KornFerry: Celebrating Forty Years

When I joined the firm on May 1, 1979 Korn/Ferry was approaching its 10th anniversary. Korn/Ferry had recently been designated as the largest search firm in the world by Fortune magazine. As I recall, total worldwide revenue was about $16 million. The New York office was housed in one small corner of the 13th floor of 277 Park Avenue, which was then the Chemical Bank Building. The Firm was small enough that within a year I felt that I knew most of the US partners and associates.

At that point in its development, the Firm was a real reflection of the founders, and in particular Lester Korn. He visited the New York office frequently and even when he was not here we all received daily memos listing where he was and what he was doing. He was also extremely adept at public relations and at keeping his name and the Firm´s name in the eyes of the business community.

With the exception of Financial Services, under the direction of Win Priem (and a year or so later Retailing), there really were not any industry-focused practices. Everyone was a generalist. The first search I worked on was for a merchandise controller for The Limited in Columbus. The target compensation for that search was $40,000, and when my lead candidate from Davison´s in Atlanta was offered $60,000 everyone was amazed.

Without computers, e-mail, the Internet, and Searcher, the whole search process was much slower and much less efficient than it is today. We either mailed or faxed Position Specifications to candidates, and if you sent the spec by mail it would be at least a week until you could expect a response from the candidate. With hand-produced source lists that grew in a random way it was much harder to control the process. In most instances there was no way to know if the prospective candidate you were calling was already known to Korn/Ferry or even a candidate on some other Korn/Ferry engagement. It was also much more difficult to be aware of client off-limits; we were periodically provided with updated lists of companies that had become K/F clients.

I think one of the most remarkable things about Korn/Ferry is that the Firm has held its number one position throughout the past 30 years. The fact that we were number one in 1979 was no guarantee that we would still be number one in 2009, or even still be in business. We are fortunate that throughout this period we have had senior management that has anticipated change and that was proactive rather than reactive in dealing with change.