I see from the press releases that AKQA has anounced a new CFO.  He sounds like a solid choice for them.  From the little I can see of his background, it certainly makes sense.  Of course they've been looking since last December so I'm glad they found somebody to their liking. 

Which brings me to my reason for blogging this one.  It may be that with the former incumbent still at AKQA, moved into the COO role, they didn't feel any particular urgency to make a choice.  If that was the case, I hope they looked on their own rather than involving a search firm.  I've been in those situations where my client has no urgent need to fill the position and therefore no reason to make the trade-off choices between candidates.  It is a recipe for taking a long, long time to finish.  If you're going to wait for the perfect person, you don't need a search firm to bring you six candidates in the first month who could do the job, but aren't perfect.  You'll only frustrate them and yourselves.  If you've had a position open for a year, guess what, filling it isn't urgent.  Just keep being oportunistic.  On the other hand I've seen companies make less traditional arrangements, where they'll hire a firm to be opportunistic on their behalf.  That would make lots of sense, but the sort of self-knowledge that makes that work is rare. 

Came across these job interview questions of the puzzle variety here today.  Allegedly from Microsoft and Google.  People asking these questions don't usually care about the content of your answer, but there are some good ones in comments.