Sharing insights from a CEO hiring specialist. This article focuses on Interesting experiences from our mandates.
As a firm that specializes and focuses only on CEO and CFO hiring, one would imagine that it could become a bit repetitive. But experience shows otherwise, as we are roped in when things get interesting. For instance, one of our clients wanted to take a clutch of companies within the conglomerate and run it like a PE – prune the uninteresting out, double down on the ones that make the cut and enter into newer areas. In addition, the group also had a significant real estate spread among the various entities, which could be strategically used. The question is, who would be the best candidate to drive this kind of a role? An operating partner from a PE? A mature CFO with a strategic bent of mind? A CEO? All these three could do justice to the role (and there are 1-2 more other options that we mapped, but not getting into the details here). These kind of roles fall somewhere in between the CFO and CEO, in large part, due to specific client preferences of where the person should come from. And, this is where our specialization comes into play – for instance, in this, Saroja and I both worked together. Saroja, an ICWA and the lead for CFO Practice, brought her wide, global connection to the CFO network, while I brought the PE reach, thus pooling our networks and capabilities to deliver on the mandate. When we pivoted and started on our journey of focusing only on CEO and CFO search, we did not even imagine that there could be roles like this. But when the clients come up with these kind of new roles, we had a blast delivering on these! By Ramadhurai k CEO Lead at Resource Bridge