Retained executive search has followed the same set of clubby rules for decades. Technology, mobility, and marketplace demand, amongst other key trends have set the table for an industry primed for disruption. At Carpe Diem Partners, we have found these six principles to govern our philosophy for change and to best serve our clients.
- Generalists vs Specialists. The industry model is built on specialization. The thinking over the last 20 years has been firm specialization, translating into faster recruiting and deeper market insights. In reality, industry results don’t support this. Engagement cycle times, stick and close rates are no better today despite deeper specialization and more assessments, from boutique outfits to, and especially, the top 10 global firms. By definition, more specialization trends toward narrower thinking. It can limit creativity and the diversity of thought. Today’s business needs vary and change. A strategic generalist better serves the client in many situations. Don’t take our word ask our clients ranging for F500 Public to VC backed Unicorns.
- Incentive Systems Partner incentives in this industry are built on volume. This means, a partner in a large firm must complete a greater volume of work to earn the same income in a boutique firm. Misaligned incentive systems create cultures that shape and influence partner and team behavior often pushing less qualified candidates to clients. Doing ‘new original’ research and assessing new candidates is incredibly time consuming and costly (e.g. Labor time=Cost of Goods Sold). A volume-based incentive system doesn’t align executive search firm behavior with the client’s needs. We believe investing in better technology can allow our teams to spend more time in research and assessing candidates with attractive incentives without increasing our costs.
- Technology There is an outdated belief that a firm’s CRM (Customer Relations Management system) and long record of relevant credentials is the yard stick of effectiveness and assurance of success. The landscape is littered with dissatisfied clients following this decision path. Access to the world’s best talent has become commoditized due to LinkedIn and other trends. It is no longer what distinguishes what great looks like in world class retained search firms. Old proprietary enterprise technology platforms created just a decade ago, are as outdated as your uncle’s El Camino. Carpe Diem Partners believes investment in disruptive technologies creates more collaborative teams, internally and externally and stronger results in our engagements.
- Transparency – The retained search industry has zero transparency on either the firm’s or the individual partner’s performance. Today there is no player which collectively allows clients to have full access to the delivery process nor openly track and publish their results. Insights into the candidate funnel, firm and partner engagement results, end to end, have been kept hidden from clients. Courtesy of “The Cloud”, the barrier to entry with digital technology has been eliminated and we can now operate like a Tesla 90d. At Carpe Diem Partners, we have radically changed how a retained executive search firm can partner with clients to access, organize, share and measure data. Clients have complete access to the engagement journey, from research, candidate details to real time engagement performance and measurement of our results. There are no smoke and mirrors in our process. We believe in our process and partner with our clients by sharing all of our data to achieve strong outcomes.
- Ownership structure – Based on our experience, partnerships are inherently inward facing and more political which leads to cumbersome and slower decision making. As a former CEO of PE owned companies and almost a decade in executive search as a top global billing partner in both partnership and single owner firms, I have found many ownership structures not optimally aligned to serving clients. With this in mind, we designed Carpe Diem Partners ownership structure to shape culture and team behavior when solving our clients most pressing leadership challenges.
- Performance metrics – The yardstick for search firm selection has historically been based on soft data – what network relationship the client might have with the firm/partner and what kind of relevant work (e.g. specialization) a firm has done in a very particular space. We believe a better yard stick in the evaluation process needs to shift to actual performance scores (e.g. cycle times, stick rates, etc.) and client satisfaction scores at the midpoint and conclusion of the engagement. Carpe Diem Partners has a 45-day average cycle time and high client engagement scores, which we believe clients value over hundreds of pages of credentials as a specialist.
We invite you to bring us your most complex leadership challenge. We have formed to deliver an experience which improves upon the executive search industry’s “clubby culture”, legacy technology, and economic incentives which are no longer aligned with the critical needs of clients and today’s marketplace. The way in which we recruit, assess world class C-suite executives for our clients of private and public enterprises is transparent and measurable. It’s been designed and constructed to help solve the most complex challenges our own clients face today, not ten or twenty years ago.
Like our name, we say the time for change is now. Join us! And carpe diem!