CHAPTER 5EXECUTIVE SEARCH GROWS UP

As my firm entered its second decade and momentum began to build in earnest, the business of executive search was facing an identity crisis. Despite corporate America’s increasing reliance on outside search firms to fill top positions, the business itself was still viewed with suspicion.

When Lee Getz left Manufacturers Hanover to join me as my partner, he was debriefed by the bank’s chairman, Jeff McNeill. McNeill gave Getz many reasons why he considered his decision a mistake. “The most poignant one,” Getz recalls, “centered on one term: ‘steegma,’ as he pronounced it. ‘There’s a stigma associated with that industry,’ McNeill told me. ‘They’re not very good people.’”

A. D. Hart, one of Russell Reynolds Associates’ ...

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