Here’s why first-time human capital operating executive hires fail – and what to do before you start your search to set yourself up for success.

Firms that create a portfolio talent operating seat for the first time often struggle to get it right. We learned that quite often these roles, and many first-time roles on the operating team, have failed at other firms too. Across more than 60 conversations with talent and human capital leaders and candidates, the reason that came up most was simple: leadership wasn’t aligned on what the role was supposed to achieve.

We also heard how firms shift what they’re looking for partway through a search, sometimes because the deal team and other leaders have different ideas of what the person will do. Each change can make sense on its own, but together they mean the firm is still working out the role while it recruits for it. Several candidates had a story of firms that had this role open for over a year, either because the target profile kept shifting or because the firm didn’t understand the market dynamics.

One caution came up repeatedly: folding two jobs into one. Several practitioners described advising the portfolio companies and handling the firm’s own talent work as different jobs that are hard to do well together, though some people do cover both successfully. In our view, if a firm wants both in one seat, it should build it that way on purpose.

Who Is Filling These Seats

Human capital operating executives and portfolio talent leaders are a growing career path, similar to the broader market for portfolio ops and value creation. The estimates we heard put the number of people in these seats at roughly 200, with a large share coming from talent acquisition. Many are first-time practitioners moving over from search firms, corporate (PortCo) HR or consulting, and just as many are coming from the same role at another firm.

The common thread in our calls was that the seat is moving beyond pure talent acquisition toward broader advisory work, and that people with a talent acquisition background may be narrower than the seat now requires.

How We Start a Search

One recommendation we start with is to be intentional about meeting someone from each of the three or four most common backgrounds (for example, search or recruiting, corporate HR, assessment or consulting, or the same seat at another firm). Let’s meet some benchmark candidates before we settle on the final target and run a full, market-wide search.

Talking with people already in the market, whether an experienced recruiter or peers at other firms, is a quick way to understand the market dynamics and what the different prototypes look like. It’s also important to be clear on what you want to achieve with the hire and what the compensation looks like. If you don’t, the new hire inherits all of that ambiguity.

Someone arriving in a first-time role can face the pent-up need from several directions at once. A leader brought in for talent acquisition can find that the firm later wants organizational assessment/design and leadership development frameworks too. That raises the chance of failure.

What to Do Before You Open a Human Capital Operating Partner Search

Without a shared definition, a new hire gets a different version of the job from each person. Here’s what we heard on our calls, and what we’d do to settle the role before the search opens.

  1. GET ALIGNMENT: Settle the job description first and have every decision-maker read it. Ask each person what they expect this hire to do in the first year and note where the answers differ. It’s cheaper to find that disagreement before the search than after the offer.
  2. BUILD A SCORECARD: Turn the job description into a scorecard and assess candidates against what you’ve agreed matters most for success in the role. It can also flag candidates who are a strong personality match but lack evidence of vital competencies. Scorecards came up repeatedly in our calls as a working tool for these searches, and they build alignment: without one, the people involved picture different things and scope can creep during the search.
  3. DEFINE FUTURE SUCCESS/KPIs: Write down what success looks like in year one and have each decision maker agree to it before the search opens. It’s as much a tool to attract talent as it is to assess it. Two or three priorities give the team something concrete to judge the hire on.
  4. TIE IT TO PORTCO VALUATIONS: Make sure finalists know exactly what the value creation strategy is and how HR and/or talent is meant to drive value. Many of the practitioners we spoke with frame their own work around value creation in the portfolio, so show finalists that link.
  5. REMEMBER, CANDIDATES PROBABLY KNOW MORE THAN YOU THINK: Have an answer about the last person to hold the seat. Candidates ask, and in a community this small the story tends to travel. Several people we talked to already had a view of the firm’s culture and were quick to ask why a prior hire was gone or being replaced. They also want to know how carry is structured, and they have little patience for hard questions that get unclear answers.

Compensation, reporting line and fit all matter too. But an undefined role was the reason that came up most when a first attempt didn’t hold. Agree on what the role is for before the first call goes out, and the search gets easier.

If you’re thinking about this hire, we’re happy to compare notes on how other firms are scoping the role.