It’s really interesting to see why senior-level executive roles fail sometimes from an executive search perspective. In our world, which is Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) executive search, being about half of what we do, with other senior-level marketing positions making up the other half, it’s sometimes easy to look out and say, “Hey, that didn’t make any sense from the beginning.”
I recently spoke to a good friend of mine—I’ve known him since 1999. He’s really grown his career as our search firm has evolved into becoming the premier marketing-specific executive search firm in the country. He’s now on his third CMO gig—not a search we were working on, but something where he reached out to us and said, “Hey, you know, I’ve got some questions. How do I manage through this process? What do you recommend as someone who’s an expert in executive search?”
A Flawed Process from the Start
Unfortunately, the search was really set up to fail from the beginning by the organization recruiting for a new Chief Marketing Officer. What does that mean? Why was it set up to fail? Well, it’s about a $10 billion company recruiting for a CMO, and the expectation is that the person will relocate to their corporate headquarters’ city, which we’re seeing more and more as organizations reassess remote or hybrid work. More corporations are going back to the office, and relocation is again becoming a bigger part of what we do as a marketing executive search firm.
So, a $10 billion company is going to market with a CMO search, and the recruiter they chose was not an executive search firm—it was a staffing firm. A very good, large, national staffing firm that typically places people on a contract basis, does staff augmentation (mainly for IT, but really any part of the organization that needs staffing services—usually coordinator, manager, or senior manager-level talent on an interim basis). That’s what this company does, and they’re very good at it.
But then, if you go to their website, they also say they do “executive recruiting.” The fact that they call it “executive recruiting” is the first red flag that it’s not really an executive search firm. They generally ask the same number and level of questions for staffing as they do for executive search.
So, what does all that mean? They found this individual—my friend—who is absolutely an A-player and would have been a huge win for them. I asked him, “So, first, what kind of interview questions did they ask you relative to marketing strategy, digital, ROAS (return on advertising spend)?” And he said, “Well, they really didn’t—because that’s not their expertise, and they didn’t know how to screen a senior-level marketer.”
I said, “Okay, what kind of questions did they ask about leadership and culture fit?” And he said, “You know, not really any. Basically, they asked about three interview questions total for a Chief Marketing Officer search at a $10 billion enterprise.”
Not really an interview, just more asking questions about whether this is a role you might be interested in? This is a typical approach to contract staffing/staff augmentation.
The Importance of Working with the Right Search Partner
Right there, there’s no way to know if the talent they’re presenting is a good fit. In this case, with my friend, they got lucky because he’s absolutely a rockstar CMO who would have been a huge value-add. But that wasn’t because their process was proper—it was because they happened to find the right person who was open to interviewing. They got lucky. Kind of.
When they got to the end of the process, as a staffing firm, they really had no understanding of executive compensation structures and did not know what questions to ask in this area either. So they allowed a candidate to interview who was never going to accept anything close to where the offer came in at.
Which was a huge waste of time for him, the HR team, the executive team, the board members, and everybody who interviewed him. This is another area where, if they had hired an actual executive search firm that understood how to work with individuals at this level, it never would have gotten that far. All that time wouldn’t have been wasted because we would have known upfront that we had a big disconnect on compensation and either not presented this candidate or made our client aware of the compensation gap prior to the first interview.
As I was asking him how the process went, he said, “The recruiter, from the staffing firm, was obviously in way over their head when I spoke with them and didn’t understand how to work positions at this level.”
So, What Were The Key Misses?
1. The Interview Process & Vetting
- Only three interview questions total (compared to our executive search process, which includes an hour-long deep dive on marketing, custom questions, and a second hour-long interview on culture fit and leadership).
- We rule out 90% of candidates before sending the top 10% to clients. Their process? Three quick questions, and if they think you’re good, they move forward.
2. Compensation & Offer Structure
- The base salary was ~20% light.
- Bonus was fine (30-40% short-term incentive), but no long-term incentive (LTI)—despite him coming from a role with significant LTI.
- No provision to offset unvested equity from his current employer (a gap of 300K–500K).
- No discussion of a signing bonus to compensate for lost LTI.
3. Relocation Package
- Very low fixed amount for moving—no support from a relocation company.
- No help with selling his current home (commission costs).
- Expected him to manage his own move while hitting the ground running.
- Essentially, the message to the candidate was, How would you like to pay money out of your pocket to come work for us? Not a great way to intice top talent to join your company.
4. Lack of Employment Agreement
At-will offer (no severance terms), while his last three roles had structured agreements. Not saying this policy is right or wrong, but how did a candidate who would never take a new role without an employment agreement get to an offer stage with a company that does not offer one?
Why Did This Happen?
They trusted a staffing firm (great at placing junior/mid-level contractors) to do an executive search—something outside their expertise. Maybe they thought they were saving money, but in reality:
- The role remains unfilled.
- The opportunity cost of not having a CMO is massive.
- The staffing firm looks bad, HR looks bad, and the CEO is frustrated—all because the process was flawed from the start.
The lesson? If you’re hiring a CMO (or any C-suite role), use an actual executive search firm. Otherwise, you risk wasting time, money, and credibility—and still ending up with no hire.