CEO hunters in India getting their act together

Executive searches in India were turning into as sophisticated and as rigorous an exercise as it is in the US, Janet Tweed, CEO of the US-based search firm Gilbert Tweed Associates (GTA), said.

Tweed, who was India recently, said the CEO-search business, which is worth $7 billion in the US, is growing at a rate of 40-45 per cent in India.

"CEO and senior executive placements have become very scientific with more than 5-6 stages of filters. Things like reference checks have become very important in understanding a candidate's personality and cultural fit with the organisation," Tweed said.

Ravi Bhatia, CEO, GTA (India), said even smaller family-owned companies were insisting upon 360-degree reference checks and elaborate profiling of the CEOs being hired.

"Most of the CEO searches happen though plain cold calling. The headhunters have to communicate to the prospective candidates the bigger challenges and opportunities that are in store for them at the new firm. More often than not, money is not the biggest trigger for them," Tweed said.

According to Tweed, companies in the US are increasingly realising that an executive, in his career span, can give his best only at 4-5 different organisations.

"We filter out candidates who look like being compulsive job-hoppers, who can leave a company primarily for monetary reasons. Similarly, someone who has spent more than 10-15 years of his working life in the same company, too, does not figure high on our list," she said.

She also observed that salary differences between Indian and US companies in sectors like infotech, infotech-enabled services and pharmaceuticals were fast evening out.

The salaries in the business process outsourcing sector were bound to rise and would take another 4-5 years to plateau, she added.

"Biotech firms like Ranbaxy and Reliance Life Sciences, and infotech companies like Infosys, Wipro and Satyam are offering their executives salaries in the range of $150,000-200,000 annually, which is comparable to that in the US and other developed markets," Stephanie Pinson, president, GTA, said.

She added that India was fast becoming a favourite hunting ground for high-end science and technology jobs.