The Companies Headhunters Avoid

Why?

Despite the (incorrect) Hollywood caricature of military leaders being shoot first ask questions later seim-psychotic blowhards, the military rewards everything you want in a leader and at the same time aggressively weeds out all but the strongest performers.

A good military resume will almost without exception create the following person:

1. Analytical observer - the fog of war keeps these people asking "what don't I know" even when it seems clear that they have all the information about a decision point.

2. Good Planner - Data gathering is important in order to make the right calls.

3. Decision Maker - These folk are always able to make calls - yes sometimes the wrong one - without knowing certain details.

3. Decisive Action Taking - Once the call has been made, these folk see that the Action is executed immediately, and attempt to gather information regarding the effectiveness of the action as soon as possible.

4. Results focused - These people appreciate and reward high quality results, which means they tend to breed people like them.

However, the most important quality is:

5. "In contact leadership" - Combat leaders tend to have a significant ability to think on their feet in reaction to the changing environment. In my experience, this never seems to be properly learned in a civilian in the same way. I suppose it has something to do with the magnitude of the choices being made, but even non-combat military folk seem to be better at this than the average manager.

Yeah, I'm a veteran. But I spent five years working in uniform, and have spent about 15 out. Based on my observations, and excluding outliers, the difference is noticeable.

At the same time, no one ever needed all the qualities you mention in the swiss army. It never fought a war.

Veterans that I've known often have not developed their abilities at building a consensus, getting people to buy in, or pushing responsibility and decision making down to the people in the trenches.

You're right on the first two, completely off on the last one. Military leaders will view building a consensus and getting buy in as politics, and avoid it. They will most certainly delegate properly, especially if surrounded by proven performers. In fact, you can pretty much observe what they think of their colleagues by observing who they delegate to. If they don't delegate at all, odds are likely that they would also consider their staff lacking in skill if asked.

That being said, without being too draconian, I'm learning more and more that assessing the first two items as politics is accurate. Sometimes necessary, but not fun.

Employee/Company culture matching is tremendously important as you point out.

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together."

There are very few women in executive positions, that is a fact. But it does not follow that a white, middle-aged gentleman is less qualified because he's a man. He was unqualified because he was a finance wonk who didn't understand makeup and fashion.