For boards and investors
Track record tells you what someone can do. Chemistry tells you that you like them. Neither tells you whether this role, at this stage, will keep feeding what drives the person. That is the unknown that costs you 18 months later, and it is the one a board can check before it signs.
01 · What most searches check
That's picking a player without knowing how the team plays. Expertise, experience, track record: every serious search checks it, and so do I, on every candidate. It gets someone into the room. It does not tell you what happens after.
Skill decides who gets into the room. Stage fit and need fit decide what happens after.
02 · What need fit is
Predictability. Variety. Recognition. Connection. Growth. Contribution. Everyone has two top needs, and they barely change. If the role keeps feeding those two, the person is switched on for the long haul. If it starves them, the energy drops around month nine, decisions slow down, and a year later you are hiring again.
People don't show or articulate their needs on purpose. Not in an interview, not over dinner.In their actions. In the reasons they did something, and the reasons they didn't.
Which job they left, and what they gave up to leave it. Which offer they turned down. When their energy dropped, and what changed right before.That's not theory. That's their track record, read for the right thing.
Hard. You can't rewrite the choices you already made.A personality test can be gamed. Senior people know what the test wants to hear.
03 · Where boards see it first
A biotech brings on a board member with a big name and a bigger network. What drives him is recognition. The company needs someone driven by contribution, someone who helps the CEO decide. A few months in, every board meeting turns into a vote on whether he was right. When the company doesn't do exactly what he says, he announces he doesn't want to work with them anymore.
The cost isn't just a lost board member. The CEO starts second-guessing every decision to avoid the next fight, and investors notice when a big name leaves early.
A board needs someone who helps the CEO decide. That's why contribution has to be one of a board member's top two needs.
In a typical board member search, around 30 candidates have the right expertise. Around 10 drop out on conflicts of interest. Around 15 drop out because recognition ranks in their top two. Around 5 are left for the short list, with need fit checked.
04 · Two questions for the board agenda
CEO, CFO, CMO, interim, fractional, board member, chair. Only the answers change.
What will the stage ahead demand from this role, and which needs will it feed?The company side. Answered before the first candidate.
Are those the needs that drive this person, year after year?The person side. Read from decisions that cost them something.
05 · Fifty years of research
Three findings a board can lean on.
Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, Self-Determination Theory: when a job meets someone's core needs, they engage and stay.A review of 99 studies in the Journal of Management confirmed it at work in 2016.
Amy Kristof-Brown and colleagues, Personnel Psychology: how well a job fits a person predicts satisfaction, commitment and whether they plan to leave.
Paul Sackett and colleagues: a century of hiring research re-checked. The best predictor of performance is the structured interview.Not the CV, not the gut feeling after dinner.
Let's talk
Sixty minutes on a call, no brief and no pitch. We start with the stage your company is entering, then with what the role has to feed, then with the person.
Christian Rados, Rados Recruiting, Munich. Biotech executive search in Europe and the US, headhunter since 2011.