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According to Wick, a hiring team should consist of three or four people, usually managers with line responsibility who have the confidence of the person at the top. George Clement appointed Brian Kirby and Ed Dwyer, both men he'd worked with for more than 10 years. Kirby had excellent contacts within the industry; Ed had fewer contacts but a better sense of internal operations. Both had the full confidence of George Clement.

"When we formed the hiring team," says Clement, "we decided that no offer would be made until all of us agreed." Wick grants that this decision was made more out of prudence than our of gentlemanly spirit: "If a person gets ticked off because he doesn't get his say," he explains, "he's more likely to sabotage the new person's success. That's why a lot of hiring doesn't work."

Sitting around the table in the conference room next to Clement's office during the first meetings with Wick, Ed Dwyer, Brian Kirby, and George Clement discussed very specifically what they thought an "ideal" director of new publications would do. They not only decided what skills and experience the person should bring to the company, but also pinpointed what they expected him or her to accomplish over the next three years. The exercise forced the members of the hiring team to organize their thoughts about the company's business plan and future growth and made them think about their own responsibilities and how they were interrelated.

Creating the job of director of publication development meant separating Kirby's job as vice-president of sales and marketing from his other role as director of new product development. "Somebody could get put in that position and just get angry, saying 'Why is this job being taken away from me?" says Wick. "But Kirby, the person who was most affected by the decision, was involved in figuring out just how to separate the two jobs."

Defining the position took several meetings, which Wick generally sat in on. Personal disagreements, remembers Ed Dwyer, were partly tempered by a remark from Wick. "One of the things that hit home," says Dwyer, "was when Cal described this person as someone who could carry us in the future. I think that was important. At least it crystallized in my mind the importance of this new employee."

Once the group had agreed that the ideal candidate would have a background in direct mail and publication development, the next step was to figure out what he or she might be doing currently, then to think of whom they knew in the business who might come in contact with such a person. The exhaustive list of attributes the hiring team had drawn up made the group realize it wasn't limited to a handful of candidates.

Developing a network of sources to find these candidates depends, says Wick, on being "almost playful in thinking about who you know." Besides reviewing research files and trade directories, and going though company Rolodex files, they telephoned and wrote to various members of the Direct Mail Marketing Association in New York City and Philadelphia, asking for their help in finding candidates. They ran a classified ad in Advertising Age, the trade magazine probably most read by the kind of candidates they sought.

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.

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