CBA Recruitment 7200 The Quorum Oxford Business Park Oxford OX4 2JZ

Inflated expectations (and why you really do need a specialist headhunter)

I'm looking at a CV.  It was sent to us in response to an advertisement for a Divisional Sales Director position that appeared on this website.  When we emailed him the brief, the candidate replied, I won't be applying for this as I'm looking for something more senior.

Now, I sympathise with the candidate.  According to his CV, he's currently in a General Management position.  I don't know what his salary is, but he knew when he applied that the advertised job carries an OTE in the low six figures, so we have to assume that money isn't an issue - what he wants is greater seniority.  He doesn't want to find himself reporting to a Group Sales Director.  He must, presumably, believe that his record will support this aspiration.  On the face of it, so does his CV.

But does it?  He's spent the past couple of years with a subsidiary of what used to be one of the world's largest and best run high tech companies, but he wasn't with them then and the company now is a crashed, empty shell.  Maybe that isn't his fault.  And maybe some of it is.  At this point, I don't know.  And, if he applied for a job with your company, neither would you.

What did he do previously? Well, he had a couple of splendid job titles.  He says he worked with some huge names to put in place 'the forms of partnership appropriate to these major international players'.  One of these major international players is now in Chapter 11.  One relied too heavily on too few customers, lost two thirds of its business and is now better known for its profit warnings than its profits.  And one is struggling to find someone to sell itself to.  So one might speculate that the forms of partnership most appropriate to these major international players were no form of partnership at all.

I have not the slightest doubt that this candidate will land a job somewhere at General Manager or Group Sales Director level, simply because he has held the right sort of title and despite the fact that nothing he has touched has turned to gold (before the jobs I have described he wasn't in selling at all, and he certainly wasn't anywhere near MD status).  Someone will hire him who is too impressed by appearance and who doesn't know how to seek out substance.  

I know a man who has been Managing Director of three companies.  Each one was doing fine before he got there; each one (I'm really not joking) has ended in bankruptcy with him in charge.  He should be considered a Jonah, at the very least, but I have every confidence that the phone will ring one day soon and someone will say, 'Guess where x has gone now.'

This shouldn't be happening.  In the hard markets of the opening years of the 21st century, charisma and chutzpah are not enough.  There are a lot of candidates out there and some of them - quite a lot of them, if we're telling the truth - aren't good enough for the jobs they're chasing.  This is more than merely, 'Did s/he really have this job title in that company?', or 'Does s/he really have the degree specified on this CV?'  It's about whether or not claimed achievements were actually made, and in what context.

I doubt that the CV in front of me will end up in our files.  We're going to do some background checking, take references and carry out personality profiling because if the candidate is as good as he says he is he'll be able to do a heck of a job for one of our clients.  But I think I know how it's going to end up.  90% of the people who seek a place on our database don't make it, because they aren't good enough.  They wouldn't be good enough for you, either. 

If you have the skills, the resources and - most of all - the time to do the work and the checks we do when we evaluate a candidate, fine.  You don't need us.  If you don't, and you still think you don't need us, go ahead and make your appointment anyway.  And be prepared to regret it, sometime down the road.

Sadly, you won't be alone.