Corporate Nomads

As any young executive in a big, national corporation quickly learns, it is almost impossible to succeed in business without really moving. Companies have found that there is no more challenging way to broaden a promising man's horizon or give him an opportunity to grow. These days, the rate at which they are shuffling their young executives about the country is positively dizzying.

On the way to becoming assistant secretary to Humble Oil & Refining Co., Charles Goodyear, 33, has moved six times in eleven years. Until he landed in the head office in Houston a year ago, his nine-year-old son had never finished a single grade in the same school in which he began it. Johnson Wax moved Ed Furey, 30, from Racine, Wis., to New York to Chicago, where he is re gional office and warehouse manager, all in the past ten months -- and Furey's son went through kindergarten in three different schools as a consequence. Last year Union Carbide moved 1,200 of its executives, compared with 600 only five years ago.

Like New Year's. Since each change brings with it a promotion -- or a promise of one -- corporate nomads tend to be cheerful movers. Their children, at least until they become teenagers, prove highly flexible. Wives, too, for the most part, enter into the arrangement with zest. Gloria Bradfield, 30, wife of a Crown Zellerbach sales-training supervisor, has moved her household ten times in the past nine years. During that time, the Bradfields have bought one house, built two others, and had three children. "We're not as eager to move as we once were," says Mrs. Bradfield, but she still sees virtues in the nomadic life. "It's sort of like New Year's," she explains, "getting a chance to start all over again. I'd hate to get in a rut."

A fatalistic sense of humor also helps. IBM executives like to joke that their corporate initials stand for "I've Been Moved." "We're in the business of landscaping for other people," cracks Frank Allston, who has moved six times while working for General Electric's press-relations department. "We seed lawns and plant shrubbery--and then another family takes the house." Adds another constant mover: "There are three ways of assuring you'll be transferred: finish building a house, buy a new house, or have your wife pregnant."

Pins & Needles. Such wry comments do not go unheard in the home office, and many big companies these days go out of their way to make the uprooting process as painless as possible. They not only pay all moving costs, often including temporary hotel quarters in the new town for two months or longer, but frequently pick up the tab for new drapes. Many even buy up an executive's old house if he has difficulty getting the price he wants in a hurry. But even with company backing, the search for a new house is a pins-and-needles operation for the whole family.

So arduous is the search--and so many are searching--that a new service industry is growing up to assist the migrating executive. In less than two years of operation, San Francisco's Executive Home Counseling, for example, has advised 20 families per month on where to live in the Bay Area, classifying communities by price range, climatic differences, tax rates, and quality of school systems. Executive Home Counseling directs the new arrival to a broker and, if he buys, receives 20% of the broker's commission. Manhattan-based Homerica, Inc., performs a similar service on a nationwide basis, has helped relocate more than 40,000 families in some 4,000 communities across the U.S.

Narrowing the List. Figuring that nowhere is the executive traffic heavier than in New York, home office for a fourth of the nation's 500 biggest corporations, Robert and Betty Stahl set up Area Consultants, Inc., three years ago to make househunting easier. After thoroughly researching 550 surrounding communities in 22 counties in three states, they narrowed their list down to 230 towns, each of which they have profiled by age, income and education level, mortgage rates, racial and religious balance, commuting time and cost.

Thus, when Shell Oil Transportation Analyst David Brannan, 31, arrived from his last post in Denver a month ago for a 21-hour interview with Area Consultants, he came away with a list of three towns to look into and the name of a good real estate broker in each. Three days later, Brannan had his house in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and last week, along with his wife and two children, was busily moving in. Area Consultants' fee: a flat $150 billed directly to Shell and no commission at all from the broker. "If we'd been left to our own devices, it could have taken us until Christmas," says Brannan. For the Stahls, such swift successes are particularly gratifying. Seven years ago, when Bob Stahl was transferred to New York, his wife spent six weeks inspecting 138 apartments before finding one that was suitable. She cried every night.

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