News > Articles

Women In Search:

Still A Ways To Go

BY DENISE HAMILTON

Reprinted with permission of

Executive Recruiter News, Oct. 1996

Just several decades ago, executive recruiting was so overwhelmingly male that the handful of women in the profession often faced absurd struggles to be taken seriously.

"When I called to make an appointment, people assumed I was Dale's secretary," recalls Dale Winston, one of the relatively few women to have her name on the door and president of Battalia Winston, Int'l. "They didn't realize I was a woman until I got in front of them."

Few would make that mistake today. Indeed, executive search has changed almost beyond recognition in the intervening years, as women have climbed the ladder to partner or launched their own successful firms. Women in search have also benefited from the growing demand for workforce diversity, as clients turn to female recruiters on the theory that they can better attract female candidates.

Obstacles still

But while many barriers have fallen, at least one important one lingers. Even some of the top women in the profession say they aren't likely to win plum contracts to find board members or CEOs for Fortune 500 companies.

Susan Bishop, who owns Bishop Partners Ltd and is widely hailed as a role model by other women in executive recruiting, says she's pitched a search once or twice in that environment only to watch the job go to a man at a larger firm.

"A lot of CEOS are over 60 and they just don't have the faith and comfort level in dealing with a woman," Bishop says. "They want to work with the guy they play golf with on the weekend."

Women say the old boy network is dying as many of the "old boys" near retirement age. Men who are rising up the ranks to replace them usually have wives, or at least daughters, who hold executive positions in the corporate world and are more comfortable working with women and seeing them at the top.

Growth helps

So while an ability to do CEO searches remains the yard stick against which recruiters are measured, many women take the pragmatic view that there is enough business to go around.

"There are many million dollar billers among women, and you can certainly have a lucrative and productive search career without doing those [Fortune 500 CEO] searches," says Millie McCoy, a co-founder of Gould, McCoy & Chadick.

McCoy, a pioneer from the '60s who was once asked "Do you really think it's appropriate for you to interview a man in a room alone?" today is recognized throughout the industry as a force to be reckoned with. Ditto for the women who have made partner and vice president at large, mainstream firms such as Caroline Nahas of Korn/Ferry Int'l.

But these outstanding women with high visibility tend to obscure the fact that their true numbers remain relatively small compared to men. Statistically, women make up only 28% of principals at all North American search firms. And the majority of that growth occurred in the past 10 years.

Breaking free

That low percentage is due in large part to:

• women getting a late start in the field 
• women evolving into search from research 
• women falling into search from other professions

Janet Jones-Parker, for instance, co-founded Management Woman,Inc. with Anne Hyde after quitting her mid-level management job at TWA in 1973 and realizing that no recruiting venue existed for young professional women like herself.

Other women learned what they could at larger search firms, then left to start their own firms.

"I felt I wasn't being listened to and didn't have real credibility among my peers, and I wanted to run some-thing in a softer, less authoritarian, more people-oriented environment," says Bishop, about why she decided to leave Johnson, Smith and Knisely Accord.

How to get there

Research remains a "woman's ghetto" from which it can be difficult to break free. About 95% of researchers are still female, and women have long complained that they are pigeon holed and blocked from advancing. It is possible to make the jump from researcher to consultant, and indeed some search firms owned by women make a point to "grow their own." But the majority recommend that candidates spend five years in industry to develop an area of expertise before going into executive recruiting.

That was the strategy pursued by Linda Bialecki, who specializes in Wall Street investment banking searches. Bialecki, who has a Stanford MBA and commercial bank experience, started as a junior consultant at a small company, then opened her own firm 10 years ago. For her, being a woman in finance, a field still dominated by men, has been mostly positive.

"If somebody doesn't know you and you try to sell business cold, it can work against you. But once you have the business it's a real advantage, because women listen and clients will talk to you about stuff they'd never tell a man," Bialecki says.

Woman/man: does it matter?

Indeed, many women believe their gender gives them a competitive edge in search. Janet Tweed, whose Gilbert Tweed Associates was the first woman-owned and operated firm (and at one time was all women), says women are generally more intuitive than men, who have tended to cultivate their analytical skills over intuition. That makes women recruiters better able to assess a candidate's soft skills, such as compatibility with the corporate culture.

"It all sounds so stereotypically female, but this business is all about listening and caring about getting it right and not having a lot of ego tied up in it," says Bialecki. "And I have clients who think that women do this better." About the author: Denise Hamilton is a freelance business writer and occasional columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

10 Issues Women Face

1.       Finding female role models to talk to and emulate

2.       Maintaining a sense of style and identity as a woman in a profession where almost three out of four consultants are still men

3.       Developing client relationships and networking apart from the "good ol' boy" clubs

4.       Having to be better and smarter than a male competitor to get the same business

5.       Advancing in large, mainstream firms where only one or two women have made it to partner

6.       Obtaining Fortune 500 CEO and board assignments with the same regularity as male recruiters

7.       Juggling extended travel with raising a family

8.       Dealing with the "nice little girl" treatment from clients and bosses

9.       Deciding whether to seek advancement at an existing firm or start your own

10.   Waiting for more women to rise to CEOs and CFOs of major corporations so that having successful women as heads of industry becomes more commonplace

25 Recruiters to Remember

© 1996, Kennedy Information, LLC. (603) 585-3101.

All rights reserved.

Reproduction without permission prohibited.

 < Back to News