How We Found Our Dream Chief People Officer

So, turns out our Chief People Officer was a really hard role to fill. Our search took over 18 months, but after all of that, I'm very pleased to announce we've found exactly the leader we were looking for.

After an exhaustive search using traditional search techniques we had not found "the one". I personally had dozens of meetings with many extraordinary candidates but "the one" still eluded us. I really wanted someone who had the scale of experience we needed with the philosophy that trust, inspiration and respect drive human performance. An innovative thinker who was also grounded in the experience to know what already works and what needs to be reinvented. An advocate for engagement and humanizing work while also a protector of organizational values and commitment to performance.

This is not to say that the candidates I had already met wouldn't be great CPO's, we just didn't feel they'd be a great CPO at Intelex. But after as while you start to wonder. Was it us? Was it our approach? It felt like we were seeing the same profile over and over, very little variance in how the world has defined, bred and reinforced what it means to be an "HR" leader. It's as if the world was telling us "you don't understand what this role is, change your expectations". We didn't want to.

So, we decided to depart from the typical search playbook and leverage our LinkedIn networks to reach a broader pool of potential candidates. We also decided to depart from the typical job description, and write more of a letter... a letter that we poured our hearts into. We exposed our inner thoughts about the type of person we hoped to find. This felt risky, could we be exposing our naivety on the topic? If we received no response we'd be out of options for all the world to see. Gulp.

But, we wanted to connect directly with a potential candidate, we thought that, for the right person, our passion and transparency would be seen as an asset. We hoped that, using this approach, we could find a like minded THINKER rather than bullet points on resumes that match the bullet points on our job description.

So, we wrote a LinkedIn article. It can be found here. Not just an article... more of a manifesto, a blueprint to our philosophy and a call for like minded people to potentially see us as a place where they could materialize their hopes and dreams. Clicking the "Publish" button was kinda scary.

The response was fantastic, within a week it had been read over 5,800 times. It received over 350 likes, 200 shares, 40 comments and resulted in over 120 formal nominations/referrals for the role. The skills and experience we saw from the candidates were amazing and diverse. We had nominations and applicants that came from every industry and background that we had never before had access to. We even had candidates from all around the world, including as far as Europe, Australia and even Tibet!

Our situation changed overnight. We went from picking through individual resumes to having a massive group of qualified candidates to sort through. We developed a scoring methodology to filter the candidate pool. The methodology included 15 objective check points that ranked a range of criteria including career background, industry experience, cross functional experience, evidence of caring about people, evidence of inspirational leadership and many other factors.

Using this scoring we narrowed down the candidate pool to a top 10 list. From this list I met them all (as well as many more), spending as much as 3 hours of interviews and dinners with each candidate (I spent easily 100 hours on this search over the course of the 18 months). My objective was to validate tactical skill set, strategic philosophy, cross functional experience and to get comfortable with the cultural add that the candidate would bring to the company.

This process resulted in 3 final candidates who were all extremely qualified for the role.

As this role is a partner to the entire organization we felt it was very important to have an inclusive and cross functional selection process. So, in addition to meeting the other members of the executive team, we chose to form a 6 member “CPO Selection Committee” that represented the diversity of job functions, seniority and background of the Intelex employee population.

Each member of this committee met each one of the candidates one-on-one. They each then provided me written feedback privately. We then held a group discussion to share priorities they looked for in their evaluation and to discuss the conclusions they derived from their interviews. This was a fantastic opportunity for everyone to triangulate their experiences and was very helpful in informing our eventual decision. 

Although very rigorous, we thought the level of diligence was critical. This role is one that interfaces and represents all Intelexians and is critical to not only our organizational success but also the individual success of each of the members of our team.

Every one of our candidates were amazing to participate and although the process was rigorous we received feedback that they were comforted by the level of importance we placed in the role and the level of cross functional engagement in its success. They were all willing to dedicate a massive amount of time (like 13 interviews, each!) and this spoke volumes of their character. I consider myself fortunate to have learned from each of them. They all would have made exceptional leaders at Intelex.

After this long (and exhaustive) search I am so pleased to announce that Intelex did have a clear leader for the role, and we have since welcomed Faith Tull as our Chief People Officer!

Faith is an incredible people leader. She has a unique combination of business acumen, strategic vision, broad and deep experience in talent management and she 100% exemplifies our core Intelex values. She is an exceptional add to our executive team and her strong leadership is already helping us steer the organization.

In a few short weeks she has become a key leader at Intelex, and even kicked off her intro presentation at our Vision Meeting with a kick-ass intro dance. During her dance I watched Intelexians grin with a collective “oh yeah, you’re one of us” look on their faces. I wanted to post the video but apparently she doesn't want her dance published for all the world to see. What up with that Faith? :)

Oh… and, just to circle back to something we did to increase viewership of our original post. We offered a public referral fee. Not just any fee, but a $20,000 referral fee for anyone who could introduce us to a candidate that we ended up hiring. No questions asked.

I bet you’re interested in what happened with the referral fee, aren’t you?

Well, Faith submitted her application directly to us, so our assumption was that she was due the referral fee. On her first day I passed her an envelope and she looked straight back at me and said “I was actually told about this job by a friend of mine, I shouldn’t get all of this”. And I said, “well, you applied direct, those were the rules of the posting, you deserve it, those were the rules”. And she said, “that doesn’t feel right, can I at least split the fee with my friend”. To which I said “you can do whatever you want to do” and left it at that.

Well, of course, a week later I got an email from the man that told Faith about the role. He was full of gratitude for his part of the referral fee and even more full of praise for Faith and the contribution she’ll bring to Intelex.

I want to thank everyone who assisted us in our search and who shared, commented or liked our LinkedIn post. We are very fortunate for your assistance and are so happy with the result. I hope that this story can help you in their own recruiting efforts!

Thanks,

Mark