Member Article

Non-executive directors, languishing in recruiters’ purgatory?

There was a director called Joe

Who wanted his business to grow.

Someone said, ’N.E.Ds

Used to cost us big fees

But it ain’t necessarily so!’

There is still a place for headhunters – recruiters – to help fill executive positions, but for non-executive directorships, there are alternative ways for companies to make the right selection. And for NEDs themselves, there are much sharper ways of promoting your profile than allowing your name to languish on a database along with tens of thousands of others, not unlike the countless souls hanging around in Recruiters’ Purgatory waiting for the call to “a higher place”!

The French author Victor Hugo once wrote:

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

If you’re Joe, the CEO of a growing and ambitious company, you might feel happier with that statement if the final word were money and not time.

Using your company’s finances wisely – measuring expenditure against outcomes – is so obvious an aim it might be regarded as a truism. But for a moment let’s consider the following scenario.

Your company is growing and you need the expertise and insight of a non-executive director to bring a freshness of ideas and a network of new and potentially profitable contacts. So your next step is?

One path to follow would be the traditional route – pick up the phone, dial the number you’re familiar with and leave the search and selection to the headhunters. For this particular non-executive directorship, let’s say the going rate is £20,000. Fair enough. You’ll get your man or woman, and the whole process will have cost you £20,000.

But that ain’t necessarily the way to go these days.

There’s a quicker, more streamlined route – nonexecutivedirectors.com – that will enable you and your fellow board members to make the right choice, tailored precisely to your needs, without the need to bring in middle men or incur any financial outlay. There are twenty thousand reasons why this is a better option.

On the other hand, if you’re a non-exec seeking an opportunity, then Hugo’s statement is just as valid today. Why waste time and effort with recruiters when you can exercise total control over how you promote yourself on-line by registering with nonexecutivedirectors.com? You can continually refresh your profile and enjoy all the benefits of an extensive network of professional advisory contacts across the UK and Europe.

It’s a straight choice. Being content to let your name and details settle, unfriended and often inactive, on a recruiter’s database?

Or become part of a thriving, high-profile community whose entire raison d’etre is to bring together companies and NEDs for their mutual benefit?

Victor Hugo also said:

Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.

Establishing your profile on the nonexecutivedirectors.com website might well be the perfect way to achieve that.

- See more at: http://www.nonexecutivedirectors.com/blog/cutting-out-the-middle-man-non-executive-directors.html#sthash.Vjw4VEfw.dpuf

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ian Wright .