Nyal Williams wrote:
Faulty logic, Jack. It isn't about geography; there
are crooks everywhere.

At 13:36 19 September 2006, Jack wrote:
Eric Greenwell wrote:

Mike Schumann wrote:
If you were looking for a new CFO, how many candidates
are there in
Hobbs, or would be interested in relocating there?
That's the real
downfall of being in such an obscure location.


Really, there are a couple of issues underlying this:

- Availability of a deep enough talent pool to allow for multiple,
qualified candidates to be sourced locally.
- Barring a local talent pool, the desirability of the environment as
a place to relocate a family. This is a way to broaden the talent
pool.
- Accessiblity for both planned and unplanned visits.

A thought on this last point. Over the last 7 years, I've been part of
a team which started up a global company. Despite extensive use of
phone, video, Web meetings, etc. there's still no substitute for
face-to-face interaction. I've noticed that the ability to get an
executive to visit any location is almost directly proportional to the
quality of the airline service. I'm sure it's the same for our
board members, who are, for the most part, extremely busy individuals .
Even if we do move toward more of a "virtual organization" (which I
fully support), we still ought to be in a position to drop in (planned
or unplanned) on HQ (even if HQ is just 5,000 square feet in some
office complex). As a straw model, I'd say that any location we
choose must be within a 1 hour drive of a major airport (defined as
one having direct service from any of the 20 or so major hubs in the
US). There's obviously a lot more to site selection than that, but
it's certainly one of the knockout criteria in my book.

P3