Christian Spletzer: Managing Expectations of Time to Hire Key Talent

After years of experience in the challenging world of executive search, Christian Spletzer founded Clockwork Recruiting to improve how search firms and their clients work together on retained search projects. He designed Clockwork to help recruiters demonstrate their consultative value to their clients at every stage of each project.

Prior to founding Clockwork, Christian worked as a recruiter and in operations at CT Partners, a Top 10 Global Executive Search firm. Previous to that, he worked within the Private Client Group of Merrill Lynch, and in an e-commerce start-up, 86.com, where he met his Clockwork co-founder, Jay Greene. Christian has a BA in Economics and a Juris Doctorate, and is a licensed attorney in NY, CT, and SC.

Today is all about Timing! Managing expectations for time and performance to make a key hire is more important than ever. The data is in and we are going to give you performance benchmarks of what your expectations should be.

Today’s Quote:

“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” - Colin Powell  

Show highlights:

• The challenges and data to support today’s hiring challenges
• Measurement for performance and what a Great search looks like

Measuring your search performance

• Data from over 30,000 search projects
  • Placement rate
  • Days to Placement
  • **Missing: Quality of Hire
• Key hires are taking an average of 123 days with a 71% placement rate on retained search
• People don't know how to pick a retained search firm. Most buyers of a retained search run off of bad data. No objective criteria to measure a search firm.
• Time matters- the longer it takes to get the seat filled, the shorter the ROI. Amazingly costly if a search fails.
• 22% failure rate
• Motivations may be wrong.
• The company is 50% of the equation in a successful outcome

Companies can go to:Benchmarks - Clockwork Recruiting

What good search looks like and how to choose the right partner

Detailed analysis

• Great- Average under 115 days and over 83% success rate
  • Seniority
    • Managers- lowest placement rate, 80+ days to place
    • C-Level 130+ days, 78% placement rate
  • Department
  • Industry
  • Region
    • New York City - 60% success rate with longest days to hire

What to look for in a search firm

• Judge on time/success rate. Buy based on the experience and track record of success.
• Access to that information. Pick based on the one best suited for the search.
• Do not bet on the relationship only. Find the company with the track record- if you don't know where to look, you don't want to be sold. Getting more data before buying
• Track record
• Specialization in that particular department
• Inquire about Success rate/Stick rate: good hire vs. bad hire. Still around after a year, two years.
• Expectations: are very different than contingency search
• Meta data on actual projects. Who does it the best
• Hire the firm who brings value above and beyond just presenting candidates