TO FIND A CHIEF OPERATIONAL OFFICER FOR AN IT COMPANY
A leading provider of BSS solutions came to Avarn with a tricky task. They needed a chief operating officer, and not an ordinary one, but one who was able to combine the roles of both chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
Usually CFO and COO are two different people. There are not many specialists who really understand the peculiarities of both positions and the respective fields of responsibility. How to find one?
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE SEARCH
A person that the company was looking for, had to combine the functions of both officers and have experience with managing big teams and huge budgets. Such people are rarely on the market looking for a job: usually, they are already employed, and you can’t find them on an ordinary job board.
The recruiter went to specific websites, where C-level specialists are more common. The primary focus was on the executive and operating officers in the companies with no defined financial officers. In that case, most probably the CEO or COO would be responsible for financial questions as well. Many of the specialists we found were qualified enough and interested in the position but — to be honest — a bit arrogant.
After a couple of talks the recruiter realized that he needed to create a scenario whereby a candidate would show the initial interest in the position, not the other way around. The recruiter wrote a blind post: he briefly described who he was looking for but never named a company, and sent the post to the professional community. He got over 10 candidates replies but only two of them were qualified enough.
A COO IN 1.5 MONTH AND A HALF
The Recruiter’s active search also bore fruits: we introduced a total of seven candidates, three out of which were introduced to the investors by the company’s CEO. However, the most motivated one was the one who responded to our post himself. He had all the skills required to manage a company o over a thousand staff members, and even his lack of IT experience didn’t change the client’s mind.
The client was satisfied: in a month and a half, we had found a C-level specialist who was a perfect fit for both soft and hard skills.