Headhunters make a meal out of guff about talent

A few years ago, I spent a day at Korn Ferry pretending to be a headhunter. I raced round London in taxis, sat in on interviews and drew up lists.

When it was time to go home, I asked the woman I had been shadowing if she would give me a job. No, she replied after an indecently short pause. The main problem with me, she said, was that I said what I thought.

This was a blow, as I had thought I'd found my vocation. Headhunting (contrary to its slimy reputation) struck me as being just as worthwhile as teaching or nursing but without the dismal salary. Finding the right person for the right job is more important than most things, and anyone who can do it deserves not only a place in heaven (or similar) but also the thwacking great fee they extract for their efforts.

Yet recently I have started to feel less bruised about the rejection. Talking my mind may have ruled me out as a headhunter, but now saying anything that even makes sense disqualifies one from joining what practitioners call the "executive search space".

Modern headhunters spout as much guff as management consultants, but without the excuse. Consultants have to, to hide the fact that it often isn't clear what they're selling.

Korn Ferry describes itself as "the premier provider of human capital solutions" and the other big firms are no better.

Heidrick & Struggles boasts that "as innovators, we are actively redefining top-level search to encompass complementary services". Michael Page's approach goes for bathos. "Our journey starts when we see a difference between where we are today and where we want to be," it says on its website.

Last week an acquaintance told me he had just employed one of the world's largest headhunting firms to help him find a new managing director. He received an introductory e-mail from the firm that began: "As a Leading Total Talent Solution Provider, we have some special assessment tools to help identify the 'right' candidate."

The only important word here - right - has acquired inverted commas, while the rest seems to have been produced by an automatic buzzword generator. All the above words are dismal, but the word "talent" is the worst. Most people aren't terribly talented at all. And, once you start talking of talent, it's only a hop, skip and jump to "talent pools", with the dangerously misleading idea that schools of talent are swimming around, just ready to be fished out by the headhunter. With the e-mail came attached a "Leadership Advantage Toolkit" containing 66 characteristics that might be desirable in a leader, including "dealing with paradox" and "organisational agility". These had to be rated according to "mission critical", "important" and so on.

This is a low trick. It is about making clients think they are buying rigour in the hope this will make them less likely to protest when presented with the inevitably disappointing shortlist of candidates.

In fact headhunting is both simple and difficult. The theory is simple: there are good managers and not-so-good ones. Alas, most are fairly mediocre, as managing isn't easy.

Choosing the good ones has nothing at all to do with 66 carefully weighted competencies: it is more a matter of finding three. The ability to think, the ability to act, and (most importantly) the ability to get others to act.

To find such people means having good contacts and doing an awful lot of slow and tedious checking to discover whether candidates really are good. This is a slog. This is another reason why headhunting might not have been the job for me.

It isn't just headhunters who hugely overcomplicate the talk about "talent". The solicitor Eversheds has come up with a list of personality types to embody what it is looking for in its trainee lawyers.

Finding the English language inadequate, it has invented seven new words: "Knowlivators": (knowledgeable motivators); "Logithizers" (logical empathisers); "Proactilopers" (proactive developers) and four other clumping concepts. This is old hat.

Martin Lukes, Financial Timescolumnist and now chief executive of a-b glöbâl, invented these hybrid concepts in 2000 with his leading edge "Creovation™", which was 50 per cent creativity, 50 per cent innovation - and 120 per cent drivel.

A friend who is a senior partner at a law firm was recently asked by one of her new recruits: "Will I get enough sleep?" to which the answer was most definitely "no".

Only one of the seven Eversheds characteristics slips off the tongue. That is Winnowmat, the winning diplomat. But the reason it rings a bell is that it sounds like Winalot. Which is dog food. Now Purina, the company that makes it (Mission: "Your pet, Our Passion) explains that what it is really selling is "expertise that can enrich the relationship you share with your pet".

Headhunters can take comfort after all: they may make a meal out of talking about their business but at least they are in the excellent company of the makers of Tender Meaty Morsels.

- (Financial Times service)