I'm Alison Beard.

And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.

Adi, so many of our listeners, many people who read HBR, who go to business school, are or have aspirations to be senior leaders in their organizations.

Maybe the C-suite, maybe they even want to be CEO someday. And that, of course, means building a resume that will impress a lot of stakeholders. But one increasingly important group is executive recruiters.

Look, I co-ran HBR for a long time. And, you know, we're a different organization from a lot

of corporate entities out there. But even we bring in executive search firms for the big roles.

And, you know, the senior

leaders I talk to, these are people who have great skills, great experience, they're politically

savvy, they've made all the right career moves. Even they say they need to figure out how in the

world to persuade recruiters that they are C-suite material as both internal and external

candidates. Yeah, exactly.

It's a tricky process.

And today's guests say that companies are bringing in search firms more often than ever,

in part because it's so hard to discern who is really ready for senior leadership in a business

world that's changing so quickly.

They need objective, independent advisors

to help them not just see what someone has done in their past, but also gave their potential

for growth into the future. And so anybody who wants a senior role has to be ready for the

recruiting process. And the process, I assume, means the behavioral interviews, the assessments, the reference checking, all of that.

Yes, it is an onerous process, but thankfully we have some experts here to talk us through how to navigate it.

Mark Thompson is chairman of the chief executive alliance, and Byron Laughlin is Global Head of Board Advisory at NASDAQ.

Together, they wrote the HBR article,

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