Search Employ

Learning how to be your own headhunter can help your company in ways that go beyond filling a specific job.

George Clement was stymied. Developing imaginative new publications was critical to the continued success of Clement Communications Inc., a Concordville, Pa., publishing company that markets motivational posters and training programs through direct mail. But Clement, president of the company, which has annual sales around $10 million, and Brian Kirby, his vice-president of sales and marketing, no longer could handle the job. "We'd make a crash effort, then turn our attention back to other areas of the business we'd ignored," Clement explains.

"The obvious solution," he says, "was to find someone who could develop new publications on an ongoing basis." But Clement was uncertain how he and his top managers, especially Kirby and senior vice-president and general manager Ed Dwyer, would deal with a powerful newcomer. Even more worrisome, Clement didn't have any inkling where to look for the new person, aside from a handful of competitors.

"If you're looking at direct competitors as a source for candidates," remarks Clement, "especially if these companies look very much like your business, you'll end up bringing in someone who doesn't have a fresh perspective." Clement wanted to develop publications that would lead the field, not follow it.

"To tell you the truth," adds Clement, "not only didn't I have a clear picture of where to find -- or even who would be -- a qualified candidate, I wasn't sure I'd know how to handle that person once he or she was sitting across from me. Conducting the search was only the first hurdle."

Until recently, Clement Communications had solved its hiring problems at the top management level by promoting from within. At one time, the company did hire an executive recruiting firm to search for a direct-mail manager, but, after spending thousands of dollars, the search came up with "zero," says Clement.

Then, through a twist of fate, Clement discovered the catalyst for the search. At a dinner party in mid-August, he struck up a conversation with an ordained Episcopalian clergyman-turned-businessman named Calhoun Wick.

Cal Wick had attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management in 1974-75 with the intention of bringing some management skills to the Episcopalian Church. "After MIT, I went out to be the rector of a parish church outside Toledo," says Wick. "Then I began to realize that the church had muddled through for 2,000 years, would probably muddle through for another 2,000, and I'd rather work in the business world."

Wick joined MBA Resources, an executive recruiting firm in New York City, which fills senior management posts that pay anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000 a year. MBA uses its own resources to find job candidates and charges a client 30% of the first year's compensation.

After a while, however, Wick had an idea: Why not take the skills he'd learned in the search business and teach them to other businesses so that they could do their own searches? Wick would help companies capitalize on their knowledge of their own industries, instead of having to rely on a search firm to find contacts.

"I wanted to teach businesses to become virtually self-sufficient in hiring top managers," explains Wick. He left MBA to start his own company to do just that in 1980. For a fee of $2,500 a month for the first search, Wick claims he'll teach a company a system for hiring key people. The system includes building an internal hiring team, defining the new job, developing a source network to find candidates, learning an effective interviewing style, and creating ways to bring the new person on board. "Each step must be done thoroughly and professionally," explains Wick. "If you short-circuit any step, you greatly reduce your chances of finding the right person."

Wick meets regularly with a client, generally once a week for one to three hours a session, until the hiring process is completed, usually a period of about three months. If the client wants to work on a second or third search with Wick, the rates drop to $2,000 and $1,500 a month respectively, since each time the client conducts another search, he needs less assistance.

A month after George Clement's and Cal Wick's serendipitous encounter, Clement hired Wick and Company, which is based in Wilmington, Del., to lead him step by step through the hiring process. "I thought to myself," recalls Clement, "I'll be satisfied if we do it in eight months. I was just hoping that Cal would be patient enough to work with us for that long."

The first order of business was to create an internal hiring team. Under Cal Wick's supervision, the team would conduct every aspect of the search, from defining the job to bringing a new director of publications development smoothly on board.

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