PassingNotes.com

Albert Einstein once mused, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?â€? You have no idea, Steiny, no idea.

When it comes to profiling executives – and people in general - you’ve really got to pause up front and make a clear choice between the deep ocean or the big blue sky. With the Internet and a few hundred dollars in hand, there is almost no limit to what you might uncover about any individual. Start by listing what you need to know, then add in what you’d like to know, and get rid of what you do not want to know – unless you’re particularly curious, or unless that is your real goal.

There is a big difference between personality profiling through primary research and profiling people through secondary research (namely online and database resources). Most importantly, a profile in either case is not a deep background check. A deep background investigation is a whole lot more than what I’m getting into in this particular column.

Most of my experiences with requests for this sort of information have revolved around profiling leaders of specific organizations for the purposes of organizational research or talent discovery and acquisition (aka headhunting). With that in mind, I’ve included some very popular areas of interest within traditional profiles, as well as other ideas that have come up in the past.

What you’ll find below are some broad topical areas of interest followed by a set of relevant resources and possible approaches to using such resources. Use your best judgment when determining how far to go with a profile through secondary research. Don’t get yourself into trouble, and don’t waste your time on meaningless resources. Always put your client’s interest first in this case, and discuss with them the information that you’re after before you start digging.

What are they being paid? Are they earning more than their peers?

If your target is an officer of a public company, or serves on the board of a public company, you will be able to gather a tremendous amount of information related to compensation. While sites like www.10Kwizard.com and www.edgar-online.com make this information fairly easy to gather, they carry a cost. Thankfully, our wonderful government has made all of the information easy to find for those who know where to look within the SEC website (www.sec.gov).

Most companies will make a definitive statement about compensation within annual reports and related filings. However, others will tuck it away in an addendum, or some sort of information statement or proxy material. If you don’t see what you need right away in a 10K or ARS, try looking into forms like 14A (e.g. DEF14A for executive and board compensation), S8 (includes stock to employees), or 11K (stock purchase plan details). You’ll get all the detail you need regarding salary, bonus and equity (vested and unvested) plus additional detail where relevant and disclosed.

Some companies have completely focused on just this area of information. This can help quite a bit with private company research. First, find your comparables (e.g. publicly held equivalents, try Hoover’s if you want somebody else’s opinion). Then gather the salary data from the public counterparts (e.g. all of the CFO’s at the public firms) and guesstimate. If you’re interested in a shortcut to this tedious work, AON has launched a service called www.eComponline.com that will allow free access to some basic data.

Additionally, if you just need to take a guess at what your target might be earning, there are countless sites that track industry salary data. Personal favorites include www.Salary.com and the Wall Street Journal’s own www.CareerJournal.com (view Salary & Hiring tab up top to browse by title, state, metro area, industry etc.).

What other boards do they serve on – if any?

Okay, this is really a whole topic unto itself, but I’m going to try to scratch the surface right here. If your target executive is not bragging about affiliations in his/her profile, there are other ways to get at the information. Unfortunately, it’s just not as easy as ‘guessing’ where they’ll be for other board roles, unlike guessing where they’ll be within their own industry’s associations (for example, Meg Whitman of eBay is on the Staples board. Guessing that she might be a part of a ‘women and technology’ group is a bit different).

There are a number of publications that cover the area of corporate governance, as well as countless academic research groups. My personal favorite is from Board Member magazine (www.Boardmember.com ), but their database will require that you separate from money. I’ve also used traditional business school library resources to get at this information; this is more time consuming.

However, as I mentioned, there are many watchdog groups to network through. My favorite is The Corporate Library (www.thecorporatelibrary.com ) – you might try calling or emailing them if you are looking at a specific person and want to track changes. Also, you might consider the network through NACD (www.nacdonline.org ), the National Association of Corporate Directors. If you’re looking in Europe, try the European Corporate Governance Institute (www.ecgi.org).

Personally, what I usually do is just pick up the phone, call corporate communications and ask them for the information (with a smile on my face, because they can feel that love over the phone). This does not always work, even when I really smile hard and fast.

Are they giving money to Political Parties? Did they really vote Perot?

Our wonderful government, once again, has managed to amass mountains of data on political contributions through the FEC – Federal Election Commission. A visit to their site (www.fec.gov) will yield many links, but if you want to just skip to the Transaction Query System, then type in:
http://herndon1.sdrdc.com/fecimg/query.html. If that doesn’t work, view the site map and navigate from there to search/view reports.

You’ll have an option to look up individuals by name (anybody who gave over $200 bucks technically), or you might want to view a whole Candidate or PAC summary whether or not the database contains the individual’s own data. This is actually quite interesting if you’re looking to understand the flavor of the corporation’s own PAC for purposes such as cultural analysis.

In the latter case (viewing a Political Candidate or PAC) you might look up the target’s employer by company name. From here, you will be able to see total money out, as well as links to individual contributions and related data. There is really a wealth of information on this site, and it’s an interesting way to uncover new research sources within a ‘human capital research’ context as well (you’ll see many other employee names here).

How much can I dig up on this person? Take a trip to a search or metasearch engine.

I am not promoting any one search engine here. However, for quick background information on any one individual, I often turn to traditional engines like Google or metasearch tools like Copernic. Both will yield tremendous volume if you type in your queries carefully. Don’t chase herrings, think carefully about what you need or what you might like to know. For example, if your target or his/her employer has been involved in a scandal, try searching for the name and include the specific industry or scandal (e.g. Enron, Valdez, ‘Union Carbide and India’).

Remember to use common sense here. Is your target’s real name ‘Dick’ or does he go by Richard? Honestly, the industry might only know him as ‘Dick.’ Keep this in mind as you modify search strings. Try adding in confirmed data to ease the pain of researching plain names like Smith and Jones (such as employer name, undergraduate institution attended, etc.).

Personally, I get a kick out of Google’s image search. It is typically accurate with well known figures (try Bob Dylan or Larry Ellison). However, with lesser known figures you might wind up looking at anything from a ball of yarn to a loaf of bread. With that said, gathering a current photo is a nice touch in a detailed profile. I used the image engine to chronicle Michael Jackson’s metamorphosis into a Caucasian female.

Hey! They earn a lot, I wonder how much their house is worth.

Last time we covered compensation; this is a bit of a variation on that theme and in particular, requires a little guesswork. Historically, this has been of tremendous value to executive search people, who often require this data in the relocation process for a number of reasons. However, if you’re not recruiting your target, then it is unlikely that he/she will disclose such information.

For starters, let’s just hope that your target has an unusual name. Now, call the corporate switchboard and confirm that the target works at the main office (or find out where they do work, if not at HQ). Next step: go online and search those white pages. Look at the addresses of the returns. If you are not familiar with the area, you might consider a call to a local realtor to inquire about ‘upscale towns’ in that geography (this assumes that executives live in style, many do, because it’s all about the bling-bling).

Hopefully at this point you’ve got one address to investigate. If you have more than one, try looking again at the towns and the neighborhoods. Are several in the same town? Get creative, and get that list down to one address. Review executive resumes and bios to see if they identify their hometowns or cities by name. If they are registered officers of the corporation, this information might also be buried within a filing or registration.

Now, take a trip to Domania (www.domania.com). There are many sites on the Internet tracking home price sales, recording historical data, etc., but this has always been my favorite. You might visit historical sales and dig up the actual record of sale for the target’s home, or you might visit current area homes for sale to see how the whole ‘hood is living. If you don’t find the exact number, don’t get discouraged. You’ll still get some insight by looking at area home prices.

Gosh, she doesn’t look a day past 50. How might I find out for sure?

This tool is a bit smarmy, but interesting nonetheless, so I’m mentioning it here. Based on public registration records (voter, driver, etc.), a site called Anybirthday launched a while back (www.anybirthday.com). They claim to have over 135 million birthday records, and it’s still growing. That’s got to be at least twelve thousand tons of melted candle wax.

What’s particularly interesting about this site is that you don’t even need the individual’s maiden name (where relevant). You will need to do some guessing as you view returns (having viewed a photo or chronological bio including college attendance dates will be helpful here). In the end, you might wind up getting quite close, and will likely uncover the exact record. If you have additional data, such as a Social Security Number, you will get the exact information.

I’m personally not so comfortable with this kind of information floating around on the Internet. However, information wants to be free, and so I’m passing it along to you.

Have they done something really bad?

Any consultant can search a local court house for records and filings, or any actions brought against an individual. But why get in the car when somebody else will do it for next to nothing? Use your time wisely.

There are now countless sites promoting background check services on the Internet. My personal favorite is KnowX (www.knowx.com ). They can get at a tremendous amount of information, and can deepen responses based on your requests for more information. They have access to skip tracing tools for a return of unlisted address and phone information, as well as access to myriad county level filings and news bytes (wonderful if you need to make personal contact with these targets outside of the office).

By the way, that skip tracing tool can also be used to get the exact address for the home price search mentioned above, but it’s unfortunately not available to the mass market, only approved requestors (there are several vendors of skip tracing services, you might try different vendors if you really, really need this information for some reason). On a related aside, KnowX and many of the other services are able to use similar tools to gather background information on owners and officers of a company.

Other popular low cost services in place of KnowX come from vendors such as www.BackgroundsOnline.com and www.ChoicePointOnline.com (public records). A quick search on the Internet will lead you to dozens of others. However, if you are using a background check as part of an employment/recruitment process, think twice. There are laws that specifically govern the use of such practices; consult your attorney – or your client’s own counsel.

My final comment regarding these resources:

In general, many of the approaches described will uncover information about almost anybody, regardless of corporate affiliation. There are many ethical and moral dilemmas presented with access to such information, and I urge you to think carefully about why you need this information and where you’re going to put it.
————-

I originally wrote this column for the May and June 2003 editions of SCIP.Online, the newsletter for the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (www.scip.org). At the original time of publication, all Internet links were valid. This column has been modified as follows: author biography and direct email have been removed; the two-part article has been merged back into its original one-part format.

Share This

Some similar nonsense, if you like that kind of thing:

None Found