Throughout the search, Wick urged Clement Communications to publicly identify the name of the company, although George Clement was nervous about what effect the recruiting effort would have on his firm's reputation. "If anything," says Wick, "if a search is conducted in a professional way, corporate image is enhanced." Furthermore, candidates prefer to know from the start whom they're dealing with.
Developing sources and prospects is a learned skill, Wick reassured the Clement hiring team: "When you contact someone by telephone and he says, 'I'm not interested,' you have to keep the conversation alive and try to find out if he knows someone who might be." At weekly meetings the hiring team updated the list of candidates. "If you don't keep reviewing the status," says Wick, "time goes so quickly, you'll never find the person."
When the hiring team found a good prospect, Clement, Kirby, and Dwyer each interviewed the person separately. Before the interviews, Wick reviewed with them the questions they wanted to ask. "Too often," says Wick, "people are so busy doing other things, they're totally unprepared for the interview. When it's over, they don't have any idea how suited a candidate is for the job and, chances are, the candidate leaves unimpressed."
To prevent overlapping of questions and to speed up the process, each member of the hiring team pursued a different line of questioning. Clement asked questions related to management strength, Dwyer focused on technical competence, and Kirby on creative ability.
Asking open-ended questions, in tandem with very specific ones, also helped reveal more about a candidate's competence. For example, the question "What creative process in new product development have you seen work effectively?" forced the candidate to reflect upon and organize an answer. A narrow question -- "What was your role in the development of a product?" -- was useful in evaluating the person's individual contribution and skill.
After the interview, each member of the hiring team filled in a review sheet, noting how well the job candidate's experience met up with the job description. Each scored the candidate on technical competence and personal contribution. "Be tough," advised Wick. "Pressure to hire often tends to make you give marks that are too high."
By the end of October -- two months into the search -- a dozen candidates had been interviewed, seven of them at least three times. Sometimes people threw their hats in the ring, but no one wanted to catch them."Because of the clear job description," notes Clement, "we could say, you have strengths and you're obviously a capable person but, as we've pointed out, we need someone with a track record in direct mail."
Among the top contenders were a couple of circulation directors for national publications, the founder of a well-known consumer magazine, and several directors of company publications, all with strong direct-mail backgrounds. As choice candidates surfaced, the selection process grew somewhat easier. "It's like the salesman showing you ties," explains Kirby. "When you have the choice of a dozen, it's tough to make up your mind, but when it comes down to only several, you begin to see more clearly which you like best."
However, agreeing on a single candidate became more difficult. By the time the choice was narrowed down to two candidates, the team was philosophically divided.One of the prospects was in his 40s, an old pro long on experience. The other was Mary Sue Hansell, director of publications for Colonial Penn, a large Pennsylvania-based insurance company. Hansell, 33, had fewer years' experience in direct mail and product development, but a lot of personal style and potential. "An awful lot was staked on this decision," explains Clement, "the validity of the project and all the other emotional things that go into it. And who wants to be wrong?"
Ed Dwyer, who had originally contacted Hansell, recognized his own prejudice and stepped back from the debate: "There's a tendency after you've found somebody you perceive as good to run in and tell everyone you've found the person to fill the job. You can do too much of a job selling a candidate."
The question for Clement and Kirby become, "Do you choose someone who has his dream before him or behind him?" Together with Wick, they discussed the tradeoffs between taking someone with a proven track record of success and experience and taking someone who is a rising star and who may need more time to learn. One morning in mid-November, they agreed that a rising star could ultimately contribute the most to the company, and decided to make an offer to Hansell.
Although Wick had given Clement's hiring team many of the tools for carrying out the search, he didn't participate in the final hiring decision. "I remember calling Cal to tell him our choice," says Clement. "He replied, 'Good, because that was the right decision.' He insists on teaching you to fish, instead of giving you fish."
During Thanksgiving week, Clement offered the job to Hansell, who informed him she was leaving on a trip to Jamaica and would need a couple of days to think it over and talk with her husband. "I thought, 'Oh my God.' It was like she was disappearing into a vacuum," remembers Clement.
But Hansell had needed convincing that this job was the right move for her from the moment she heard of the position from Dwyer in mid-October. "After 12 years at a billion-dollar company," says Hansell, "I didn't know what to expect." She concedes it was largely the careful, almost grueling, hiring process that gave her confidence in the smaller company.
"Some places you'll go for an interview and they won't know what they're looking for," she says. "It's not a matter of having good communication skills. They just don't appear to have really thought out what the job is -- even if the position already exists."
Hansell had also expected to get a "job offer, like that," she says, snapping her fingers. Instead, Clement's hiring team invited her for four interviews. "When I found out there were other heavyweight candidates, that got my competitive spirit up."
She called Clement from Jamaica to accept the offer and, on December 21, started work at Clement Communications. By January, she'd assumed the title of vice-president of publications and director of publication development. "We've never had things go this fast and this well before," says Clement. Both he and Hansell agree that the time they spent together before she was hired has minimized the number of surprises since she joined the firm.
George Clement grants that the search process the company learned from Cal Wick did lead to Hansell, but he also admits that the best search techniques in the world don't insure that the person will work out. "Although we figured we had a pretty good chance of success, it's Mary Sue's personality that made this thing work."
As for Cal Wick, he did his job too well. "I don't want to knock Cal," says Clement, "but I don't think we'll need him again."
