People in H&S: Robert W. Pivik;

              For Bob Pivik, the multifaceted demands
of his position as Executive Office partner
responsible for recruitment and college
relations have been as broad and varied
as his career path in Haskins & Sells has
been concentrated in geographic scope.
Born in Renton, Pennsylvania, about
thirty miles east of Pittsburgh, Robert W.
Pivik was one of three sons and a daugh­ter
born to a man who, in his midthir-ties,
turned from coal mining to a success­ful
career in local government.
An accomplished saxophone player,
the young Bob Pivik had set his sights on
becoming a professional musician. By the
time he began his senior year in high
school, however, his career interests had
been refocused, and thus it was that Bob
entered Penn State University as a busi­ness
major who quickly turned his atten­tion
to accounting.
His first contact with the Firm was
through an H&S Foundation Scholarship
Award which he received for academic
achievement while an undergraduate. A
closer look at H&S and the realities of
public accounting came in his senior year,
when Bob was a winter intern in our
Pittsburgh office. Like most outstanding
students, Bob was courted by recruiters
from the Big Eight public accounting
firms. After visiting the different firms,
he narrowed his choice down to two,
chose H&S, and began with our Pitts­burgh
office in 1959 after graduating
with honors.
The years in Pittsburgh were busy ones
for Bob and his wife Yvonne, whom he
had married in 1960. As the family grew
at home (a son Keith was born in 1961
and a daughter Sharon in 1965), Bob's
responsibilities multiplied at the office.
It was those early years in Pittsburgh
that played such a vital role in shaping his
outlook toward his chosen career, Bob
says. "One of the reasons I find public
accounting so interesting is the variety
of challenges one is faced with—and this
was certainly the case in Pittsburgh. All
the opportunity one could want was
there," he said.
Staff accountants were encouraged to
take on as much responsibility as they
could handle, Bob recalls. "I worked on
such engagements as PPG Industries,
Crucible Steel and Ormet Corporation
and within two years found I was per­forming
at a senior level. I suppose you
could say the office had the perfect for­mula—
give the staff the opportunity for
growth and as much encouragement as
necessary to want to grow."
In 1967 Bob, then a manager, reached a
turning point in his career. Partner Colin
Park, for whom Bob had worked earlier
on a special project, had been asked to
establish a new Professional Education
and Development Department in EO.
Colin chose seven people, Bob among
them, to help launch the forerunner to
today's Continuing Education group.
" Colin's request that I come to EO
was something my wife and I gave much
serious thought to," Bob said. "Both of
us were born and raised in Pennsylvania
and had lived there all our lives—and we
were expecting our third child, Tracey
Moving to the New York City area meant
a major change, but we decided that you
grow by having to make new friends, by
sometimes being forced to make these
adjustments to your way of life. And the
professional opportunity the move of­fered
certainly was important in our
thinking and our decision to come to EO."
After two years with PE&D, Bob j oined
the Mergers and Acquisitions group, then
headed by partner Hugh M. Eggan. When
Hugh left EO in 1972 to be partner in
charge in Cleveland, Bob was put in
charge of the group. He was admitted to
partnership that same year.
In 1974 Bob was asked to assume re­sponsibility
for recruitment and college
relations. "This was basically a new post,"
he said, "directed primarily to the plan­ning,
coordinating and assisting in the
implementation of a long-range Firm pro­gram
aimed at ensuring future availabil­ity
of a pool of quality people from which
the Firm could recruit its future leaders.
"Certainly recruitment has always been
of great concern to those at the top levels
of management. No public accounting
firm can maintain the high level of pro­fessionalism
H&S has unless it can attract
the best graduates—and this presupposes
that high-caliber students will be there
for us to recruit. One of the interesting
aspects of the public accounting profes­sion
in this country is the fact that the
CPA firms play almost as important a
role in ensuring this continuing supply
of superior 'recruits' as do the colleges
and universities. Certainly the emphasis
placed on our recruitment and college-relations
program at the very highest
levels of the Firm is the clearest indica­tion
of just how important it is held to be.
"From a more practical point of view,"
Bob points out, "you have to remember
that Haskins & Sells recruits actively at
some four hundred campuses and talks
to about fourteen thousand students
every year. Although the prime recruit­ment
responsibility is at the practice-office
level, close coordination between
the offices and EO is vital to the long-term
success of this effort."
Bob puts considerable emphasis on
maintaining personal contact with the
academic community. "There's so much
to be done," he said, "and personal con­tact
is important. The only way you can
really find out what the deans and faculty
at the schools are concerned with, what
they think must be done, is to sit down
and talk with them. It takes a lot of time,
but it's worth it."
Much of Bob's time has gone into de­veloping
a more-integrated internal pro­gram.
"I'm putting a lot of emphasis on
establishing a broad-based communica­tions
link with leaders in the academic
community. At the same time I'm trying
to be equally effective as a coordinator
of our recruitment and college-relations
efforts," he said. As part of this pro­gram,
Don LaBoskey, formerly person­nel
director with our Los Angeles office,
became permanently attached to Bob's
recruitment and college relations section
as national coordinator two years ago.
Jim Older, a member of the EO personnel
department, is also an important part of
the team, providing the needed admin­istrative
control over many of the ongoing
projects.
At the present time several promising
programs are being tested. A special sum­mer
internship program which holds
much promise for the future was initiated
this year. (Editor's note: A report on this
internship program will appear in an up­coming
issue of H&S Reports.) A recently