In the world of curious business decisions, nothing inspires as much furious head-scratching as a mystifying chief executive hire. And the past decade has seen a lot of scratched heads—primarily after a once publicly trashed C.E.O. is snatched up by another firm.  

To wit: After Robert Nardelli stepped down from his perch at Home Depot under pressure following the company's poor stock performance in 2007, he promptly floated his golden parachute over to Chrysler, where Cerberus Capital Management gave him another go as a C.E.O. Don Carty hastily left American Airlines after very publicly botching negotiations with the company's union in 2003, but three years later, he landed a job as chairman of Virgin Airlines. And George Shaheen took the helm as C.E.O. of Siebel Systems in 2005 after previously driving the online grocer Webvan into the gutter.

Given the critical importance of C.E.O.'s and the stratospheric salaries they command, one would expect that a candidate's past record of success would be of utmost importance and thoroughly examined. But executive recruiters acknowledge that this isn't always the case.

Instead, companies prize any kind of experience at the C.E.O. level, even over a stellar performance record at any other executive level. And for companies that are in a hurry to hire a new C.E.O., as often happens when the current chief is ousted or coming under pressure, the safest, easiest, and quickest bet is to choose someone with previous C.E.O. experience—good or bad.

"Under those circumstances, you want to take as little risk as possible and find someone who's proven," says Jay Gaines, who heads his own executive search firm in New York. In this case, Gaines says, the proof is in the title: "It's what we call a 'value candidate,' someone who has been there, done that."

Moreover, there's a tendency in the C.E.O. selection process to be blinded by familiar names who have worked at well-known companies.

Case in point is Carl Yankowski, who's something of a poster child for seemingly unsuccessful C.E.O.'s who get rehired. After a good run as president of Sony Electronics in the mid-'90s, Yankowski became C.E.O. of Reebok in 1998. But his time at the struggling shoemaker lasted only 14 months, as sales dropped almost 10 percent over the first nine months of 1999. Consumer electronics company Palm, then a division of 3Com, proceeded to give the C.E.O. reins over to Yankowski in 1999 following the sudden departure of then-president Robin Abrams.

"Given his background, it seemed like it was a good résumé," says an executive who worked under Yankowski at Palm who requested anonymity. "He was clearly the 'world-class C.E.O.' who was going to take the company public and then drive its scale to be big."

Yankowski was able to take the company public and presided over its growth into a $30 billion market cap during the tech boom, and for several months he was lauded for that. But he seemed ill-prepared for the economic slowdown that followed. Palm's market share plummeted and critics lambasted his tendency to discuss future products in public, a habit that weakened demand for those already in the market and led to inventory problems.