CHAPTER 24 - STRATEGIC ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT



CHAPTER 27 - CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Agents for career change

By Alison Maitland

FTCareerPoint - May 09, 2001

Phil Schneidermeyer is a “chief talent scout” but his clients are not footballers or Hollywood hopefuls. He is one of a small but growing number of agents who manage the careers of high-flyers in the corporate world.

Mr Schneidermeyer left Korn/Ferry International, one of the world’s largest executive search firms, last year to set up his Connecticut-based Talent Intelligence Agency, specialising in senior technology professionals.

The uncertain economic climate, with waves of job cuts being announced each week, may seem the obvious time for employees to make contingency plans. But career management has been growing during economic boom as well. The ill-fated leaps that many made to new jobs during the dotcom frenzy highlight the need for careful planning at all times.

“Executives are being a lot more proactive about their careers,” says Shannon Kelley, marketing director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants in New York. “I think it’s a mindset that’s developing, independent of the economic cycle. People know companies won’t necessarily be loyal and they also want a varied career, not necessarily within the same company.”

Mr Schneidermeyer says the jobs market is demanding a new model, “one that puts the executive first while introducing him or her to a range of career opportunities and professional challenges”.

Career agent

Unusually for a career agent, he does not charge individual clients for advice, preferring to recoup his costs from the companies who recruit them. “It’s taking the idea of specialisation in executive search to the next level. We want to know these people now and for the long term.”

Given the economic downturn, he is advising clients with itchy feet “to enjoy their present position for another six months and then look around”. But he does not appear unduly worried about business, arguing that software developers and their managers are among the least dispensable in any cuts.

Personal career agents target an exclusive clientele. The website of STI, a Californian executive management firm, boasts that it will “define your personal brand vision” using consultants such as Richard Greene, presentation coach to the late Diana, Princess of Wales. But the emergence of such agents reflects a wider trend for professionals and managers to take control of their careers. “There’s a multiplicity of ways careers can happen,” says Maury Peiperl, director of the careers research initiative at London Business School. “In recent history, we have gone from company man to empowered person.” Young high-fliers have different expectations of a career. “If you talk to some of the new MBAs and the top university graduates, they’re starting out thinking that they should do their own thing.”

What has caused this shift? The cuts that signalled the end of “jobs for life” were not forgotten as the last recession gave way to economic growth. Nor did they end there. Redundancies continued throughout the upswing as companies merged, restructured and shed staff to meet changing needs. Not surprisingly, it became more acceptable for employees to move to a rival company or to start their own business.

The corporate response to these changes has been to sponsor career development and coaching for employees, particularly the most prized. In-house programmes have been the fastest-growing form of executive education in the past decade.

Recruitment and staffing agencies, in turn, have been expanding their range of “human capital management” services. Last year, for example, Manpower bought a stake in SHL, the UK psychometric testing supplier. This year Whitehead Mann Group, the UK-based executive search firm, acquired The Change Partnership, a coaching company.

“There’s increasing global competition and [corporate] clients are asking for more,” says Kevin McNair, a director of Granville Baird, an investment banking group that advises the “human capital management” sector. “What they’ve all been trying to do is become more important to the client.”

Moving on

But in-house career development programmes are limited in that they tend to assume employees will stay put. Who helps those who want to move on? In the past few years, most of the big executive search firms have launched online career management services aimed at individual candidates.

was set up by Korn/Ferry in 1998 after a study by The Boston Consulting Group found that middle managers felt let down by recruitment agencies. “There wasn’t the same relationship as at senior levels,” explains Simon Wiggins, UK managing director of Futurestep. “They felt they didn’t get any help or value.”

The site, where registration is free, offers online self-assessment, information on leadership and communication styles, advice on the jobs candidates would be best suited for and an idea of their market worth.

Will search firms, established to serve employers, pay even greater attention to candidates’ needs in future? Mr McNair is doubtful. “These are relatively inexpensive feel-good practices that will hopefully keep candidates eye-balling their sites and in contact with them,” he says. “Ultimately, their responsibility is to their clients and that’s where they’re going to spend their real money.”

Indeed, there is a fundamental conflict between the recruitment industry’s imperative to fill vacancies and the needs of some candidates to take control of their careers by changing course.

Prof Peiperl says career management should start with individuals asking what drives them, what their ideal job would be, and which skills and relationships are most important to them. “If you start with what’s available, you limit yourself. The idea of fitting people into jobs is slowly shifting towards finding jobs to fit people.”

Individual potential

This is an appealing notion. But people who have been wedded to a single career might find the idea of breaking out on their own a little daunting. A new type of counselling agency, focusing on individual potential rather than labour market need, is emerging in response.

One example is New Directions, a Boston-based outplacement company which has set up a “portfolio programme” for senior people who want a change from a traditional career.

The mix of options on offer ranges from business and entrepreneurship to education, charitable work, “spiritual” work, and leisure time, says Bill Reading, vice-president of marketing and sales. “We find out what their personal interests are. We don’t have an endgame when we start.”

This is a service for older, well-heeled clients or for people whose companies are paying because they are being made redundant or taking early retirement: fees range from $8,000 (£5,500) to $35,000.

The fees charged by Careers by Design, a London-based agency, are more modest at £650-£1,500 and clients vary widely in age and background. Many are highly successful but feel something is missing in their lives, says Elizabeth Klyne, who founded the agency three-and-a-half years ago. “There’s an increasing unwillingness for people to sacrifice their whole life for the sake of their careers,” she says.

Her programmes aim to discover what each person has to offer - their “unique contribution” - and what changes are needed to make this contribution a central part of their working lives.

One former client is Phyllis Santa Maria, a 57-year-old consultant in electronic learning, who explains what this new approach to career development means to her. “So often we live our lives in a big rush and just don’t stop and listen,” she says. “The question is not what am I doing in my career, but what am I doing in my life?”

© FT CareerPoint 2001.

Questions for discussion:

1) From the article identify the different roles that agencies may have in promoting the career development of individuals, particularly high fliers?

2) What does the article suggest about how high fliers are now managing their own careers?

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