The cost of executive failure? A Mercer study estimated that it’s often more than $500,000 or 2.5 times salary. And this doesn’t include organizational, opportunity, productivity, and transitional costs for the new executive (Mercer et al, 1999). Including these other components of executive hiring, the calculus for fully loaded cost to the organization per failure at the executive level can top a million dollars (Fortune Magazine).

However, the retained executive search industry has historically taken an “insurance approach” to this problem. If an executive fails within a certain period of time after their start date, the search firm will step back in and re-do the search.

Why does the executive search industry take this approach? For decades, our industry has relied on the art of interviewing as the core of its executive assessment and selection methodology. But with executive failure rates greater than 1 in 2 hires, art alone fails more often than it succeeds. This begs for another, different way.

At BSG Team Ventures, rather than simply relying on the traditional insurance approach to executive search execution, we’ve endeavored in parallel to build a stronger proactive approach that targets all that occurs before the offer is made and accepted. Call it an “assurance” versus “insurance” methodology. Others might label it the “belt and suspenders” approach. Whatever the label, we have invested the last 12 years trying to evolve a different, and yes, better way. We are committed to the constant improvement in executive retention where we have the most responsibility and control—during the search and selection process.

The methods used to assess executive candidates haven’t evolved much in the 30 or 40 years since the execuive recruiting industry was born. In fact, research has pointed out that even the large retained search firms, for all their extensive research capabilities and financial dry powder, haven’t evolved a “gold standard” in executive assessment, but rather each partner relies on their own “recipe” (see the PhD research of Monica Hamori, Wharton PhD candidate. It’s a very interesting read -- . Because of this, executive assessment and selection becomes very subjective, non-standardized, not repeatable nor scalable across a search firm made up of multiple partners, or a corporation made up of multiple influencers in the hiring decision.

BSG Team Ventures has recognized this challenge, and strived to evolve a more consistent, repeatable, deeper candidate assessment methodology. Although there is no disputing that art is and will always be a part of executive candidate assessment and selection, we’ve added to our search methodology a combination of science,technology and psychology to the art.

Our methodology includes the following:

A novel process targeted at assessing not just the executive candidates we interview, but the client into which these executives will be seeded. A superstar in one corporate culture with one set of values may be a failure in another.

A unique set of success attributes we’ve researched and developed that define the successful executive candidate we call the “builder-leader” profile. This competencies model is what we’re best at matching against. We populate our database with those with this builder-leader profile, and we’re best at hunting and finding this profile, regardless of industry or geography.

An innovative set of tools and technologies that allow our clients AND candidates to better learn about each other through the interview process, and also allow clients greater visibility and transparency into where they are at any given time in that process.