natassamarkidou.com

David Elkins jumped through a lot of hoops before Becton, Dickinson & Co. hired him as its chief financial officer in December 2008. After eight interviews with company officials, he underwent an executive “assessment.”

The day-long process included a business-simulation exercise involving role playing, a two-hour session with an educational psychologist and online personality tests that gauged key traits such as strategic thinking. Becton says it assessed 95 internal and external prospects for executive posts last year, up from six in 2008. (The increase was not related to additional executive hiring.)

“Getting the right people is paramount to what we’re trying to do now,” explains Thomas Ruddy, vice president of talent management at the medical-technology concern. Becton expanded its use of assessments after gaining confidence in their value, says Colleen White, a company spokeswoman.

Management assessments are booming again as companies scramble to find the best leaders amid a hiring rebound. “Our U.S. executive-assessment business increased more than 30% in 2010,” says Matt Paese, a vice president of Development Dimensions International. The human-resources consultancy is a major provider of assessments for picking or promoting top managers. Major rivals such as PDI Ninth House describe similar recent gains.

About 72% of 516 employers now use assessments to help make executive promotion decisions, nearly twice the proportion doing so in a 2010 survey, reports Aberdeen Group, a market-research firm. Those polled this year said their evaluations comprise a variety of cognitive, behavioral, simulation and motivational tests.

Assessing a C-suite candidate can cost up to $30,000 and last two days. Outside experts typically handle assessments. Their psychological interviews probe deeply into a person’s strengths and weaknesses. “It’s far more comprehensive than any job interview,” says Stuart Crandell, a senior vice president of PDI Ninth House, a leadership consultancy in Minneapolis.

During a simulation, an individual plays the part of an executive of a fictional company who must deal with a pretend boss, subordinate or customer to solve a difficult dilemma. Participants almost never get eliminated solely due to poor performance on online tests, typically taken from home. Employers receive written reports about the evaluation.

Nonetheless, prospective executives can easily veer off track. Managers sometimes knock themselves out of the race because they mistakenly try to “ace” a process where there rarely are right answers.

Experts say candidates should do their homework about the screening process, the assessor and their roles in deciding the outcome. They also should ask upfront for feedback regardless of the outcome,

Prospects eager to “learn about themselves through these exercises are prone to be viewed stronger than others,” notes Stephen P. Mader, a vice chairman of recruiters Korn/Ferry International. He feels that the ability to learn fast represents an important factor in the success of a leader in a new role.

Earlier this year, Mr. Paese of DDI assessed an applicant hoping to become a regional executive for a global management consultancy. The man didn’t request feedback, so he never learned that he lacked sufficient experience handling clients with difficult demands, according to Mr. Paese. He didn’t land the job.

Careful preparation counts at Becton, too. Mr. Ruddy says he encourages aspiring executives to spend six to eight hours getting ready for the simulation portion of an assessment. Mr. Elkins prepared over a weekend after he received a broad overview of his simulation exercise.

His simulation: figuring out whether a fictitious consumer-products company “had the wrong people executing the right strategy.” Complicating things, role players unexpectedly supplied additional details on the day of his exercise.

Potential executives should try to keep their cool during a simulation because companies prefer bosses “who don’t get anxious in a situation like this,” notes Dan Zdon, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Liberty Diversified International Inc. in Minneapolis.

Easier said than done. Mr. Zdon says he felt too nervous to eat lunch during his first Liberty simulation in late 2000. But he did fine anyway. Since then, he has used assessments to fill 50 executive positions for the diversified manufacturer over the past decade.

Three years ago, a middle manager seeking a C-suite promotion at a conglomerate abrasively challenged the outside assessor, recalls John Beeson, principal (CQ) of Beeson Consulting Inc., the New York firm that screened him. “Losing composure under stress cost the person the job,” Mr. Beeson says. Maintaining poise during a stressful assessment can be more important than an individual’s answers, according to PDI’s Mr. Crandell.

Stretching the truth during the psychological interview also could crimp candidates’ chances. “The best thing you can do is not fake people out,” advises Steve Kelner, a leader of the executive-assessment practice at recruiters Egon Zehnder International. He sometimes sees introverts “try to come across as extroverts,” while other executives claiming to be change leaders simply follow orders.

Trained as a motivational psychologist, Dr. Kelner assessed the sales vice president of a U.S. biotech company for a possible promotion a few years ago. She exaggerated her ability to coach lieutenants, according to Dr. Kelner. Three subordinates told him, “She’s a great leader. Just take her word for it.,” indicating they didn’t view her as a great leader.

Dr. Kelner says he warned the woman’s boss that “she is not as good as she thinks she is,” and cited her high staff turnover. The sales executive soon took early retirement.

It’s equally difficult to walk the fine line between answering honestly and divulging irrelevant personal details during an assessment. Asked about their leadership values, some executives describe being abandoned by their parents at a young age, says Sandra Davis, chief executive of MDA Leadership Consulting in Minneapolis. “I am not looking for personal, private stories.”

Dee Soder, managing partner of CEO Perspective Group in New York, has assessed executives who mention a romantic affair as the reason they quit a job. “Don’t tell me you had an affair,” she warns. “It’s going to set off all kinds of alarm bells.”

On the other hand, a senior executive disclosed the challenge of growing up with an alcoholic mother during her six-hour assessment interview for the No. 1 spot at a financial-services company in 2009. “I let it all hang out,” she recollects.

The revelation apparently made a positive impression. The company offered her its CEO job. The executive turned down the offer, however. “The fit wasn’t quite right,” she says.

Write to Joann S. Lublin at joann.lublin@wsj.com

By MIKE ESTERL

Carnival Corp. estimated Monday that the wreck involving its Costa Concordia cruise ship off Italy’s coast will lower net income by $155 million to $175 million in fiscal 2012.

Carnival estimated Monday that the wreck involving its Costa Concordia cruise ship off Italy’s coast will lower net income by $155 million to $175 million in fiscal 2012. Mike Esterl has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP

Passenger bookings fell in January, but the cruise-ship operator added that it doesn’t expect the accident to have a significant impact on its business in the long term.

Seventeen people have been confirmed dead and another 16 still missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks in the Mediterranean Sea on Jan. 13, triggering an evacuation of more than 4,000 passengers and crew members. The ship remains partially submerged off the island of Giglio.

Miami-based Carnival said in a regulatory filing it expects the loss of the use of the Costa Concordia to reduce its net income by $85 million to $95 million in the fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 2012. It estimated insurance deductiles will cost it another $40 million, in addition to $30 million to $40 million in “other incident related costs” from the accident.

Carnival is the parent company of Costa Crociere SpA, the Genoa, Italy, company that operated the Costa Concordia. Carnival is the world’s largest cruise ship company by revenue and owns several other cruise lines, including Holland America, Princess and Carnival Cruise Lines. Costa Concordia represents about 1.5% of Carnival’s overall fleet capacity.

Carnival, whose shares are listed in New York and London, said in its 10-K filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it expects its fiscal 2012 earnings to be reduced by $0.20 to $0.22 a share because of the accident. It had estimated in December that it would book 2012 earnings of $2.55 to $2.85 a share.

Fleet-wide booking volumes, excluding Costa, declined “in the mid teens” after the accident through Jan. 25, bottoming out Jan. 16, Carnival disclosed Monday. Bookings at the Costa Crociere unit are believed to be down “significantly” but are still difficult to quantify, said Carnival, adding that it has significantly reduced its marketing activities in the wake of the accident.

“We anticipate other financial impacts to our business, including lower net revenue yields, that are not possible to reasonably determine at this time,” Carnival stated in Monday’s regulatory filing.

At the same time, “we believe the incident will not have a significant long-term impact on our business,” the company stated.

Write to Mike Esterl at mike.esterl@wsj.com

By LAURA JACOBS

New York

‘There’s nothing traditional left in Murcia—no earrings or jewelry . . . everything is lost, nothing remains, not even a simple cap I’d hoped to find.” So wrote the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, in 1918, to his wife, Clotilde. He was traveling through Spain doing studies for the kind of commission that is an artist’s dream. Archer Milton Huntington, the founder of the Hispanic Society of America, had asked Sorolla for a cycle of mural-size paintings representing the customs and dress of Spain’s 11 regions. Begun in 1911 and completed in 1919, the majestic, 14-panel “Vision of Spain” would be the climax of Sorolla’s career. His plaintive cri de coeur—“everything is lost”—suggests just how far-reaching and detailed his vision was. It’s an old story, this search for the vivid imprints of one’s early years. “You have to go deep into the countryside,” Sorolla wrote Clotilde.

And deep into the countryside is where “Joaquin Sorolla & the Glory of Spanish Dress,” at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, takes us. Curated by Vogue’s André Leon Talley, the show was conceived by the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who initiated the Institute’s acclaimed exhibition of last year, “Balenciaga: Spanish Master.” That exhibition demonstrated the ways in which Spain’s sartorial inheritance—the matador’s embroidered bolero, the flounces of Flamenco, the lace veils of Catholicism, the stark outerwear of shepherds—had been absorbed and abstracted into Cristóbal Balenciaga’s masterly and vastly influential Paris couture. From the 1940s to the 1960s, many a socialite’s cocktail dress was actually the silhouette of a Spanish goatherd or a Jeronymite nun, ineffably transmuted.

Bohórquez Domecq, S.L./Craig McDean/Art + Commerce

A traje de luces, or ‘suit of lights,’ from the 1950s-60s by Fermín that was once worn by the matador Antonio Ordóñez.

In this current exhibit, however, transmutation is beside the point. Going from Seville to Navarre to Castille, and so on, painting life-size studies as he went, Sorolla was all the time looking for traditional clothing, ceremonial costumes, the history-laden styles and jewelry unique to each region. He wanted to get the details exactly right, and when he found these pieces he often bought them. For the first time ever, Sorolla’s purchases are set side by side here with his painted studies. The resulting connection, as ethnographic as it is aesthetic, is captivating.

From the moment one enters the show, the relationship between form and function comes into play. So many pleats: pin pleats, cartridge pleats and gathers so fine that they read as pleats. This means volume: swaths of fabric pleating up at the neck, or over the bust, thus creating bell-shapes, tents, private homes for the body. Yes, there are corseted shapes in this exhibit, but more mysterious are the brooding, woolen capes and shrouds, which are protective, asexual—rooms, so to speak, of one’s own.

Then there is the surface embellishment—exuberant, zealous, over-the-top. It’s as if Spain is the life of the party, a land of ribbons and bows, cockades and tassels, fringe and lace, not to mention pompoms. One is struck by the correspondence between the ornate gold bullion that ornaments Spanish statues of the Virgin Mary and the same bullion that adorns the matador’s traje de luces (“suit of lights”). Feminine-masculine. Spiritual-corporeal. Where the silhouette of the Virgin is an upside-down V, rooting her to earth, the slim-hipped, broad-shouldered bullfighter is an upright V, opening to the sun and sky. What might this say to us? That the shoulders of men may uphold heaven, but the hemline of heaven brushes the earth. Indeed, the V is a triangle and in this exhibit there are triangular shapes everywhere. The Holy Trinity, it seems, is intrinsic to the metaphorical landscape of Spain.

Museo Sorolla, Madrid

‘Flamenco Dancer’ (1914) by Joaqín Sorolla

Up on the third floor of the exhibition, a panorama of recent haute couture influenced by Spanish dress calls us back to our own hunger for relevance. The most splendid of these is the wedding dress from Christian Lacroix’s final show, in 2009, which takes its inspiration from those festooned statues of the Virgin that are carried aloft through the streets of Spain. I’m not sure how many present-day brides arrive at the altar as virgins, but I don’t doubt that most feel they’re levitating in their dresses. That Mr. Lacroix chose to make this dress the last image of his farewell show attests to the power of Spain’s place as a fount of visual epiphanies.

For me, the most compelling piece in the exhibition is simpler. Downstairs, a fisherman’s shirt from the Basque country is on display. Sorolla bought it in 1912, a loose pullover made of unbleached white wool, its open neckline trimmed with black piping. The shirt had been patched with so many squares and rectangles of white wool that today it suggests Cubism in soft focus—a modern work of art. It expresses austerity, and yet that wool, the color of broken bread, makes one think of the loaves and fishes, the feeding of the multitudes, and this country’s abiding belief in miracles.

Ms. Jacobs is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where she has written extensively on fashion history.

By ERIC FELTEN

This April it will be 100 years since the Titanic’s one and only sailing. And the centennial of the unsinkable ship’s sinking, which took the lives of some 1,500 people, is already a bloated extravaganza of dubious taste and obtuse cultural history. If only there were lifeboats in which to escape it all.

At the end of March, Belfast, Northern Ireland, will open “The World’s Largest Titanic Visitor Attraction,” a glittering behemoth at the old shipyard where the Titanic was built. In size and sheer expense (north of $145 million), the building is equal to the original ship, at least in hubris. Once all the centennial festivities are done, this enormous white elephant will be available for weddings, which is only slightly less awful than using the wreck itself as a venue (as one couple did back in 2001, taking their vows crouched in a little submarine above the ruined prow).

April will also see a raft of Titanic cruises, including an excursion from New York to the site of the catastrophe, and a voyage retracing the ship’s route from Southampton (though the plan is for the vessel to make it all the way to New York this time).

And as one might have expected, “Titanic,” James Cameron’s maudlin megahit movie, is being rereleased—in 3-D, of course.

Not every Titanic commemoration is on a mammoth scale. This weekend in seaside Penarth, Wales, a restaurant will be throwing a Titanic party touted in the local press as “an evening of music, dinner and life jackets.”

If you can’t make it to Wales, there’s always Orlando, Fla., where on Saturday nights one can enjoy “fun” and “merriment” at the “Titanic Dinner Event.” The show is staged at “The Titanic Experience,” a strip-mall “attraction” about a dozen miles down the road from Disney. Not only is there dining and singing, but for $64.95 you get to “Be a part of the splendor and surprises at one of the most famous dinner parties in history.” What a surprise it would be if, after a sumptuous meal, two-thirds of the patrons were tossed in a tank of icy water and left to drown. But that might scuttle the merriment.

The Orlando enterprise is owned by Premier Exhibitions, the parent of RMS Titanic Inc., the outfit with international salvage rights to what’s left of the ship. Much of the haul has been out and about in traveling shows. But, appropriately, the permanent displays are in Las Vegas and Orlando.

There is also something fitting in the fact that the Titanic tchotchkes are displayed by a company otherwise known for turning cadavers into entertainment. Premier Exhibition’s bread and butter has been “Bodies: The Exhibition,” a show of semidissected corpses preserved in plastic.

Premier Exhibitions is cashing in on the centennial of the Titanic disaster with an April auction to offload some 5,500 artifacts raised from the wreck, everything from chunks of the ship’s hull to White Star Line teacups and passengers’ possessions. The goods will be sold in one gigantic lot, appraised at $189 million.

At the other end of the market, the company has licensed a $19.95 “100th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Necklace” almost surreal in its schlock value. On a silver-plated chain dangles an “ocean blue” heart pendant made of glass and reminiscent of the fictional jewel used as a plot device in Mr. Cameron’s movie. Embedded in the glass is a crumb of coal hauled up from the wreck. This bauble is “destined to become a conversation piece and a valued collectible you’ll want to pass down for generations to come.”

Imagine someone trying to hawk costume jewelry made with singed palm fronds from Boston’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub—where a horrific fire killed 492 people in 1942. (Come to think of it, the 70th anniversary of that catastrophe is coming up in November. Maybe they can do something with it in Orlando or Vegas.)

Thanks to the success of the 1997 movie, an unfortunate number of people now think of the sinking of the Titanic primarily as the setting for a romance. And that ahistorical misunderstanding is behind much of the creepy centennial sentimentality.

A hundred years after the disaster, it’s worth remembering why the Titanic loomed so large for so long in the public mind—what made it, according to Walter Lord, “The greatest news story of modern times.” Lord, whose 1955 book “A Night to Remember” remains the essential Titanic account, wrote: “Here was the ‘unsinkable ship’—perhaps man’s greatest engineering achievement—going down the first time it sailed,” and taking with it many of the most notable people of the day. “If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else?” Lord asked. “People have never been sure of anything since.” The Titanic century soon devolved into world wars, atomic anxiety and an angst rooted in the worry that our machines may not be entirely within our control.

This year, instead of sinking into a celebration of catastrophic kitsch, it’s worth restoring the Titanic to its rightful place as a most modern memento mori. What should we remember? Steven Biel, in his cultural history of the Titanic, aptly highlighted Henry Adams’s response to the tragedy: “Nature jeers at us for our folly.”

—Write to me at EricFelten@WSJPostmodern.com.

Bart Ziegler/The Wall Street Journal

Daffodils are among the most reliable spring-blooming bulbs I grow in my yard.

The air finally is turning cooler in upstate New York after an unusually warm start to fall. The leaves are half-gone and the days are shorter. Just the time to get out in my yard and do some planting.

Bulbs, that is. It may sound crazy to do gardening this time of year but planting bulbs is a good use of time and money. Bulbs are ridiculously easy to grow—even for novice gardeners with brown thumbs—yet you get rewarded with something colorful in your yard next spring well before the leaves come back.

Fall is the only time you can plant spring-blooming bulbs such as daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths. They need to settle in and undergo a period of cold weather to be prompted to put out their flowers in five or six months.

While shrubs or perennial flowers planted in the fall could be set back or even killed by a harsh winter it’s tough to destroy a bulb, at least during its first year in the ground. Each bulb contains inside its protective shell all the nutrients it needs to thrive along with a nascent version of the flower it will become.

Bulbs come in hundreds of types, including oddball ones that most people have never seen.

There’s an ancient variety of daffodil whose blooms resemble hooped skirts (Narcissus bulbocodium conspicuus). Some alliums, an ornamental member of the onion family, have tentacle-like flowers that look like a prop from a science fiction show (Allium hair). And there are nearly black tulips as well as daffodils in shades of bright orange or pink.

And if you plant bulbs with varied bloom times you can have bulb-based flowers from February through October, depending on where you live.

So where to start? First, figure out what types of bulbs you want to plant. If you have deer or other animals that eat your plants you probably don’t want to grow tulips, attractive as they are. Tulips are like giant lollipops for deer—if underground critters such as voles don’t eat the bulbs first. And tulips have a short life for bulbs; most don’t tend to live more than a few years.

A far safer bet is daffodils, which are virtually indestructible. Almost nothing likes to eat their bulbs or their blooms. And if they are planted in a place they like, with adequate drainage and enough sun in the spring and early summer, they can live for years. (Several clumps of daffodils in the neighbor’s yard where I grew up still produce flowers decades later.) Another reliable choice is hyacinths. As with daffodils they’re a plant that few animals like to nibble, and they put out a powerful, sweet fragrance that is a sure sign of spring.

And for flowers that will appear even when snow is still on the ground try snowdrops, with their dangling, bell-shaped white blooms, or winter aconites, which have tiny flowers in bright yellow. (For a selection of unusual bulbs check out the catalogs of John Scheepers, Brent and Becky’s Bulbs or Old House Gardens.)

As for the planting technique, bulbs aren’t too fussy. Generally, the bigger the bulb, the deeper you plant it. Daffodils should be planted six or eight inches deep, while tiny crocus bulbs should be put just three or four inches below the surface. (Most bulb packages give instructions.)

Be sure to orient the bulbs in the right direction: with the pointed end facing up, and the squatter end, with remnants of roots, at the bottom. Finally, don’t plant bulbs singly but instead arrange them in clusters of at least five–otherwise, the flowers will look kind of artificial growing by themselves like lonely sentinels.

You can plant bulbs as late into the fall as you can dig the soil. One year, I was so behind schedule that I had to chop through the frozen, snow-covered top layer of ground; the daffodil bulbs didn’t miss a beat in putting out flowers the next spring. And while bulb suppliers tell you to add fertilizer at least once a year I rarely do so and still get plenty of blooms.

Where to plant the bulbs is another issue. If you want the flowers to come back each year you must let their leaves “ripen,” or turn yellow and eventually die, after they are done blooming. That allows the leaves to recharge the bulbs. If you cut off the leaves prematurely you likely won’t get blooms the following spring.

But the dying foliage, which can persist for several months, looks messy. The best solution I’ve found is to plant bulbs behind or beside clumps of summer-blooming perennial flowers that will grow up and disguise the fading leaves, such as coneflowers, peonies or brown-eyed Susans.

People who live in warm-weather climates unfortunately can’t grow as many types of bulbs, but some varieties of daffodils and lilies along with gladiolus are said to do well despite the lack of a cold winter. Talk to a local garden center for advice.

Write to Bart Ziegler at bart.ziegler@wsj.com