7:02pm |The Port of Long Beach is looking for a few good leaders, and one of the world’s largest port complexes has hired a national executive search firm to do its bidding.
RSR Partners will lead the port’s search for a successor to Executive Director Richard D. Steinke, who in April announced his plans to retire in September after more than a dozen years at the port’s helm.
Steinke has agreed to stay on as executive director until a successor is named.
Executives for such high-level posts are becoming more in demand and may be increasingly hard to find, according to recent statistics. The general management/CEO/COO function is expected to see the greatest shortage of talent worldwide in the second half of the year, online recruiting trends website OnRec.com states.
To keep up with the demand, more than half of the search firms surveyed by the Association of Executive Search Consultants plan to hire more consultants and researches from July to December 2011.
“The search for our next executive director is a top priority for the Board of Harbor Commissioners,” newly appointed Harbor Commission President Susan E. Anderson Wise said in a statement. “With the help of RSR Partners, we will be recruiting from among the nation’s top candidates to find a new leader for our world class port.”
Greenwich, Conn.-based RSR is one of the nation’s leading board and executive recruiting firms. The company helps to find CEOs, CFOs and other top executives for established and emerging firms in industries ranging from financial services to health care to industrial products, according to the online business directory Hoovers.com.
The firm, which also provides management succession planning, lists clients including Apria Healthcare Group, Starwood Hotels, Kellogg and Eastman Chemical.