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“Follow your passion,” your mother likely told you. It turns out she was right. According to these six respected executive recruiters—some well established, some up-and-comers, all insightful—doing what you like, for the right reasons, is essential for career success. What else do they recommend? Read on. Or go ask your mother for more advice.

Words of wisdom from the talent allocators.

Deb Brown, Russell Reynolds Associates Leo Meggitt, Forster Chase Anne Keyser, David Barrett Partners

The KnowledgeDavid Barrett, David Barrett Partners Jane Marcus, Korn Ferry

Art by John Cuneo / johncuneo.com

Renee Neri, Heidrick & Struggles

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WITHOUT USING NAMES, WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISSTEP YOU’VE SEEN BY AN ASSET OWNER IN BUILDING HIS OR HER CAREER?

A lack of patience. But the flipside of that is lethargy. Fifteen years in the pension world can be too long.

Speaking ill of a past employer and not taking ownership of a mistake, misstep, or blunder. There are people who will cast aspersions and make it look like it’s someone else’s fault. It’s just so unbecoming. For an asset owner in particular, a mistake might be taking what appears to be an industry spotlight role as a stepping stone when your heart isn’t really in it.

People trading down in terms of quality of platform for the money or title—because it’s very hard to recover from that. What’s key is the quality of organization where you work. Don’t compromise on your platform in terms of the next step.

Going to a public sector scheme. It doesn’t always work out badly, and there are some within the public sector (like the Pension Protection Fund) that are seen as good moves. But in at least one instance I’ve seen someone take a public sector scheme position—and it set him back years. He’s back on the right track now, which is great.

In one instance in the insurance space, someone was about to get an offer but went off the rails when asked about compensation. They were way too cagey about what they currently made—and that leads people to think you’re being dishonest.

Too many moves—it usually indicates you’re chasing the money. Oh, and lying on your résumé.

THE MOST UNDER- AND OVERVALUED QUALITIES IN AN ASSET MANAGEMENT JOB CANDIDATE ARE…

Overvalued: Current compensation. I will quote Warren Buffett: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

Undervalued: The proven ability to mentor, train, and promote staff. How do you treat the people underneath you?

On a personal level, the most overvalued quality is charisma. It’s too easily confused with leadership, and many people lead from a quiet confidence. Professionally, manager selection can be overvalued. What’s undervalued is having a great network of leaders and mentors to rely on.

The most overvalued is the undergraduate degree—who cares if I went to Yale and Columbia? I’m looking for academic achievement wherever you went, and how you levered it. Undervalued is what you can’t see on the résumé: communication skills.

Undervalued: Humility. Overvalued: What’s another word for bullishness? Assertiveness? Assertiveness is often overvalued.

Overvalued: Counter-intuitively, the ability to get things done. It’s not just what you do, but how you do it, that leads to persistent success.

Undervalued: On the flipside, respect and cultural fit. You want to be a disrupter—but in the right way.

A breadth of asset class experience can be undervalued—for so many people are really siloed. Breadth of asset class experience shows a breadth of thinking. The ‘soft’ skills can also be undervalued—and the bigger the team to lead, the more important this is. As for being overvalued, I call it the ‘But… but… but’ issue: The idea that a candidate wants to point to something that doesn’t really matter, when they should be looking for breadth.

Deb Brown

Leo Meggitt

Anne Keyser

David Barrett Jane Marcus

Renee Neri

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WHAT IS THE MOST CHALLENGING SEARCH YOU’VE EVER UNDERTAKEN?

The most challenging one was for multi-billion dollar pension search. There was someone on the trustee board who was extremely well regarded and well known in the city and among consultants—and was also known for being incredibly tough. A number of the candidates heard he was on the board and had a nervous giggle. We did find someone for the position in the end—but it could have been better if people hadn’t backed away due to his tough reputation.

The most challenging position I’ve had to fill was backfilling a CIO who had risen to the top of his organization. We couldn’t replicate the new CIO, and we had to complement their strengths and weaknesses. It was tough—so tough that it brought about a very helpful conversation about restructuring the organization.

Don’t take on a search where you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into. Know your client. In our business, it’s easy to get wrapped up into the next search, the next seat. To avoid that, don’t be greedy. Don’t take something on that you can’t sell yourself. [Editor’s note: Slightly better than Anne’s answer, but still.]

There is no winning in answering this question! [Editor’s note: Much persistence was exhausted in attempting to get Anne to answer this question.]

Like I’d tell the name! The most challenging one for me was a family office. It wasn’t a bad client at all, but a family office investment head can be drawn from such a diverse background, and this was its first CIO. It was an ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ search, and we had to kiss a lot of frogs—little ones, fat ones, round ones. It took a long time.

KAUST, or the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, in Saudi Arabia. When we were brought in, the school was just a dream on blueprints. $20 billion was bequeathed to rival the Harvards of the world. It had an iconic board, with brilliant finance people alongside some treasury experts from Saudi Aramco. They wanted the most brilliant minds in endowment and foundation land to be CEO and CIO of this new idea. As recruiters, we had to tell a story. It was challenging because no one had ever heard of them. If you name the big names in nonprofits, we went after them. The ultimate pick—Sindo Oliveros, from the World Bank—has done a splendid job.

WHAT IS YOUR REACTION WHEN A CANDIDATE REACHES THE POINT OF RECEIVING WHAT YOU SEE AS A STRONG OFFER, THEN DROPS OUT?

It was my fault. I didn’t manage the process. If the offer is fair and strong, and you’ve been managing relocation, spouses’ jobs, and all that, I don’t blame the candidate. I blame the recruiter. It can always fall apart if the client gives a poor offer—but if you’ve checked all the boxes, it’s on us. That’s what we get paid for.

I hope I have a strong backup candidate!

My reaction is disappointment. By that point, I think it’s important to understand where you stand. I generally mean it when I say I don’t end up angry—except if it’s clear that they’ve wanted an offer to get a counteroffer, but that’s only happened once or twice. My first thought would always be to look at why I didn’t see that coming.

First of all, we try really hard to not let a client make an offer that won’t be accepted. We have tested it, tweaked it, and then both sides get what they want. Does it ever happen? Of course it happens. My reaction is disappointment. I don’t want to be played—and if we’ve orchestrated the search well, we have a close runner-up that the client will be equally happy with. Also, I’ve advised clients to not make an offer if I know the candidate is interviewing elsewhere—I don’t want that offer in their pocket!

Disbelief. Massive amounts of frustration. The nature of the search hinges on human emotion—and that’s hard to anticipate. It’s not always possible, but to avoid being left at the altar you need to suss out all the risk factors. Flesh them out early and hit them repeatedly.

It doesn’t happen very often, so my reaction is, ‘Something went wrong.’ But it’s an outlier.

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WHICH SPECIFIC ORGANIZATIONS IMPRESS YOU WITH THEIR ABILITY TO DEVELOP CIO-LEVEL TALENT? AND PLEASE DON’T SAY THE YALE INVESTMENT OFFICE…

Aberdeen Asset Management is good—they’ve got a great culture. Legal & General Investment Management as well. The best among the pension fund side is Universities Superannuation Scheme, I think.

Because they are both strong at talent development in their own unique way, T. Rowe Price and BlackRock. On the asset-owner side, the MacArthur Foundation—under the leadership of Susan Manske—has great talent.

In the traditional money management arena there are many examples, including Wellington, Capital Group, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Tiger Management, and the Tiger Cubs. In the endowments and foundations world, it hasn’t gotten to that level of scale. You have to look at Yale, Notre Dame, Michigan, and even some of the Canadian plans in the pension space—but in most cases there isn’t enough scale to say they’re huge feeders of talent.

Two that come to mind are the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and the University of Notre Dame. With Notre Dame, Scott Malpass has done an awesome job. He’s filled the office with alums, and they have huge retention—which of course makes it hard to recruit them out of there! Also, I must add that more broadly, in terms of generating the next generation of talent, the Canadian pensions are unparalleled.

Any of the companies and funds that David said. More generally, anyone with over $5 billion in assets who performs well. You’ll find talent there.

Look at Boeing, at Chrysler, at Ely Lilly—these corporations have done a great job of spawning talent. It’s no coincidence they’re all corporations. Pensions can have a material impact on a corporation, so the management of those assets and liabilities is done very professionally.

WHICH SPECIFIC CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER OR ASSET OWNER HAS STRUCTURED THEIR CAREER EXTREMELY WELL, IN YOUR EYES?

Oftentimes prospects tell us that their dream job is to manage money for their alma mater. There are many success stories out there, but one is Pam Peedin, Dartmouth’s talented CIO (an undergraduate and graduate degree holder from the college). She successfully leveraged her Cambridge Associates experience to ultimately land the top spot at the investment office.

Rob Wallace, the new Stanford investment leader, has been very smart. He had great training at the Yale Investment Office, and he stuck very close to a strong mentor. And don’t think that the recruiting community hasn’t been running after him for years. He was patient. He waited for the fat pitch.

On the asset-owner side, Ian McKinlay has done it very well. He rose to a senior position with a large consulting firm, developing his skills there, and then he moved to take on a big role at the Pension Protection Fund at a time it was growing very quickly. He then parlayed that into a good role at Aviva. He’s in a strong position to go on to even bigger things.

Jason Klein, CIO at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. I like backgrounds that include direct investment experience, and Jason began his career at Lehman Brothers in private equity. He then made the conscious decision to move into the endowments and foundations world.

Greg Williamson, now at the American Red Cross Foundation. A recent placement—not mine. Greg has always been very discerning with what’s brought to him, and that’s why he was at BP America for so long. You might say ‘He’s an old timer!’ and you’d be right—but that’s the point.

Greg Williamson. He has had real staying power, and he really delivered for BP. Mark Schmid, now at the University of Chicago, and DTE Energy’s Paul Cavazos have also done a good job—with Paul largely being under the radar.

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WHAT IS ONE NON-ASSET OWNING ROLE THAT YOU WOULD RECOMMEND FOR ASPIRING CIOS, AND WHY?

Any position that provides you with an equity track record. Combine that with a track record of managing people, and you’ve got a shot.

A multi-asset solutions job. It’s somewhere where you use a lot of breadth—you’re coordinating with portfolio management teams and consultants—and where you’ll get asset class, allocation, and relationship management experience.

There is a school of thought that great CIOs need to have some direct investing experience. So find a way to do that, either through co-investing or spending some time at an asset manager. Also, perhaps take on an advisory role in some way—maybe as a consultant or at a solutions group, if you are an allocator. It can only make you better.

I’m not actually sure. In this business, you’re either the mechanic or you’re selling the cars—there is little appreciation for rotation between those two sides. So perhaps I would advise people to get experience in a risk department, and in distribution, if they can find a way.

What I love to see is someone who started in the traditional money management business and has direct investment or capital-markets experience on Wall Street; Someone who trained at a T. Rowe Price, Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley, and then transitioned into a nonprofit or plan sponsor role. To me, that’s someone who is passionate about markets and then made a conscious decision to get to the asset-owner side.

A big area is distribution—it’s valuable to have sat in that seat. Knowing this in a multi-asset class role gives you credibility you might otherwise lack. The flipside of a move to this space exists, however. If you have been a CIO for a long time, you’ve probably gotten used to being the prettiest girl in the room—and when you’re in distribution, you need to be ready not to be.

IF YOU WERE TO GIVE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE TO AN AMBITIOUS DEPUTY CIO, WHAT WOULD IT BE? AND FOR A CIO?

To deputies: You need to assess the likelihood of being a CIO at your current organization. The thing is, when the CIO leaves, the deputy often gets overlooked—so you need to call upon confidants about what they think will happen if your CIO leaves. The CIO also has a network of other CIOs, which can help.

To the CIO: Great, let’s talk. But is larger the real goal in your career progression? Small can be exciting, and can grow.

For a deputy: Don’t get overly siloed. Work across asset classes and get good asset allocation and board exposure.

For the CIO: Stay focused on your current role, on your performance, and on your team. Don’t look too far ahead—if you’re good, we will find you.

Advice for an aspiring CIO: I’d be silly if I didn’t say do a great job in the role you’re in. Also, find a way to move from a specialist to a generalist. And get on Chief Investment Officer’s Forty Under Forty, of course.

For a CIO: I think the answer to that has a little to do with visibility. Do a great job, but become visible and connect with influencers. Get noticed, but not to the point that you put off your board. Find that balance, and get noticed.

For both groups: I would advise excelling in the seat they’re in. Be open to relocation. Focus on investment performance, effective leadership, and management of your board and committee—which ultimately are your references—and opportunities will come knocking.

For a deputy: Broaden your exposure to asset classes and broaden your exposure to leadership. Get a coach. Know who you are.

For a CIO: Don’t get stuck on titles. You may now be a CIO at a smaller fund, but don’t be afraid of being the deputy at a larger, more sophisticated fund. And have an end game.

For a deputy: The critical component is showing reach across the portfolio. Show you are ready to fly the plane. I always ask which internal committees they’ve sat on, how they’ve influenced the whole portfolio, and what changes they’ve affected during their tenure.