Headhunters in Local Government: Use of Executive Search Firms in Managerial Selection

Abstract

For decades many private corporations have turned to executive search firms for assistance in the selection of management employees. Use of headhunters by local governments is a much more recent phenomenon. Both pragmatic and philosophical objections long deterred reliance on executive search firms, but their use has now become widespread. Search firms relieve corporate boards of directors and their counterparts in local government, city councils and county boards of commissioners, of many of the recruitment chores associated with the quest for chief executive talent. Professional recruiters promise not only to screen meticulously the resumes submitted in response to job advertisements but also to help the council or board develop a of desired attributes and experience, to use their contacts to assemble a pool of managers who fit the desired profile whether they are seeking new employment or not, to attempt to entice such prospects, and to check thoroughly the backgrounds and qualifications of all finalists before presenting a select group for interviews with the person or group actually doing the hiring. The use of executive search firms by private corporations grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. By the mid-1970s more than 900 firms offered such services; by 1985, the number had swollen to more than 2,000.111 The use of executive search firms in the public sector has developed more slowly, with little, if any, activity prior to 1970. Of the four most active national firms currently serving the public sector market, only one has a history of city manager recruitments dating back as far as 1972. A major reason for the relatively slow adoption of the practice in the public sector is that market factors restrict its attractiveness. Lower executive salaries in the public sector reflect either a lower valuation of executive worth or restricted resources, either of which bodes ill for a consultant making the company's pitch for a recruitment fee representing a substantial percentage of the executive's salary. The fragmentation of local government presents each firm with myriad potential clients but few giant prospects with which they could hope to establish a toehold for a major volume of future business. Other reasons for slow adoption in the public sector, perhaps, are captured not in the perceptions and economic rationales of the service providers but in the