In How to Lose
Friends & Alienate People,
former Vanity Fair writer Toby Young tells of his first in-person
meeting with the magazine’s famous editor Graydon Carter—the arbiter of status
for Hollywood and the fast set:
“You think you’ve arrived, doncha?” he said. “I hate to break it to you but you’re only in the first room.” He paused. “It’s not nothing—don’t get me wrong—but it’s not that great either. Believe me, there are plenty of people in this town who got to the first room and then didn’t get any further. After a year or so, maybe longer, you’ll discover a secret doorway at the back of the first room that leads to the second room. In time, if you’re lucky, you’ll discover a doorway in the back of the second room that leads to the third. There are seven rooms in total and you’re in the first. Doncha forget it.” This, I later discovered, was Graydon’s ‘seven rooms’ speech, a pep talk he gives to all new recruits.
Who is the arbiter in asset management? For better or worse, each industry has one—that person, or group of people, who decides not just who gets to advance deeper and deeper into the warren of rooms, but how that very journey is defined.
In my view, the strongest contenders in our industry are the executive recruiters profiled extensively in this issue. The judgmental overtones of Young’s assessment of Carter need not apply, but you would be hard-pressed to make the argument that the elite recruiters in asset management don’t have significant influence over which CIOs are allowed beyond the first room. You may view this positively. You may view it negatively. But it cannot be ignored.
Thus, the extensive package of content in this issue—the largest single-subject section we’ve ever published in six years (as of this month) of Chief Investment Officer.
We start with the cover story, “How to Lose Jobs & Alienate Everyone,” a look at the do’s and don’ts of CIO advancement. We then move on to our Proust Questionnaires (also a Vanity Fair knockoff), where we asked a mix of established and up-and-coming headhunters to tell us who’s done well, why others haven’t, and how to improve your chances in what one recruiter derisively labeled “the revolution of the deck chairs.” Then comes our résumé critique: six brave (and, after some redaction, relatively anonymous) souls sent me their résumés to be picked over by executive recruiters. We end on the last page with Angelo Calvello’s column, which gently chides recruiters and asset owners alike for being more timid than the moment demands. The result, I believe, is a holistic view of the executive recruiting industry—and, more importantly, how CIOs and aspiring CIOs can successfully navigate it.