Although some Boards are considered more prestigious than others, the Selection Committee of each Board demands the highest recruiting standards in terms of competence, compatibility, integrity, and confidentiality. Likewise, candidates for Outside Director positions require comparable professionalism, accuracy, and discretion.
In prior decades, CEO’s and shareholders notoriously recruited “friends” onto their Boards; however, because Directors are increasingly being held accountable for their decisions, CEO’s and shareholders of today are finding less of their friends are willing to serve as Outside Directors. Consequently, contemporary Boards are tending to use executive search organizations like JP Cornerstone significantly more often to locate individuals who are willing and competent to serve in such Board capacities.
A search process for non-executive Board Members is very similar to a regular Executive Search process (see under Executive Search).The Pre Study, the Profiling and the Assessment is as important as for recruiting executives, but the set up can be a little different depending on the case at hand: the owner situation, if it is a listed company, if there is a Selection Committee, etc.
The JP Cornerstone Board Bank
JP Cornerstone has since 2002, in cooperation with Cornerstone International Group, built up an international ”Board Bank”. The purpose with this is to pre-identify a number of senior and leading executives with an interest / experience / competence to join a Board of Directors in the Nordic countries or internationally. The international Board Bank now contains more than 5.000 relevant candidates that are interested in board assignments nationally / internationally. The Nordic Board Bank contains approximately 500 names of experienced and senior executives. A large portion are females. With access to this Board Bank, we believe that we can help our clients with a fast search process while at the same time guarantee top quality.
Further Discussion
The discussion about how to put together an effective Board of Directors is very vital, to say the least. Add to this the relevant discussion how to get a better balance with male / females and ethnic minorities, and you can end up in a very complex situation, should you need to add or replace a member of the board. We at JP Cornerstone have the experience and tools necessary to assess what kind of competence you should add and then find the relevant candidates and assess their “fit” in the organisation.
We would be happy to discuss your non-executive situation further. Please refer to the Contact section for how to best make contact with a relevant office and / or consultant.