ABSTRACT

Think about it. If I am doing a CIO search and I call to recruit you, it may take us a week to connect. Once we have our initial conversation, you need to review the position description and, most likely, discuss it with your spouse, particularly if it involves relocation. You will want to sleep on it, and eventually you call me back. We still need to do our own round of interviews, and if you are involved in some kind of major project (which you almost always are) that will take some time. Multiply that by a short list of five candidates, and the recruiting process extends to a good five or six weeks before we can present a slate of candidates. Even if a company is extremely e®cient in scheduling interviews (and most companies are not), the interview phase will take another month (especially since the candidates are probably on global projects themselves). Then there is the time it takes to make an o­er, for the candidate to resign, and for the start date to arrive.