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Our Executive Search Model: Professionalism, Ethics, Logic, Simplicity, Efficiency
Where do we recruit?
ART is the first executive search firm recruiting with a truly global perspective, with world-class candidates in the world's top 1,500 cities, in over 100 countries, on six continents. Unlike some of our competitors, which simplistically divide the world into a small, self limiting, number of field offices or franchises, ART is entirely region-neutral -- "virtually local to you" -- bringing you our candidates wherever you need them to be.
Whom do we recruit?
Searches are only for CEO, COO, CFO, CMO, CSO, CPO, CIO, CTO, President, General Manager, Managing Director, Vice President, Director and certain Manager level positions.
Job descriptions might involve a "hands on" manager or someone who is expected to run a very large department or company. Our clients include multinationals, leading edge medium sized firms with strong growth needs, as well as well funded startup firms. Each type of company profile has different needs, and our candidate selection process takes candidate suitability for our client's unique business model into account as much as we consider any other criterion in shortlisting candidates.
ART is very useful in strategic searches - executive search needs for managers who can make a significant impact on a company's growth or survival. In a given year, probably over 40% of ART's searches are confidential searches, where there is a need to find a key manager in a sensitive situation.
What is special about ART candidates?
We would characterize most of our candidates as "low risk" candidates based on the following considerations. In the vast majority of cases, ART candidates are employed, with employment histories that document stability and successes at well recognized companies in their fields. Candidates presented to our clients are typically evaluated for their familiarity with our clients' industry and market, so in most cases, they will be knowledgeable of the client's industry and they will be able to evaluate the job and company at a sophisticated level of business analysis.
Most of our candidates have a minimum of 10 years' industry experience, so their track records are evidence of their possible success in our clients' vacancies. For the most part, our candidates' past employers have already vetted our candidates for their employability, stability, presentation skills, management skills, communications skills, and other key factors. In most cases, our candidates are happy at their current companies, and their principal reason for changing jobs is for a significant career enhancement. Such candidates are themselves restrained from overstating their qualifications, and we encourage our candidates to ask as many questions of our clients' opportunities, as we ask our clients to question our candidates. In short, because we are not presenting "desperate" or "unknowable" candidates - the types that often respond to advertisements - but rather some of an industry's most successful candidates as our norm, the risk of surprises in candidate performance after a placement is typically going to be low.
Why should my company use ART?
Founded in 1987, ART is a results oriented senior management recruitment firm utilizing a refined methodology of highly targeted executive search. We only accept searches that we believe we are likely to succeed in filling with excellent candidates who would enjoy their new jobs. ART is best used by companies to recruit their senior managers and high-end middle managers at headquarters and globally.
ART recruiters have been interviewed in some of the leading and most respected business publications of North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist Group, Düsseldorf Handelsblatt, and The Singapore Business Times, on topics such as global competitiveness, global economic changes, business management transformation, and universal business ethics.
Our service should be regarded as a replacement for those old-style retainer oriented executive search firms that seem to be so costly, and so slow to present any candidates, even while claiming that they "know everyone." It should not make sense to you, when a search firm, claiming to be experts in your target search field, asks to be paid in advance, in order to take months to investigate the existence of suitable candidates. If they are experts, they should already know people or they should be qualified to try to find suitable candidates in a few weeks, not months. If they tell you that they will need months to learn your market well enough to recruit in it, should you have to pay them in advance for this kind of service?
We don't believe that it is right for a client to pay any search firm before seeing their candidates. ART was created to do executive search very differently from our competition. We do not want to be paid unless our clients feel that our candidates are suitable enough to hire. We are confident enough in our abilities, worldwide, to succeed or to fail in a search without causing needless costs to our clients.
Our fees are flat fees (fixed fees) that are calculated and stated at the beginning of a search, based on the unique criteria of that particular search need. No other charges are billed to the client beyond this fee. Our fee is due only if our candidate is hired. A solid money-back guarantee on every placement is offered. Our fee policy and guarantee policy make our clients happy, and they cause us to work hard to make sure that we make lasting placements, benefiting our candidates and our clients alike.
Our fees are search-specific, and they are not linked to candidate salary, as are fees quoted by most executive search firms, which usually calculate their fees as being equal to a percentage of the yearly compensation of a placed candidate. ART clients can therefore be comforted that ART's goal is to only present the best, most suitable candidates for their specific vacancy, regardless of candidate salary. Also, if in the course of an executive search, it becomes apparent that the client would need to raise the compensation range of their offer in order to attract the best candidates, the client can rest assured that the ART recruiter would recommend doing so only to help our client, not to raise a placement fee.
Candidates working with ART appreciate that ART presents its candidates to a client equally, whereas recruiters whose fees are based on candidate salaries might be tempted to promote higher paid candidates first, even if lower paid, but more qualified, candidates might be more suitable for the job.
We do not accept retainers for any search, convinced that retainers provide no significant benefit to clients, candidates, or even to the recruiters themselves. Retainers neither create nor enhance professionalism in recruiters. We believe that they mostly help promote greed and inefficiencies that restrict and delay an employer's choices in their company's most critical executive searches. Retainer focused search firms need to ask themselves if they would serve their clients, candidates and reputations better by only accepting those searches that they are truly competent to fill, rather than concentrating on soliciting retainers first, and then scrambling to fill their clients' searches with some group of candidates - with any group of candidates.
ART provides a high quality service with minimal risk and a maximal possibility of choices for our client companies. We are only paid if our candidates are good enough for our clients to hire, and our clients are normally free to hire only the best candidates from whatever source. This is true even for CEO searches, simply because we always have the confidence that our candidates are likely to be the best, regardless of their competition.
When not to use ART.
Please do not use ART's services when your firm is conducting an online or print advertising campaign for your vacancy. We are better used only if the client understands that advertising would be the worst method to find that particular key manager, who only could be identified through a targeted, professional headhunting effort.
Our candidates are specially chosen for our client searches after careful consideration, and they should be given only the highest attention by your hiring managers. Please never consider using ART in an "11th hour" recruitment effort, when you are about to offer a position to an existing candidate, but you just need a few more resumes or CV's as comparison.
If your firm is a startup firm with minimal financing, please do not use ART to seek CEO's or other managers who would be expected to create the initial funding of the firm.
Good, experienced headhunting is an ART.
ART never outsources any search or partners with any other search firm. If we do not have the candidates now to fill a vacancy, or if we believe that we cannot find candidates ourselves, we do not accept the search assignment. We never use advertising to find candidates. Real headhunters never should need to advertise to find candidates!
The process of headhunting usually involves an aggressive, targeted, direct approach of leading candidates at a client's competition. Such candidates are not ordinarily reached through advertising, because these top candidates are usually too busy to read job advertisements. If headhunters do not already have the contacts or knowledge to find candidates at the start of their search, they should not accept that search assignment from their client. A client's search is not intended to be a "learning experience" for an executive search firm, nor a chance to earn a percentage of a placement fee that is really to be earned by another firm. The executive search firm should already know their client's market and discipline when they contract with their client.
Many of our competitors are proud that they perform tests on candidates such as handwriting analysis, inkblot tests, lie detector tests, and other forms of unproven 19th Century pseudo-science, as ways of "qualifying" their candidates. Often they even bill such charges to their clients! Perhaps they have reason for believing that their candidates need to be exposed to such bizarre forms of analysis. Perhaps they feel that by suggesting that their work is a scientifically verified service, they are providing some sort of proof to their clients that their candidates will command corporations successfully, will sell products over quota, will finance companies brilliantly, etc. We don't see how such testing shows anything relevant to a company in the 21st Century.
We believe that people and the companies that employ them are unique, profoundly human entities, that in an executive search process need a knowledgeable human touch to match them together. There is no quantifiable "score" for any person or for any company. There are mutual needs and mutual opportunities that need to be explored and bridged. There is no better method of evaluating a candidate than by having an experienced headhunter, who has seen literally thousands of variations of career histories, career paths, and corporate business models of success and failure, simply ask the candidate frankly about his or her motivations, interests, opinions, experiences, and concerns, and then compare these responses with the client's needs, business history, opinions, goals, and concerns. At ART we will not pretend that executive search is a science. There is a risk in any hire - for the client, the candidate, and the recruitment firm. But in the hands of trained headhunters, our clients' searches are in the hands of professionals trained in understanding the logical destinies of people and their companies.
Our Time Lines and Business Hours.
ART is in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, serving our clients before, during, and after their own business hours. In most cases, our successful searches are completed in 2-4 weeks, regardless of the location.
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