Nearly 25
years ago, Janet Jones-Parker and Anne Hyde, executive recruiters
who owned Management Woman Inc., won an assignment so remarkable
that they appeared on the Today show, interviewed by the then-anchor,
Jane Pauley. Citibank had hired them to find a senior-ranking
woman executive at a salary of $100,000 annually -- the equivalent
of about $285,000 in current dollars. "The company had never gone
outside its ranks to hire a female at that level," Ms. Jones-Parker
recalled.
Much has
changed for female executives, of course, since the segment was
broadcast in March 1977. Women now make up 46.5 percent of the
labor force, according to the research organization Catalyst,
and hold 45.3 percent of all executive and administrative managerial
positions.
Similarly,
a lot has changed for women in the executive recruiting business.
No longer relegated to administrative posts and research, women
are now managers and partners at headhunting firms of all sizes,
from boutique partnerships to brand-name, publicly traded companies
like Korn/Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles International.
According to the Association of Executive Search Consultants,
an industry organization, of the 343 consultants at its 170 member
firms, 28 percent are women.
Those numbers
reveal a significant shift in attitude form the time Millie McCoy
entered the business. In 1965, starting as a researcher at Handy
Associates, a spinoff of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company,
Ms. McCoy was eager to advance after having spent years culling
names of prospective candidates from Who's Who in Corporate America
and other thick directories. She approached a male superior who,
she recalled, "told me he saw not a chance of a woman being alone
in a closed-door room during an interview with a man."
Today Ms.
McCoy, founder of Gould, McCoy & Chadick, and her female counterparts
at other firms routinely conduct closed-door meetings with potential
corporate chieftains, male and female. Andrea Redmont at Russell
Reynolds Associates, for instance, last year placed James Dimon
as the chief executive officer of Bank One; Joie Gregor, managing
director at Heidrick & Struggles, recently recruited Tom Glocer
as group chief executive of Reuters P.L.C.; Judith von Seldeneck
of Diversified Search Companies placed Frederick Peters as C.E.O.
of the Bryn Mawr Trust Company.
Yet, for
all the gains women have made in the search industry, their numbers
are still few in leadership positions at large firms. Like the
Fortune 500 companies, where only two women are C.E.O.s (up from
one in 1995), the nation's largest executive search firms' chief
executives are predominantly male. At the three companies run
by women, Battalia Winston International, Diversified Search Companies
and Gilbert Tweed Associates, the chief executives founded their
firms.
One common
explanation for the lack of female chief executives in the industry
is based on the theory that the pool of potential women leaders
is small compared to that of men. While the number of women at
partner level has increased tremendously since the business begin
in the late 1950's, men continue to outnumber women. And a widely
held industry truth is that recruiters, male or female, who aspire
to manage their peers and assume the duties of chief executives
are rare. Ms. Jones-Parker, the former Today show guest, who sold
Management Woman Inc. in 1980 and now recruits search consultants
for search-firm clients, said: "Most recruiters are individual
contributors. They can be successful and have a passion for what
they're doing without running the company."
Moreover,
the competencies and interests needed in an executive who runs
a multi-million dollar search company like Heidrick & Struggles
or SpencerStuart are different from those of a recruiter who manages
relationships with clients.
But other
recruiters contend that a dearth of female leaders in their business
has more likely been caused by the failure of companies to accommodate
or pay attention to women.
"The
glass ceiling that exists in the corporate world exists just as
tenaciously in the search industry," said Pat Cook, a recruiter
who heads her own firm, Cook & Company, in Bronxville, N.Y. She
had been a partner at major firms, including Heidrick & Struggles,
Ward Howell International and A.T. Kearney Executive Search, and
had held managerial roles at each.
Steve Potter,
the head of TMP Executive Search, a recruiting unit of the employment
advertising firm TMP Worldwide, said "recruiting is no-where near
where it needs to be" in placing women in its senior ranks.
The presence
of women in management varies widely by firm, which in some cases
may be a reflection of the firm's focus. At Christian & Timbers,
a fast-growing firm with $39 million in annual revenue, only 4
of 28 partners are women. Three of those partners have been hired
in the last 18 months. "We've thought a lot about why we have
so few women partners," said Stephen Mader, president of Christian
& Timbers, which is based in Cleveland. "Our best interpretation
is that our work is fairly heavy in technology and financial services,
which are both very male-dominated."
Contrast
that with Witt/Kieffer, a search firm based in Oak Brook, Ill.,
with $24 million in annual revenue that concentrates on health
care and education recruiting. Ten of the 27 partners are women,
the firm has a vice chairwoman of the board, and 6 of its 13 regional
offices are led by women.
Some female
recruiters do hold senior-level management roles at the large
firms. Rae Sedel, a managing director at Russell Reynolds Associates,
a global search firm with $230 million in annual revenue, leads
its largest practice group, technology. She is also one of the
firm's top billers. Alicia Lazaro is vice-chairwoman and co-founder
of The Whitney Group, a $21 million financial services search
firm based in New York. Caroline Nahas, managing direct of Korn/Ferry's
southwest region, has "reinvented myself many times," she said,
in her 24 years with the firm. After five years at Korn/Ferry,
in 1982, she was named the first woman to be a partner in the
firm and has held numerous leadership roles, including a seat
on an internal board of directors, a group that directs strategy
and growth. Though she leads some top-level assignments, including
the placement last May of Jill Barad's successor as chief executive
at Mattel, Robert Eckert, most of Ms. Nahas's energy now is devoted
to managing two offices and 70 people. In contrast, Ms. Gregor,
a former head of Heidrick & Struggles' largest office, in New
York, and now leader of its global communications practice, said
she preferred recruiting to managing. "I get my kicks from search,"
she said. "It means a lot to me to be respected by terrific venture
capitalists, directors of boards and chief executives for my abilities."
It remains
unclear whether other women will join Dale Winston of Battalia
Winston, Janet Tweed of Gilbert Tweed and Ms. Von Seldeneck of
Diversified Search as heads of large search firms in the United
States. But trends suggest the odds are increasing, because the
pool of women in the middle-to-high ranks of search firms is growing.
According
to the search consultants association, 23 of its 170 member firms
have female chief executives. They could rise to leadership positions
at larger firms if their own firms are acquired.
But not all
female owner-operators want their companies to be acquired. Susan
Bishop, formerly a partner at a large firm who now runs her own
boutique shop in New York, said she is far happier as a small
independent. "I was a partner, but no one listened to me," she
said. "Why would I want to go back?"
