Career development was the topic of a recent network meeting. We had invited a partner from one of the top executive search firm to discuss views and perspectives on career development. He did a great job and he also had a couple of interesting learnings for our group.

For starters, headhunters work hard to minimize risk and thus they usually go for the safe bet. This means that they do not want to change too many parametres when hiring a new key person. An example: A job opening as a sales executive holds responsibility for 80 people. Do we know someone who has done a similar job having the responsibility for 50 people? Just one small parameter changes. The message was that if you want to become an executive you should try to keep a fairly linear and step-by-step career development.

Our headhunter also told us that they prefer to hire people who are succesful - i.e. have been promoted severals times - within a large company as these people have proven that they can make it even in a competitive environment.

I have always thought that headhunters are active and outgoing networkers. Not so anymore. They are too busy so it is quite difficult to be picked up by their radar. They get to know most prospects through referrals and the work they do within companies besides executive search. This includes management appraisals in which they evaluate the human capital in a company.