【正确答案】正确答案： Art or Science? Search consultants who stress the use of "scientific methods" give the activity and its practitioner the appearance to be objective, factual and reliable. The following analogy makes the relevance of "science" and "art" clear. The scientific analysis of a book can only cover its physical and chemical properties, like the composition of the pages, or of the ink the art was written in; probably the furthest it can go is a statistical analysis of the signs or letters on the pages. Science cannot capture symbolic and institutional meaning. Therefore science cannot distinguish if Hamlet is about a brawl in a strip tease club in Bangkok, or a thematic exploration of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption in medieval Denmark. The same applies to executive search. As it is a business about and for people, science will be of little help throughout most of the process. Art will help only confirming or broadening previous assessments of candidates, and can shine a light on personality issues that might have been overlooked. Therefore much of executive search is pure art: practice and hard work undoubtedly makes better. The proof of the art successfully applied consists off the stuff tests can't figure out, either predict: satisfied clients and candidates.