of the ways that career leverage can work to your advantage is that it creates relevance.  So, for example, if your career brand is mostly defined by experience in the healthcare sector, focusing on companies in that sector means that you already have a competitive knowledge and experience advantage over others who don’t.  Focusing in identifying opportunities in a sector for which you have experience can make a huge difference today.

Key to your career management and survival these days also is to create a “relevance bridge” from your career track record of experience (whether it be industry oriented, position based, or some other aspect of your career) to the other side vis a vis a potential employer.  Leverage in this circumstance will increase your odds of garnering a position that otherwise might be elusive.

Having said all of this, many of you know that historically I have been an advocate of the notion that functional experience (such as that of an investor relations professional) is completely transferable across industry sectors.  Why? Because most companies recruit talent for their functional excellence, experience and knowledge.  However, in today’s economy, hiring executives consider industry knowledge to be a competitive advantage, which translates into a career advantage in these hiring markets.

Tip of the Month:  Being an astute listener is as important to management as taking action on an assignment – hear what isn’t being said as well as what is.

From the March ‘09 issue of IR Magazine

Today’s world is about communication – with multiple constituencies, through multiple mediums, with intent, focus and regularity.  Recently, one of our clients faced a communications dilemma of a different sort that rarely happens, at least in our realm of executive search.

With his slate of candidates narrowed to the top one, the Chief Financial Officer gave us the thumbs up to construct an offer to the candidate who had impressed both the senior management team and several board members the most. As we worked diligently representing both the candidate and client’s interests – we typically work with both sides to gain agreement on the parameters of the job compensation offer –  it became evident that the candidate was either pre-occupied with something other than the possibility of this new career opportunity, or that he had lost interest.

We, of course, knew that this new role was not only exactly what the candidate was seeking, but we also knew it would be his next best career step in what had already been a very successful career. And, while we knew that our candidate was highly interested in this new position (after all it represented an opportunity for career advancement and a relocation back to a city in which he had many friends and family), he seemed more difficult to reach than most highly responsible and engaged investor relations professionals. 

As the days and then weeks passed, both the Chief Financial Officer and we had a difficult time reaching him – in fact he became nearly unresponsive. Knowing that there were some extenuating personal circumstances, we gave him the benefit of the doubt.  However, the candidate basically went completely silent and unresponsive to our outreach.  This left the client and we feeling as though the candidate was unprofessional and wondering if this would be typical behavior once he was in this senior level position. After all, the head of investor relations and communications role is largely that of serving as the voice of the corporation and its board across many constituencies.

Additional time passed during which we heard little from the candidate, which resulted in more doubt creeping into our client’s (and ours) mind, ultimately resulting in the client contacting the candidate directly and rescinding the offer. While we both understood the personal circumstances surrounding this professional’s purported uncaring silence, it completely unraveled his credibility, and ultimately the opportunity to advance his career.

The moral of the story is obvious – appropriate and responsive communication is paramount to one’s success, even if it means sacrificing a miniscule amount of personal time. Of course there is a balance between professional demands and personal circumstances, however, until you have established deep credibility with senior management, the pendulum must swing carefully and thoughtfully.

Tip of the Month: Understand the power of communication and leverage it with all pertinent constituencies.

From the February ‘09 issue of IR Magazine

We all know that politics are everywhere whether your position is based in the political arena or not.  Sometimes politics take precedence over reality, and sometimes an executive’s own career agenda thwarts what should be the common goal among a team of professionals whose common denominator should be the overall well-being of the organization.

In the human capital arena, we witness the challenges of politics, executive ranking and individual management agendas regularly.  Recently we had a client organization, a Fortune 500 company, where competing agendas resulted in a less than optimal situation – at least in my opinion.  The “search committee” within the company was comprised of members across the leadership team, which is the appropriate structure for hiring a professional who will work at the management team level.  In this particular instance, our primary client team included the CFO, Head of HR, and the CEO.

At the onset of the process, it appeared as though the core team were in agreement with one another about proposed candidate backgrounds, the career trajectory of the role, and the intangible qualities that they deemed important for success within their company.  As the search unfolded, however, it became rather clear that something was amiss — with little feedback from the client organization about why candidates were being rejected, we forged on, scratching our heads a bit about the client’s reaction to the superior talent we had offered them, all of whom had met the agreed upon criteria.

In a last ditch effort to glean information about what was transpiring at the client organization, we pressed the Head of Human Resources about his colleagues lack of interest in talent and he revealed that there were significant differences between the CFO’s expectations about the background of the next IRO and the CEO’s views about the type of background required.  The CEO, who demonstrated  early in the process that he had an exceptional understanding of what a first-rate IRO is, found himself caught in a bit of a quandary about how to balance his expectations with a CFO who had been a significant change agent for the strategic direction of the company which had resulted in led to increased corporate success. Enter politics and executive ranking into the scene, and voila, a recipe for conflict.

 The client executives had differences that had surfaced on an internal basis which resulted in the talent acquisition process becoming muddied.  So where should have the battle lines been drawn?  Does the CEO opt to ignore the CFO’s agenda, which was to hire someone less experienced and threatening to his own role in the limelight, or should the CEO push the process down the original path that was identified?

In this particular instance, the CEO opted to avoid entering what may have become a fierce battle between the CFO’s ego and his own personal desire to recruit high caliber talent into one of the most critical roles within his team. The CEO allowed his subordinate to move less qualified internal talent into the role and supplement with external counsel.  This situation was clearly not a “black-and-white” decision-making situation.  Decisions that CEOs make are almost always rooted in the not-so-obvious factors that develop in the internal operating environment – rarely are they evident at the onset of a discussion about a particular subject, and rarely will we know what the final piece of knowledge was that tipped the scale of his/her thinking.

From the January ‘09 issue of IR Magazine

With a new year, we all have the chance to start fresh. I’m all for resolutions and here are my top ten suggestions to help you steer your IR career in 2009.

1) Focus, focus, focus — on the idea of doing great work in every aspect of your job.

2) Be relentless in your pursuit of knowledge across the organization.

3) Identify new and innovative ways to partner with senior management and their lieutenants to further your visibility and relationship building within the organization.

4) Be a superb listener for your colleagues at all levels of the company.

5) Determine ways to contribute intellectually across the enterprise, even though that may mean increased time learning more about functional areas that are not a part of your specific area of purview.

6) Reach out to experts outside the organization to learn more about key indicators that may affect the business of your company and your role in order to anticipate future issues better and provide more appropriate counsel.

7) Be clear about your voice and strive for providing the most credible counsel to your colleagues and your CEO.

Understand the pressures that your management team is facing and learn how to ‘lean into’ them and provide strategic support as they determine how to navigate a troubled economy.

9) Be undeterred in your quest to define your function and your leadership as relevant to the organization, understanding clearly that the notion of relevancy may change over time.

10) Be open to whatever role you are expected to serve and whatever responsibilities you are asked to undertake as management drives the business strategy.

From the December ‘08 issue of IR Magazine

Many of our readers are old enough to remember the comedians Abbott and Costello and their famous vignette of “Who’s on First, What’s on Second and I don’t Know is on Third”….in my opinion that sums up today’s financial markets in the U.S.

Who would have thought that with the seemingly sophisticated framework of the global financial markets, we would have recessionary conditions in the United States and capital markets in a panicked state around the world in 2008? If you are like me, well educated and immersed in business, the scenario I just described would probably not have crossed your mind as a reality in your lifetime… but reality it is.

Careers and career navigation in a market like this one are defined in ways that few of us think about in a robust economy – employed talent seeks myriad new ways to further underscore their value to an employer, knowing how fragile employment can be while chaos erupts around them.  At the same time, unemployed professionals must make new types of careers decisions, oftentimes to aggressively pursue career steps that might seem a bit illogical in an effort to identify and secure employment.

The most prudent advice I can offer professionals is:

n  Think clearly as you contemplate your next career step – it is perfectly acceptable to select an opportunity that may not seem as mainstream as the role you previously had – just make sure there is a thread that can be woven into your overall career path for future purposes.

n  Be open to the possibilities that an unusual employment marketplace may have to offer – sometimes a lateral move or a decision to take a job which others wouldn’t even remotely consider can be enlightening and invigorating.

n  Don’t give up – consider this chapter to be a discovery phase about what the possibilities in life can offer – even when 9 out of 10 situations result in “no,” you must forge onward in your pursuit of the next step.

Is there a Silver Lining?

Most of all, know that careers endure the test of time, and we are all facing similar dilemmas as the economy undulates with each passing day.  At the risk of sounding trite, this too shall pass – is it a troublesome time for many whose careers were taken away from them injudiciously? Yes.  Is it comforting that it feels as though we have no vote in our destiny? No.

And, while many careers are stalling completely, remember that investor relations is doing well because companies need now, more than ever, the external facing voice of the IRO to the financial markets.

Cheers to 2009

I close my column this year by wishing all of our readers around the globe much success and good health in the coming year.

From the November ‘08 issue of IR Magazine

How far is too far when a hiring executive takes his or her own initiative to insert themselves in the search process in an inappropriate manner? Let’s focus on reference checking, for example.  Is it crossing the line for the executive seeking new talent  to assume full responsibility for referencing, or is the C-suite professional to be given license to do whatever he or she thinks should be done whether it falls within the boundaries of acceptable protocol or not?

Clearly there are varying schools of thought about defining boundaries throughout the search process.  Every time we engage with a company to conduct a search, we explore the ways in which an executive would like to partner with us and how they can add value in the process.  Once clearly defined, all parties can advance the process productively with a clear set of goals in mind.

However, we have had clients who have taken it upon themselves to take ownership of varying aspects of the search process without telling us, which tends to cause some level of discomfort with both us and our candidate pool.  For example, we had a mid-cap technology company for which we were conducting a search to fill the senior-most investor relations position. At one juncture in the process after the CFO interviewed a candidate (and decided she would be a top contender for the position) he decided that he would reach out directly to the analyst community that covered her current employer – that caused tremendous anxiety with our candidate. 

How did she find out?  One analyst in particular, who was a huge fan of hers, called her and shared the details of the unsolicited reference call from our client CFO. Need less, to say, our candidate was disappointed and shocked at the CFO’s behavior – it resulted in her losing confidence in the CFO’s ability to respect confidentiality and she opted out of the search.  And, although duly warned by us to discontinue the behavior, the CFO opted again to pursue behind-the-scenes reference checking with the analyst community a second time – this resulted in our firm terminating the relationship with the client organization.

Why do we opt out of relationships where client executives choose not to follow protocol? Because usually this type of behavior results in creating high risk situations where candidates’ employment can be compromised, confidentiality is violated, which results in the trust between talent and a hiring entity being undermined. Not to mention the fact that there is a liability factor in a situation such as the one mentioned above, where indiscriminate reference checking can result in termination of a candidate, stock valuation decline, and potentially a lawsuit for all involved.

The moral of the story is, yes it is appropriate to expect that “stealth” (or confidential) reference checks will take place as part of the natural course of a search.  And, hiring executives can have a role is this aspect of the process if handled deftly and in partnership with the search firm so that the integrity of all parties is protected.

From the October ‘08 issue of IR Magazine

The world is changing faster than some generations can imagine…yet for other generations change is a constant force in their lives.  How do the shifting demographics of our country, the influence of professionals from other cultures around the world, and the changing demographics of business affect the IRO world?  Dramatically.

Demography is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as “the study of the characteristics of human populations, such as size, growth, density, distribution, and vital statistics.”  In my world of executive search demography (or as many today describe it in a limited way, diversity) manifests itself in myriad ways. From U.S. based corporations defining diversity largely from an ethnic perspective and companies in other parts of the world defining diversity in a wide variety of ways that are germane to their cultural/historical framework, with some entities defining it almost exclusively to include female candidates (believe it or not).  In addition, as I have mentioned before, the merging of four generations of talent layers yet another dimension to the equation.

I believe that in the world of investor relations, demography is critical because you serve as key advisors to management not only about the financial markets, but you also contribute across the organization in other areas vis a vis the overall success of the business.  Additionally, as investor relations professionals it is critical that you understand the changing dynamics about human capital a you are the stewards of competitive knowledge that influences the financial markets. Following are just a few of the ways that this is an important area to glean for the future:

n  Human capital is the single most important driver of business success;

n  Shifts in demographics can mean target audiences for goods and services change;

n  Target investment audiences are shifting from primary capital markets to secondary markets, which influences how and where a company invests energies in its targeting efforts;

n  Globalization overall means cultural influences are no longer limited to geographic regions.

As you continue to pursue the broader realms of how your individual companies conduct business, one of the most important strategies that you can deploy for career advancement is to improve the breadth and depth o f your personal knowledge about changing demographics worldwide.  Conduct the research to be able to embrace the framework and contemplate how this will affect your company’s business success for the future, as well as consider how you can influence management’s understanding of how and why your company may need to position itself differently by creating a 7 – 10 year plan that delineates how to leverage the shifting human capital markets.  Wall Street is already thinking about these issues and will soon be querying you about your company’s game plan with this issue.

From the September ‘08 issue of IR Magazine

We all change jobs throughout the course of our working lives…some professionals change jobs often and others less frequently, however, gone are the days when a person can be recruited into a new company and the employer takes care of the employment journey.  Enter the concept of “portability.”

Now, you probably are thinking that this relates to an individual’s ability to change jobs – we all can do that to one degree or another. Portability, though,  in today’s employment markets means the ability for an individual to take with them tangible skill sets, intangible human attributes, and their innate ability to integrate well into a new organization whether there is a framework for onboarding new employees or not.

Let’s face it, there is tremendous diverstiy across organizations in terms of philosophical approach as it relates to providing transition support for new employees. Yes, there is oftentimes the typical “orientation” that an employee receives, however, what is lacking in many  companies is the level of sophistication required to provide the type of partnering for a new executive that ultimately creates and allows for a smooth integration into the culture, its politics, expectations, etc. – this ultimately affects the retention of employees on a long term basis.

A professional’s portability increases significantly their ability to transition into a new company requiring less from the new team of colleagues than might otherwise be required. For today’s executive, it means the difference in being able to be successful in a broader array of organizations (meaning there are fewer companies today that provide tangible on boarding programs, so knowing how to transition is valuable) and is a very marketable quality that professionals should determine how to market as part of their inherent value to a prospective employer.

Talent should think critically about their transitions into prior organizations, how they were able to overcome any internal relationship and/or political challenges, and how to articulate those as sought-after qualities.  Corporate cultures tend to be rather complex and so does human nature as it relates to the  notion of being successful.  We all have a yearning to be successful and we have individual definitions of what success is.  Portability, although defined by intangible skills, is also very tangible in terms of how success behavior manifests itself in daily corporate life – identify those key drivers in past career transitions and know how they correlate to your potential success in a future entity.

From the August ‘08 issue of IR Magazine

It is easy to address the subject of how a candidate should approach the interview and career navigation process, but what about the hiring executive?  How easy or difficult is it from his or her perspective?

Talent acquisition today is as challenging as it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, from the standpoint of “where’s the talent” and “how do I find them?”  In spite of all of the online channels (and the traditional approach of executive search) available to hiring executives seeking all levels and types of talent, the ultimate challenge can be three-fold:

n  Determining which channel is the most effective for a specific hiring need;

n  Sifting through voluminous candidate responses to identify which talent has been smart enough to apply for a job that they are actually qualified to do; and,

n  Knowing, as a hiring executive, the priority of technical skills and leadership qualities required to exceed expectations.

Laser sharp talent identification strikes us all at certain points in our careers, as leaders and bosses, oftentimes evoking frustration and anxiety about the way to approach hiring the right candidate for a specific job.

I am always confident for all of our clients that there is exceptional talent in the marketplace and that the challenge is identifying the right talent.  However, my clients sometimes wander down a road of trying to answer the question before the journey even begins, which can limit the thinking of everyone involved in the hiring process.

First Things First

I consider hiring to be an opportunity for a hiring executive, not a burden or one more item to simply check off the “to-do” list. Hiring exceptional talent is successful when an executive takes the time to reflect upon what has worked well in the past and what has not – it is a time to reshape, rethink, and reengineer a position or function to improve productivity and success.  Take the time to process intellectually how the position should be defined for the future and from this exercise, it will become apparent as to which talent acquisition channel should be used.

The New Reality

Talent acquisition today is about a new reality and it is a strategy that I encourage all hiring executives to adopt, that of open-mindedness – consider the vast possibilities, especially if you are working with a search firm.  After all, you are paying the search firm for appropriate counsel, extensive efforts on your behalf to scour the talent markets to provide a panel of candidates with broad and diverse backgrounds…so, leverage that opportunity to consider talent that represent  experience and career track records beyond the norm.  Have the confidence to consider the possibilities, the courage to say “no” to talent that does not meet your needs and “yes” to those who, at first blush, may not appear to have the precise background you are seeking.  I have found throughout the years that, oftentimes, it is the candidate whose experience is somewhat “off-spec” who offers a broader and deeper depth of thinking and strategic approach to problem solving than those who have the typical and easily recognized set of career experiences.