"It's extremely frustratingly, because with the exception of the top tier [search firms] you've got all these people that have come from transactional recruiting and who treat the leadership role as the equivalent of hiring a desktop architect," says another. "They haven't got the insight to understand the difference between a MIS manager and the CIO so they waste a lot of genuine CIOs' time by sending them out for jobs that are really just about operational roles."

"I think we need to at least achieve an acceptable definition of what a CIO is about, and then the next thing is educating the hirers of CIOs and educating the people seeking them," says one of our CIOs. "Unfortunately, if you look at the information sources for your CFOs and your CEOs, they tend to defer to the search firms prior to doing due diligence and the executive recruiter or consultant will feed them information about the position that is not always, say we say, spot on. So you get these horrible matches because at the end of the day they might end up putting on a good friend who was a great technocrat but not a good visionary. In other situations someone will be ignored because while the brief is to perform transformation based around the supply chain over the next two or three years, they insist that you know SAP. Now if you've got a JD Edwards background, they say: 'Sorry, you shouldn't apply.' There's an echelon where that is not an issue but certainly if you look at that tier two and some of that lower tier one market, you do get a lot of that."

Reflection of Ignorance

"You can find all sorts of recruiters," notes Mike Schaffner, a senior IT executive with engineering/MBA credentia and author of the Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms blog. "Some are very knowledgeable about IT and many less so. In many cases their lack of knowledge about the job specifics is a reflection of their client. Very often the client isn't sure what they are looking for and the recruiter has to cast a very wide net. So if the client says they want a CIO but the job is only lower level, the recruiter can try to steer them in the right direction but probably will have to run some true candidates by the client to convince them."

When it comes to IT, there's no doubt that large parts of the recruitment industry struggle, and the sheer number of recruitment companies touting for work doesn't help. Since the vast majority of people in IT recruitment have no IT experience, they are much more likely to adopt a "checklist" mentality in qualifying candidates. Many will have little experience in recruiting in a particular industry sector, or find themselves working with clients who are vague in defining what is needed for the top jobs. In fact the situation is so bad even some executive search firms are prepared to put the boot into their peers, while arguing the problems aren't entirely their fault.

"I can give you story after story after story about clients who accept the worst level of service possible," agrees Sherborne Consulting managing director John Milce. "Generally speaking, the comments about IT recruitment agencies 'ticking the boxes' are true.

"Mind you, a lot of the hiring managers get what they deserve out of their relationship with their IT recruiters; you get out what you put in."

"There will always be a couple of search consultants that take a cavalier attitude towards candidates regardless of the fancy name on the front door or the impressive views from their office," agrees Amazing Results executive search and consulting group managing director Kylie Hammond.

"There are plenty of cowboys in the industry simply because there are no barriers to entry," says Derwent Executive IT consultant Suzanne Day. "You often find high-billing consultants from large-volume recruitment companies setting up on their own without any real structure or value proposition."

The calibre of executive search firms varies significantly and is typically a function of the maturity and the experience of the organization you are dealing with, says one CIO who has worked with recruiters at both ends of the spectrum. Go with a glorified recruitment agency, even if it tells you it has an "executive search arm", and you're almost certain to find yourself interviewing for glorified MIS roles, he says. On the other hand, he points out, sometimes that's exactly what a "CIO-at-large" wants.