The Herald understands Telecom whittled its hunt down to three candidates in February and a source specialising in CEO searches said decisions typically came within six weeks after a shortlist was made.
"[The search company] would present recommendations to the board and they would then look at them ... and might do some of their own due diligence at that point, but generally it should be pretty well wrapped up by the shortlist stage.
"It should just be a matter of weeks.
"I couldn't imagine it would go on longer than six weeks unless there was a major flaw in the process," the industry source said yesterday.
While internal appointments tended to be easier for a board to make, giving the job to someone overseas tended to bring more complications, he said.
Any longer than six weeks and details of the search tended to leak to the market and the media, the source said.
Although commentators originally tipped Kevin Kenrick to be in the running for the job, the former Telecom staffer and House of Travel boss was named as TVNZ's new chief executive this month.
A Telecom spokesman last night said he could not comment on the chief executive search.
