Here is an excerpt from an article written by Kellye Whitney for Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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As senior vice president and CHRO for Hillshire Brands, Mary Oleksiuk is mixing in cultural and behavioral expectation ingredients to create a brand-new organization.

Popular recruiting wisdom posits that hiring someone with a series of jobs under their belt, perhaps lasting no more than a year or two, isn’t a safe bet. When it comes to senior-level positions, turnover costs can be prohibitively expensive.

But there are exceptions to every rule. In the past decade, Mary Oleksiuk has held six jobs. She was actively recruited for each one to be a change agent and lead a business transformation. Solucient, later purchased by Thomson Reuters, recruited her to lead culture change and unify the company after a series of acquisitions. Orbitz hired her just after the company went public to lead the transformation from a dot-com to a “dot-corp.”

“I’m either really good at what I do or I can’t hold a job, because I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of terrific organizations that have undergone business transformation,” Oleksiuk said. “I’m passionate about being somewhere where I’m really needed, where I have a really good brain hurt because we figured something out … and showed some leadership courage that hadn’t existed before.”

It takes a lot of time and money to recruit a senior executive at Oleksiuk’s level, said Billy Dexter, a partner at search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

“The higher you go within an organization, the tougher it is to find that talent because the pool is smaller,” he said.

Many recruiters like to see at least a three-year job tenure, Dexter said. The first year is spent learning the organization and navigating the culture, and the second getting comfortable with the team and implementing a strategy. In the third year, that executive can count measurable results from that strategy.

In her role as senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Chicago-based Hillshire Brands, Oleksiuk is now in the beginning stage of that cycle. She joined in October 2012 shortly after the company formerly known as Sara Lee Corp. completed the spinoff of its international coffee and tea division and was renamed Hillshire Brands. “I was recruited to really help drive the business transformation through people and through culture,” she said.

To do that, Oleksiuk said the company has to be crystal clear about how it will win in the marketplace, what its financial promises to investors will be, what it values, and what behaviors and culture are needed to drive that transformation.

“It’s about fulfilling the hunger for a life well-fed,” she said. “The passion, the energy, the desire to really transform into this organization is our call to action.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Kellye Whitney is Associate Editorial Director at Human Capital Media Group.