Executive Training

work in progress

Notes on executives:

There is no correlation between Salary and Skills.
Male vs Female candidates is a 50% chance
Starting salaries tend to be between the range of $1,000 to $2,500 (some rare exceptions)
Executives age 1 year every 2 days.

What to look for when hiring a new candidate:
It has been suggested that the HR blurb may indicate what an executive may be skilled in. It can give an indication to what an executive may be skilled; but you will not actually find out until after you hire the executive.

Once you have searched the 10 hours for a candidate you have the option to hire:

Take a look at their skills. For this section we will be referring to candidates by their skills via a number system.

Starting with Management, Accounting, Communication, and Science.

The numbers: 2, 1, 0, 0

2 in Management, 1 in Accounting, 0 in Communication, and 0 in Science.

Here is where we the information is really subjective. I suggest firing any candidate that doesn’t have 2 or more in any 1 skill.

For instance you may have a candidates with:

1, 1, 1, 1
1, 1, 1, 0
1, 1, 0, 0

I suggest firing this type of skill setup. You may think that having to pay the 3 day severance is expensive. And it might depend on your company size.. But usually, the 3 day salary is less than the $10k it would cost for one training session. Think of this as part of the process and expense in finding an executive worth keeping.

You want to keep executives with 2 or more in one skill: (examples)

2, 0, 0, 0
1, 2, 0, 1
0, 0, 2, 0

This candidate is a keeper. 2 in Communication and 2 in Science.

Training:

Training new hires is not an exact science. I suggest starting with 2 to 4 Wide Range training. (More aggressive training ideas see below - "Alternative").
Executives can earn skills Organically (passively) or through Training. I highly suggest recording how they gain their skills. Especially with the first few training sessions.
Note: Executives in Position slots (COO, CFO, CMO, and CTO) will gain skill points faster organically, in that position slot.
If you had a new hire in the CTO position you may notice they gain Science skills. This can be very misleading to what their skill base may actually be.

If, you can; unlock the Staff slots so that you can see Organic skill gain without an artificial gain from a positional executive slot. The Staff slots will show true organic gain and can better assessed on skills gained.

With the Wide Range training you are looking to see what the Executives may be skilled in. Combined with the organic gains you can see what an executives skills may be.

After 2 Wide Range training and they have gained 2 to 3 skills in management ~ that executive may be a good COO. This is when you would switch to management training.
If, after 2 wide range training they gain nothing from training but gained Organically.. I suggest doing 1 to 2 more wide range to see if they gain any skills.
If, after 3 or 4 wide range and there are no skills gained. Fire them. Just get rid of them and start over.

Alternative to this is if they have 2+ in any one skill go ahead and start training them with that kind of training. Candidate with 2+ in management; goes right into management training.

Here is an example of bad skill gains:

Training: (4 wide range)
1 Science

Organic:
2 Management
1 Accounting

She was hired with: 1, 0, 0, 0

I made the decision to keep training her up to 4 wide range and it has turned out to be a dud.
In retrospect I didn’t even follow my own rules on the 2+ in one skill to train. I paid the price. Firing her cost 3 days worth of pay, $6,315.

She may have been a COO with the organic gains. But, with 4 training sessions already used up the odds of great gains with 16 more training sessions was not looking good. This is where someone with less of an urgency to gain skills could have tried a few Management training sessions.

Let’s take a look at a candidates that did meet the minimum requirements of 2 points in 1 skill:

Starting skills: 2, 2, 1, 0

Training in Wide Range:
1 Accounting
1 Communication

Organic:
none

Too early to tell where this candidate is skilled. (Update ~ See Comment Below)

Another executive that met requirements:

Starting skills: 2, 0, 0, 0

The first 2 training sessions were Wide Range and yielded 0 skills.
Maybe she was a dud?
Her organic gain was 2 management skills.

After those gains I switched to Management training.

Skill Gains
Training in Management:
12 Management
1 Communication
1 Science

Organic:
7 Management
1 Accounting
3 Communication
2 Science

Have 4 more training sessions to go until the cap of 20 training is met.
I’ll be replacing my current COO as soon as possible so that she can gain even more Management skills before the age of 40. Age 40 is when organic skills begin to lessen.

We are looking for candidates like this one. Where they gain a lot of skills quickly and before 20 training sessions.

Another Staff member review:

Starting skills: 2, 0, 2, 1

Skill Gains
Training in Management:
4 Mgmt
1 Comm
1 Acct
1 Science

Organic:
3 Mgmt
1 Acct
3 Science
3 Comm

This executive was earning points organically and maybe I misread what he actually was. Initially I started gaining Management skills, so I trained him in management. Maybe, he is something else entirely. I was going to fire this executive, but ended up getting a poach offer.

If it wasn’t for the poach offer ($3,000) I would have fired him.

Poaching today has a reimbursement of $20,000 for each training in the last 6 weeks. This would be a $280,000 in reimbursement.

Sadly, my executive ended up staying. Firing them was the next step.

Note how low the severance package actually is for 3 days.
($5,028)

This executive may have been good enough for some players. My over head is above 40%. I’m looking for a lot better skills gain than what this executive was going to give me.

Alternative approaches if you do not have the means to do a lot of training sessions:

Executives gain organically and base gain/hidden talents can be determined via observing that over several days. You can see whether or not your executive is skilled in one particular skill without any training. Something to consider if you are just starting out with executives for the first time.

Strategies:

After you have trained your staff there are different approaches one can take to maximize their benefits.

The way the game was designed suggests you use one of each: COO, CFO, CMO, and CTO.

But, a CMO doesn’t make sense if we do not have retail buildings. So the CMO slot could be filled with an executive skilled in other skills.

And same thinking can be applied to the CFO slot if you do not have to worry about the accounting fees (starting at $3 million).

Here are some strategies that can be employed depending one what you desire from executives.

Use four (4) COOs. Meaning you train up 4 executives all with Management skills and place them in each position.
Use four (4) CMOs. Meaning you train up 4 executives all with Communication skills. if you are a retailer and you want to increase your selling speeds ~ this is a viable way to do so.
Use three (3) COOs and one (1) CTO. This allows you to lower your admin while also doing research.

There are many other variations you can use to your advantage. These are just examples.

Take advantage of Staff slots. Use the 4 COO method with 1 CTO waiting in a Staff slot. When it is time to do research, make sure to switch out the CTO position with the staff CTO; wait the 3 hours for settling in, then do the research; and switch out the CTO after doing the research.

Reminder: benefits are applied before doing training sessions or moving executives around from staff slots to positional slots. Remember to always do production/sales before you move around your executives or do training sessions.

Executive Calculators (google document)

Other positions are 1/4 (25%) of the skills of the main position. If, you use 4 COOs, the other slots Management skills will be 1/4 of the COO positions.

CTO = Science Skills
1 skill point is equal to 0.125% for a CTO
Example: 11 skill points equals = 1.375
All other executives need 4 skill points to equal 1 skill point of a CTO.
4 science = 0.125% for non-CTO
A COO with 4 science = 1 skill point of a CTO

Poaching Offers:

When receiving poach offers, you have the option to give your executives a raise. The easiest way to get your executive to stay is to match the offer.

There are some other strategies that have been tested. Some say that giving a raise of 95% of the poaching offer also convinces the executive to remain.
$3,000 x 95% = $2,850 raise

This may also depend on your company rating. More testing needs to be done to verify if 95% does indeed guarantee an executive stays.

This guide is Subjective in nature.

Other players may have different opinions on what do do with executives and how to train them. Please comment to this thread to share your opinions or suggestions that may differ from this guide.