NASDAQ's Online Boardroom Matchmaker
from
September/October 2007
by Bonnie Azab Powell
ISO under-40 female to meet 8 or so times per year on East Coast. Prefer f2f to telephone. Other FT commitments OK. Bonuses for non-Caucasians and those with financial expertise (CPAs a real plus). About me: In telecom hardware, $5.7B, 13K employees, want female perspective for planned merger.
All right, so you probably won’t find any ads quite like this on BoardRecruiting.com. But happy hookups between would-be directors and boards are indeed the objective at this online matchmaker launched by NASDAQ. People on the hunt for board positions fill out a profile, answering questions about their boardroom and career experience, and set privacy preferences as to who can view it—only corporate suitors with a certain market capitalization, say. At the board end of the matchmaking service, the search committee chair or other designated representative can filter candidates by such criteria as previous director experience, day job, industry, or geographic background. When a company finds
people who look promising, it sends them a standardized message through the Board Recruiting system.
Similarly, someone looking for a director seat can browse board-created profiles and let Board Recruiting know which ones pique his or her interest. A company can then check out the applicant’s profile and decide whether to pursue the matter. If both sides think the match seems promising, they break their anonymity by exchanging contact information—an expression of mutual interest called a “view.” Then they proceed to the real-world rounds of due diligence, including interviews and reference checks.
Would-be directors can volunteer information about their gender or race for demographic purposes, but that data is not included in the search criteria. Companies seeking greater board diversity are still likely to rely on executive recruiting services, which Bruce Aust, executive vice president of NASDAQ’s Corporate Client Group, sees as potential customers too. “Board Recruiting will not take the place of recruiters, who screen interviewees and set up the meetings and all the many things they do to deserve their fees,” he says.
Since the system won’t work unless a significant number of people create profiles, NASDAQ is waiving the annual $350 registration fee for potential directors until January. How much will companies be paying? Nothing at first. “We’ll charge when we think we have something worth charging for,” explains Aust—“say, when we’ve had 25 or so board members placed at the top NASDAQ-listed companies.” After that, they’ll pay an annual subscription of $10,000 for 50 views, which count only if a candidate and a board start to swap details about themselves or the company, or $15,000 for an unlimited number of views. An additional $20,000 fee is due if a candidate found through Board Recruiting actually makes it onto the board. Search firms will be charged higher view fees, payable in advance.
With Board Recruiting, NASDAQ is challenging its old nemesis—the New York Stock Exchange. The NYSE’s eGovDirect.com is designed to help its listed companies meet the exchange’s governance and compliance requirements, but it also allows outfits to enter detailed profiles of their own executives and directors and to browse the teams at the more than 1,700 member companies. While the NYSE says eGov offers “a unique search feature that identifies experienced candidates for board compatibility,” it doesn’t allow solo would-be directors to create profiles, or those already in the system to hit up other boards. In addition, the site is available only to NYSE-listed companies. BoardRecruiting.com, in contrast, is open to all comers, including NASDAQ’s 3,200 members, the 800 listed on OMX (the Nordic Exchange, which it recently acquired), the NYSE’s member companies—and private concerns as well.
As anyone who’s ever gone looking for love on Match.com knows, the bigger the candidate pool and the broader your expectations, the better your chances of hooking up.
