

The Companies Headhunters Avoid - cwan
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_37/b4146042031508.htm

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run4yourlives
I've said this often and I will say it again here: You want leaders, go
military. Combat facing only.

Why?

Despite the (incorrect) Hollywood caricature of military leaders being shoot
first ask questions later seim-psychotic blowhards, the military rewards
everything you want in a leader and at the same time aggressively weeds out
all but the strongest performers.

A good military resume will almost without exception create the following
person:

1\. Analytical observer - the fog of war keeps these people asking "what don't
I know" even when it seems clear that they have all the information about a
decision point.

2\. Good Planner - Data gathering is important in order to make the right
calls.

3\. Decision Maker - These folk are always able to make calls - yes sometimes
the wrong one - without knowing certain details.

3\. Decisive Action Taking - Once the call has been made, these folk see that
the Action is executed immediately, and attempt to gather information
regarding the effectiveness of the action as soon as possible.

4\. Results focused - These people appreciate and reward high quality results,
which means they tend to breed people like them.

However, the most important quality is:

5\. "In contact leadership" - Combat leaders tend to have a significant
ability to think on their feet in reaction to the changing environment. In my
experience, this never seems to be properly learned in a civilian in the same
way. I suppose it has something to do with the magnitude of the choices being
made, but even non-combat military folk seem to be better at this than the
average manager.

Yeah, I'm a veteran. But I spent five years working in uniform, and have spent
about 15 out. Based on my observations, and excluding outliers, the difference
is noticeable.

~~~
btilly
That's perfect if you've got a top-down command-and-obey culture. However many
organizations do not look like this. Veterans that I've known often have not
developed their abilities at building a consensus, getting people to buy in,
or pushing responsibility and decision making down to the people in the
trenches. In some environments that can be a real problem. (Ironically the
problems seem to be invisible to the people causing it.)

This is not a slam on veterans. My point is that many different corporate
cultures work well. However a mismatch between employee and culture tends to
fail badly. And graduates of the military culture are not going to work in all
corporate cultures.

It is worth re-reading the article with this in mind. Many of the companies
listed that recruiters avoid are great companies. Companies like Oracle, Coca-
Cola and Intel are world class and clearly work very well. But they breed
people who don't fit into most other US corporations.

~~~
run4yourlives
That is certainly true.

 _Veterans that I've known often have not developed their abilities at
building a consensus, getting people to buy in, or pushing responsibility and
decision making down to the people in the trenches._

You're right on the first two, completely off on the last one. Military
leaders will view building a consensus and getting buy in as politics, and
avoid it. They will most certainly delegate properly, especially if surrounded
by proven performers. In fact, you can pretty much observe what they think of
their colleagues by observing who they delegate to. If they don't delegate at
all, odds are likely that they would also consider their staff lacking in
skill if asked.

That being said, without being too draconian, I'm learning more and more that
assessing the first two items as politics is accurate. Sometimes necessary,
but not fun.

Employee/Company culture matching is tremendously important as you point out.

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ShabbyDoo
It's interesting that the executive recruiters seemingly were concerned with
the success of the winning candidate. I've had countless IT recruiters take
more interest in the sale-ability of a person vs. the result of the placement.
I guess the high-end recruiters make their money through reputation (in the
eyes of both execs and corporate boards).

~~~
tptacek
At the upper levels of recruiting, the amount of effort that probably goes in
to pushing a single candidate might make a recruiter think twice about pushing
someone who'd be negged as a culture mismatch. Executive recruiting isn't like
normal recruiting.

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sunkencity
Amazing article! Short version: Recruiters dont want to recruit from large
successful companies, because they either breed incompetents (it doesn't
matter if you suck when you work at Coca Cola business is good anyway), or
psycopaths (The take no prisoners culture at Oracle, EMC), or paranoid
politicos (Intel)...

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tptacek
I've heard similar things said about (non-developers) from Microsoft. A dev
job at MSFT is probably as challenging as any equivalent dev role anywhere,
but project, program, and product management at Microsoft is heavyweight and
idiosyncratic.

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gehant
I think it's sad/funny there is no mention of how a middle aged white man
(with C-level experience of course) is best qualified to revitalize and
revolutionize a makeup company.

How many female product/service industries are "lead" by middle aged white
men...scary when you think about it.

~~~
aristus
Why would a man be less qualified? Should a female be automatically assumed
unqualified to run a men's magazine or or a cigar manufacturer? Why are either
of those scenarios scary?

~~~
gehant
This is what's scary: women still face a very thick glass ceiling in business
(not men - the flip scenario comparisons are baseless and for the most part
insulting to women, including those who smoke).

More importantly, is it OK that women make up less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEO
positions? That's not sad?

To clarify, there's a huge difference between unqualified and less qualified.
I would never say men/women are unqualified to do anything...

Fact: There are women who are qualified to be CEO of Fortune 500s.

Assuming selection from the above, _she_ would be more qualified since she
would be more likely to 1) be passionate about the product, 2) be an actual
consumer of the product, 3) be able to empathize with users of the product, 4)
better understand internal value tied to the product...the list goes on.

~~~
randallsquared
_More importantly, is it OK that women make up less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEO
positions? That's not sad?_

Your feelings about whether this is sad, in the absence of further information
about _why_ it's so, signals mostly whether you care about equality of outcome
or equality of opportunity.

------
mmc
Very interesting. This was about managers and executives, but are there any
companies out there that are known to have a poisoned technical or design
culture?

~~~
gaius
It's rare to meet a strong candidate from any large outsourcing firm, esp. if
they've been there a long time, and/or it's the only job they've had.

------
edw519
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you
want a chance to change the world?" Steve Jobs to John Sculley

History suggests that he should have stuck to selling sugared water.

~~~
tc
History also suggests that Jobs would have been better off not asking him that
question.

~~~
dmoho
Not necessarily...here's what Steve Jobs had to say about it
(<http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>):

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the
best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure
about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my
life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company
named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy
Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a
remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the
technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current
renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together."

~~~
staunch
"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from
Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."

I watch this speech of his every couple months. So damn good.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc>

