10. You Deserve a performance based approach to Executive Recruiting

For years the recruiting industry has failed to focus on clients and has offered limited choices. Little has changed in the last 20 years in either the contingency or retained search models – all the risk remains on clients – until now.  Perry-Martel pioneered a new model which shares in the risk with our clients and rewards performance.

9. We will train you on the most effective Interview Techniques

People are obviously more important than PCs. Yet most companies spend more time evaluating a lease on a PC than evaluating the person operating the PC. At Perry-Martel, we provide all of our clients an interviewing and evaluation workshop that teaches you how to approach interviewing strategically, based on Managing Partner David Perry’s latest book “Executive Recruiting for Leaders“.

8. We drive the Process

Ever hire a recruiting firm and never hear from them again after the check clears? At Perry-Martel, you will have an experienced industry  veteran as your Client Partner who manages your search with project discipline – in fact you’ll always have two partners – no other major search firm in America does this.  We’re driving the bus so you don’t have to. Regularly scheduled status meetings and reports happen on a weekly basis.

7. We have Built a Direct Sourcing Engine

It is no secret that the best candidates are too busy to have their resume floating around – even the largest job related social networking sites, like LinkedIn, represent a tiny portion of the talent in America. . Thus, the key to a successful search is original research and direct sourcing.  At Perry-Martel, we have a strong research team dedicated solely to finding the best prospects for your opportunity…. and then turning them into interested passive candidates

6. We’ve Walked In Your Shoes

We are technology professionals hiring technology professionals. Our Partners have walked in your  shoes.  This relevant experience eliminates the learning curve and allows us to quickly add value.

5. We Are Purpose-Built

We make bold commitments. We are the only executive recruiting firm that makes specific commitment in the number of days, number of candidates and amount of our fees when executing a search. Our competition doesn’t understand, nor can they easily replicate that commitment. Our organization is “purpose-built” with a different organizational model to deliver quality talent and measurable results.

4. All Requirements Are Not The Same

Every recruiting company will tell you they define requirements.  However, few will spend the time necessary to define clear requirements up front. Through our workshops, we define the position’s technical and functional requirements, the skills and experience necessary for success, and the personality and behavioral traits that support team chemistry and determine organizational fit. These requirements are combined in a Candidate Road-map  used to build consensus and make sure the candidates we present will not waste your time or theirs.

3. We Stand Behind Our Work

We believe an educated hiring team is our best customer. Thus, through our requirements workshop, our interview and evaluation training and our Client Management process, we ensure the hiring team has all the tools needed to make an accurate hiring decision. We are so confident in our processes and approach that we give an unprecedented one-year placement guarantee” on our candidates.

2. We Eliminate Your Cost Of Vacancy

Misunderstood and mismanaged, the cost of vacancy in a leadership position is significant. Not only are plans delayed and decisions deferred, but the competition has an unfair advantage with your clients. We aim to complete every search within 45 to 60 days. This focus on speed is not just marketing-speak. Through our Fixed-Time/Success-Fee  model, we tie our fees to making that a reality!

1. We Are ACCOUNTABLE

We are changing the recruiting industry by bringing a new client-focused model which shares in the risk with our clients. We are the only retained search consultancy that will make specific commitments to timing of the search and to the number of candidates available to interview. And we are accountable to those dates through our Fixedtime/ Success Fee, risk-sharing pricing model.

There are approximately 157,932 head-hunters in the USA today but only one was asked to co-author “Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0″ because of his in depth knowledge of the recruitment and selection function – and David Perry works with us. We invite you to get to know us through our website to see why we’re recognized as “Top Gun Recruiters”.

More detailed information including articles, testimonials and opinions are available on our website at www.perrymartel.com.

In an even more striking case, when Dreamworks SKG went public, investors immediately drove the value of it’s bonds to $2-billion. Dreamworks was a film studio without a studio, a film or even a star. All it had was the intangible value of its founders: Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Getten.

The intangible value of being — that’s what the new knowledge economy is all about. Veteran information age guru Stan Davis confirms some insights into the increasing value of people in today’s economy.

A person’s “value” is just a measure of how much someone is willing to pay to obtain something from them.

In Blur, Davis and Meyer make the point that the boundaries between your work life and your home life are disappearing. In fact, today the rate of change and the depth of connectivity is so fast that every person, product, service and company are blurring together.

Computerization and communications have made us all a linked community. There are, for example, nine times more computer processors in our products than in our computers — nine billion CPUs in item like phones, hotel keys, consumer electronics, day planners and cars.

As products are more driven by software, they become easier to link together. Intelligence and information become the key value being offered in a consumable (some 90 percent of the value of a new car is estimated to be in the computers and software it uses). And you are the value-adder.

Instead of resources or land, “capital” today means human capital. It doesn’t take a shoe factory to go into the show business these days. Nor do you need raw materials or fleets of trucks. Nike became a shoe industry leader by concentrating on the value-producing capacity of it’s employees, for design, marketing and distribution know-how.

The real capital is intangible: the person’s knowledge level, combined with an aptitude for application.

Today, employees in the high-technology world especially, tend to think of themselves as a free agent — like a professional athlete who is always in training. Knowledge workers are continuously investing in the next set of skills and training, driving up their personal “stock price”. This puts knowledge value in the driver’s seat. Employers like yourself will try ever harder to retain smart, boldly entrepreneurial overachievers. Microsoft used stock options to attract exactly this kind of person, and has created more than 21,000 employee millionaires.

In this world, value is NOT salary — not for the employer, not for the employee. Your search for a candidate job should be value-focused, not salary-driven.

At Perry-Martel International, we know how to look for knowledge value. And just as you’d expect from the complexity of the human factors involved, it is an intensive process.

What we bring to the table is a set of guidelines developed from years of experience in locating just such values, and the experience that lets us apply these guidelines quickly, on your behalf.

We know what’s important in today’s knowledge worker, and in your company, and we can bring these elements together.

David Perry
Perry-Martel International Inc.

One of the biggest challenges in buying search services is that recruiters on every end of the business – retained to contingency; true professionals to ambulance chasers – introduce themselves as a CONSULTANT. These people not only take on the title of CONSULTANT, worse yet, they believe that they really are consultants.

Our view is that executive search consulting goes beyond the task of recruiting and presenting candidates.

A competent consultant will not automatically step in and begin a search. He or she will first determine whether a search is needed, and if there are any organizational problems which may preclude a search or prevent any selected candidate from being successful in the job.

They kick tires. They push back. They probe – relentlessly – for the truth.

Here are 5 factors which separate a true search consultant from a would-be recruiter

1. Your interests will always be placed ahead of the consultant’s interests.
2. Prior to the initiation of any search, a thorough analysis of the needs will be undertaken. A professional will not accept a client assignment unless the organization truly has the need to undertake the search.
3. All candidates presented will be appropriate for the job at hand.
4. The consultant will remain objective and present all information on candidates – pro and con – such that the best decision can be made, even if that means starting over.
5. The search consultant will continue to work actively and enthusiastically on a project, even after all of the retainer fee has been paid.

The best consultants recognize that a search is not over when a candidate is hired. But rather, when one year later those involved – client and candidate – look back and admit that the new relationship worked in everybody’s best interests.

David Perry
Perry-Martel International Inc.

Mel Gibson’s movie, The Patriot, featured one of the unsung heroes of the American revolutionary war, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

The Baron, a Prussian military leader, was  recruited by George Washington to be the drillmaster of the continental army. Facing a well-trained army of British conscripts and Hessian mercenaries, von Steuben turned a ragtag collection of farmers and shopkeepers into the officer corps that led the Americans to victory. Those lessons have relevance today.

General Washington created a level playing field by bringing in a highly skilled and motivated outsider who knew the enemy and what it would take to defeat them. From von Steuben to Lafayette, Washington sought out  men who could make a difference in the outcome of the war. Could you do the same for your company? In today’s hyper-competitive environment, business is war! You put your job on the line to help your company beat its competition, gain market share and become the market leader. Washington couldn’t have achieved victory with second-rate people and neither can you. With leaders in short supply today, the battle for those of exceptional ability is fierce.

You should consider the following when you’re recruiting:

1. Communication skills – they must be far above average. Fuzzy writing and clumsy speaking skills are rarely indicative of sharp thinking, whereas clarity and conciseness of expression are. Colloquial expressions may work well on the factory floor but are unlikely to impress your customers or board of directors.

2. Leadership and change-agent skills – reject anyone who believes everything is fine just the way it is and wants to become a “valued team player”. Unless you’re hiring followers, it’s far better to find the person who wants to lead the team in search of a better way. Fire in the belly is how many of our clients describe this.

3. Action oriented – they cannot be afraid to make tough decisions. In business, acts of omission cause more damage than acts of commission.

4. Leads by example - they are able to manage effectively and blend the intricate personalities and quirks of talented people by setting ambitious goals and motivating others to participate in achieving them. Leadership is never limited to the corner office on the top floor. In the R&D lab, it motivates lone-wolf scientists and engineers to work together to design a faster chip. In the field, it motivates the sales force to take no prisoners in the battle for marketplace supremacy.

5. Global perspective – Today’s executive should be well-traveled, multilingual, aware of worldwide political and economic trends, comfortable in foreign cultures and aware of local business customs. They should bring a global perspective to the job.

6. Broad-based experience – while promotion from within was once a well and widely regarded practice, many organizations today realize that corporate inbreeding results in management that knows only one way of doing things. A recent study found that fewer than two out of five top executives are company lifers. The manager who has thrived in differing industries and corporate cultures not only brings a range of experience to the table but is also likely to be flexible enough to adapt to your organization as well.

7. Fill a gap in the management mix – General Washington knew he needed an expert in close-order drill. Good hockey coaches know their relative offensive, defensive and goal-keeping strengths and make trades accordingly. Likewise, smart corporate managers know their organization’s strengths and seek to complement, not replicate them, when hiring.

8. A range of past assignments bodes well for future promote-ability – anyone who’s been pigeonholed into a functional specialty, such as marketing, product development or PR, has not been earmarked by his or her employer as a candidate for high-level promotion. Succession planning depends on giving the line managers some staff experience and vice versa, so that someday they are truly ready for general management.

9. Fill the next job up the corporate ladder, with proper seasoning – all too often, companies consider only the demands of the current job. Why hire someone you can’t promote? The upwardly mobile manager eases the burden of succession planning and improves your return on personnel investment.

10. Anticipating tomorrow’s technology needs – from order processing to factory scheduling, from pricing models to product design, and from boardroom presentations to Ajax and LinkedIn, technology enhance a company’s ability to make informed decisions, achieve more predictable end results, optimize efficiency and crush the competition. Your executives must embrace technology and be on top of the next Twitter.

Ultimately each company must decide for itself what attributes will lead to on-the-job success, since the employer, not the recruiter, will be stuck with the end result.  But no matter what your industry, hire the individual who will give you a leg up on your competitors. In the presence of Hessian mercenaries, do as Washington did and hire a Prussian general.

David Perry is managing partner of Perry-Martel International Inc., an global executive recruiting firm.  He specializes in recruiting for high tech companies. He can be reached via e-mail at dperry@perrymartel.com

His latest book. “Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0″ explains in detail how job hunters can choose exactly who where they want to work and launch a guerrilla campaign of their own.

]]> http://www.perrymartel.com/2009/08/05/leadership-lessons-from-the-american-war-of-independence/feed/ 0