Thought Leadership

How Executive Recruiters Are Deciding Who Leads and Changing the Course of Global Business

“Executive recruiting is arguably the most important task in the world of business…”

So begins the endorsement by Wharton School management professor Peter Cappelli for Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct & Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent (April 2008, Davies-Black Publishing) by former Recruiting Trends editor Joseph Daniel McCool, the first book in more than two decades to explore executive recruiters’ unparalleled influence on corporate performance, culture and profits. It has already been recognized as “one of the 30 best business books of 2008” by Soundview Executive Book Summaries.

Executive recruiters control access to the world’s most highly paid corporate management jobs. The results of their work have also influenced simmering public debates and Congressional testimony about executive pay, leadership diversity (or the lack thereof), high profile CEO searches and the very definition of corporate leadership for hiring organizations around the world.

In the pages of his new book, McCool reveals how executive recruiters orchestrate the confidential process that ultimately leads to some of the most consequential decisions ever made by any business, large or small. They are decisions about hiring the senior executives who will mold the strategy that drive shareholder value, knit the fabric of workforce culture and set the course that dictates the customer experience, the corporate brand and financial performance.

The author is a widely quoted expert and advisor on the confidential but nonetheless incredibly lucrative and influential business of executive search consulting who also writes as a contributor to BusinessWeek and ExecuNet, a network of global business leaders founded in 1988.

The release of Deciding Who Leads, which carries a Foreword by BusinessWeek Executive Editor John A. Byrne, who authored the last book exploring some of the same topics, The Headhunters, in 1986, is both long overdue and especially timely. That’s because executive tenure has hit a record low, the demands of corporate leaders have hit an all-time high and the work of executive recruiters still remains a mystery to most business people, including the very board directors, C-Suite leaders, line managers and HR professionals who regularly engage their services.

“Despite the growing body of knowledge on leadership and its role in driving organizational change and corporate profits, the business of executive search consulting remains widely overlooked,” McCool says. “With a new war for executive talent challenging companies around the world as Baby Boomers begin to retire in large numbers, understanding the role of executive search consultants and their always influential but sometimes dysfunctional relationships with client hiring organizations is more important than ever before.”

“The insights shared by Joe McCool in Deciding Who Leads could not have arrived at a better time,” says Dave Opton, CEO and Founder of ExecuNet, the career and business membership network for C-suite executives. “Gaining a competitive advantage in a global economy starts with recruiting great leaders, and few have more influence in this process than executive recruiters.”

In his endorsement of Deciding Who Leads, Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School, acknowledges: “Executive recruiting is arguably the most important task in the world of business, and Deciding Who Leads offers an insider’s understanding of how the process really works.”

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark says in his endorsement of the new book: “Joe McCool’s book gets right to the practical advice for the most difficult of all organizational challenges - hiring effective leaders. His expert advice proves how external leadership recruiters and Human Resources [leaders] can work together to attract, recruit, develop and retain the kind of executive management talent that’s essential for high performance organizations.”

To read an excerpt from Deciding Who Leads on the emergence of a truly global competition for executive management talent, visit www.DecidingWhoLeads.com.