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- Jo Faragher
A high-profile chief executive has attacked the use of executive search companies, claiming they hold back talented senior women.
Speaking at a Fortune magazine event this week, Harriet Green (pictured), chief executive of holiday company Thomas Cook, said women candidates would be better off going straight to the chairman when applying for senior corporate roles as search companies tended to focus purely on candidates who met certain criteria.
Green said that, when she approached Thomas Cook about a role, she took the decision to “cut out the middle men” and contacted the chairman directly. She told delegates: “Nobody approached me. I contacted the chairman and said: ‘I think you need me’. I’d never met him in my life.” She described one headhunter she had worked with as being “unbelievably unhelpful”.
Green added that women should use modern technology to contact chairmen, pointing out that “one of the great things about governance is that all these people are known”.
Speaking in The Times earlier this week, one headhunter applauded Green’s enthusiasm but added that, “most chairmen won’t take cold calls”. Katushka Giltsoff, a partner at The Miles Partnership, told the newspaper: “Even if they do take the call, the chairman would recommend that the headhunter considers the candidate alongside all the others. There’s a whole lot of work done in advance on succession planning.”
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