Imagine you are out for an evening stroll in Pacific Palisades and, half-hidden under some shrubs by the pavement, you spot a leather-bound Filofax. You pick it up and realise, with rising excitement, that it belongs to Steven Spielberg: his calendar, his to-do lists, and an address book listing hundreds of his contacts in Hollywood. Could this be your ticket to fame and fortune?
The marketing writer Seth Godin used to ask exactly this: ‘If you stole Steven Spielberg’s address book, would it help you get a movie made?’. His answer was no. Even with the names and numbers of everyone Spielberg knows, calling them would get you nowhere. The data is worthless without his experience, his standing, and the trust he has built.
These days every address book has, in effect, been stolen. LinkedIn has given everyone access to everyone. Anyone with an account can see who does what, at which firm, in which sector. In theory, everyone can be a headhunter.
In the early days of online professional networks, the barriers to setting up an Executive Search firm were high. You needed a proprietary knowledge base of your market, and a robust research process run by trained, experienced researchers, to find the right candidates. Now everyone has a knowledge base. You can task graduate to mine names on LinkedIn: a keyword search turns up 100 people doing the job, they call them all, perhaps six or seven say yes, and there is your shortlist. Small wonder that hiring firms have been tempted by agencies offering cheap ‘Retingent Search’, or by running their own search in-house.
But, as Richard Bandler used to say, ‘the map is not the territory’. Hiring the right person depends on far more than working through a list of names harvested from LinkedIn. Without trust and connection, many of the best people will not take the call at all. You still need a process to judge suitability and fit, the experience to know what good looks like, and relationships with senior figures willing to give an honest, confidential reference. That is the difference between a list of names and what high-quality Search actually involves.
Just as with Steven Spielberg’s address book, the data on LinkedIn is worthless without experience, trust and connection. It is also why running a search in-house so often disappoints: the names are the easy part.
If you would like to discuss how our Best-Fit Search™ process turns market knowledge into the right hire, rather than just a list of names, please contact us at hello@godliman.com.
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