Why the Best C-Level Candidates May Be Difficult to Deal With

I have hesitated to write this one down, because it reflects something that may be a tad uncomfortable to some clients and candidates we work with.

But it is true, so here goes:

The best candidates we have placed over the course of many years often were not the easiest people to manage through a search process.

The best candidates we have placed over the course of many years often were not the easiest people to manage through a search process. Some of them pushed back on the brief. Some asked questions that made the client's team uncomfortable. A few were direct to the point of bluntness about what they would and would not accept. And more than one made the search considerably more complicated than it might have been with a more accommodating candidate.

They were also, in almost every case, exactly the right person for the role.

I have thought about this pattern a lot, and I think it is worth discussing. There is a tendency in executive search, as in any process involving human judgement under time pressure, to favour candidates who make things easy. Who respond promptly, adapt to the client's preferred format, ask sensible questions, and move smoothly through each stage.

These candidates feel like good candidates because they behave like good candidates in a process. But a search process is not the job.

What the job actually requires, especially at C-level, is someone who will push back on a strategy they disagree with.

What the job actually requires, especially at C-level, is someone who will push back on a strategy they disagree with. Who will tell a board something it does not want to hear. Who will hold a position under pressure rather than recalibrate to the room. Who has enough of a formed view of how organizations should be led that they are willing to defend it.

Sharp edges are not a defect in the stone. They are what the stone is made of. The work is in the cutting and polishing, not in wishing for a smoother rock.

These qualities do not disappear in the interview process. They show up there too, just in contexts where they may be slightly inconvenient rather than strategically valuable.

The candidate who challenges the role description is probably someone who has read it carefully and is already thinking about how to make the role work. The candidate who comes back with detailed questions about the supervisory board's governance expectations is probably someone who has thought seriously about what accountability structures they are walking into. The candidate who asks for more time to consider the offer is probably someone who makes considered decisions, not impulsive ones.

And no - before anyone forwards this article to their candidates or peers as some kind of permission slip: that is not what this is. I am not encouraging candidates to be difficult on purpose. Difficult as a strategy is not a strategy. It is just annoying.

None of this means friction is always a signal of quality.

None of this means friction is always a signal of quality. There are candidates who are difficult because they are entitled, or because they have an exaggerated sense of their own scarcity, or because they have simply been in senior roles long enough that they have stopped adapting to anyone else's expectations. That is a different profile, and the difference is usually visible on closer examination.

What distinguishes the two is whether the pushback is substantive. Whether the questions come from real interest in the role or from a need to appear hard to impress. Whether the candidate is engaging with the real content of what is being asked of them, or managing an impression.

The candidates I trust most are the ones who seem to be thinking about the role itself rather than the process of getting it.

The candidates I trust most are the ones who seem to be thinking about the role itself rather than the process of getting it. They are sometimes slower, sometimes less polished in the formal moments, sometimes more demanding than a client initially finds comfortable. But they are almost always the ones who are still in the seat three years later, having actually done what they were hired to do.

This is something I try to keep in mind when a search gets complicated by a candidate who does not quite fit the expected shape.

Sometimes complicated is a problem. And sometimes it is the best thing that could happen to a client who came looking for someone easy.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors, a Vienna-based executive search and board advisory boutique. She advises listed companies, family businesses and investors on C-suite, leaders and supervisory board appointments across DACH and CEE.

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