Deciding Who Leads May 23, 2008 How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct, and Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent (Davies-Black Publishing, $27.95)
By Jane Bozarth
In a refreshing change from most business books, Joseph McCool brings the voice of the investigative reporter to explore, if not exactly the underbelly, then the behind-the-scenes workings of the executive recruitment process. Less a how-to than a watch-and- learn, the book provides the stories and strategies used by successful recruiters. While some of the cases—Disney, Campbell Soup Company—are perhaps familiar to many readers, McCool examines them in a depth not matched by past media reports.
"Deciding Who Leads" provides an in-the-trenches view of the behaviors that make executive recruiters successful, as well as the obstacles they face. Topics include the need for transparency, and the challenges therein; the importance of decision-makers being of one mind with the search team; and some tips on Math 101—you may be wrong in assuming it will take just one new person to replace the one who is departing. Other issues McCool examines include the true cost of a bad hire, the softer side of "headhunting," the finer points of onboarding, and leveraging the search as a tool to achieve diversity.
McCool is a journalist, and it shows. His reportage is compelling, his biographies on-point, his writing style clean. Although it is not a compendium of best practices and processes, the book culminates in a list of succinct guidelines for how to hire an executive recruiting firm, made meaningful by the context the author has so richly described.
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