Some time ago I sat on a committee that had the job of hiring a headhunter. For the best part of a day we shut ourselves into a room in the City of London with quantities of coffee and superior biscuits and listened to one presentation after another from rival firms.
Four teams turned up to pitch. One had just two members, another as many as four. All were easy on the eye. All were smartly tailored, and friendly in that professional way that is slightly chilling. Each team had a PowerPoint presentation, which they ground their way through, assuring us of their “unprecedented global network” and “deep industry expertise”. By the end of the day I had acquired four fat presentation packs with printouts of slides on the heaviest, glossiest paper – all of which went straight into the shredder.
There was no good reason for choosing any one of these headhunters over any other, but a choice had to be made nevertheless. So I found myself disqualifying one firm simply because its lead man said “grow the talent pool”, thus combining three of my least favourite words in a single phrase, and slightly preferring another firm because its presentation was marginally shorter.