"He just wasn't driving the bus," says the former Palm executive of Yankowski, who resigned from the company in November 2001 when Palm's stock plunged form a high of $60 to just $2. For several years, Yankowski worked as a management consultant and corporate board director.

In 2005, however, gaming company Majesco hired Yankowski to be its C.E.O.; less than a year later, he resigned amid news that Majesco was going to miss its 2005 revenue projections by more than $50 million.

But even that didn't prevent another company from asking him to serve as its C.E.O. In the autumn of 2007, the small consumer-electronics company Ambient Devices inexplicably tapped Yankowski to be its new C.E.O.

David Rose, the founder and former C.E.O. of Ambient who helped choose Yankowski as his successor, says that the company felt lucky to nab Yankowski. "We were all impressed that someone with these qualifications could be wooed into the company," says Rose. "In business, experience typically means being associated with brands. Carl Yankowski happens to [have held executive roles at] Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Palm, Sony, and Reebok. You've heard of these companies."

Ambient declined to make Yankowski available to comment for this story, but the company says that Yankowski's engineering and marketing experience were key reasons for hiring him, and notes that Yankowski has led a successful first round of equity funding for Ambient.

Venture capitalists, who are often in charge of or heavily involved in the C.E.O. searches for their companies, are part of the problem as well. Since they tend to be less ingrained in the day-to-day operations of a company, they may be more likely to recommend a known name who's good at selling him or herself over a good fit.

"We've had a couple of [candidates] come by, and we're thinking, why did you give us these guys?" says Pejman Roshan, founder and interim C.E.O. of Agito Networks, a wireless technology startup in Santa Clara, California. Agito is knee-deep in its second C.E.O. search in two years; the first C.E.O., Rob Markovich, left the company after just 18 months (Roshan declines to give a reason for the departure, saying only that his company's needs changed as it moved out of "stealth mode"). Roshan says that this time around he's spending "lots and lots of time" with each candidate, so as to increase the chances of making a good culture fit.

Not surprisingly, the recent economic crisis has had a couple of positive effects on executive searches. For one thing, the candidate pool may grow, since C.E.O.'s who already have jobs are more likely than ever to consider new opportunities, even if they are doing well, because job security has become so tenuous.

More significantly, though, recruiter Gaines says that companies appear to be vetting candidates more carefully than ever, looking for those with real operational experience and past records of success. In the financial world, Gaines says the gold standard has become someone like J.P. Morgan C.E.O. Jamie Dimon, who has a reputation for sweating operational details and who has weathered the storm better than most of his counterparts.

"The real truth is that on the big searches—C.E.O. and C-level searches—sure, you're usually looking for the total packages, and the track record has always counted, but the candidate's presence, articulation, charisma, and chemistry have far outweighed the orientation toward the details," Gaines says. "But in the financial industry, we're seeing a sea change. The world has changed pretty dramatically."