Construction & Real Estate Practice launch (Daily Journal of Commerce)

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

Recruiting firm targets construction and real estate executives in the Northwest (From 6/30/16 Daily Journal of Commerce article by Lynn Porter)

Seattle-based Herd Freed Hartz recently launched a practice group to recruit people for executive-level jobs in the real estate and construction industry.

“It’s really a reflection of the moment and the growth that’s happening in Seattle,” said managing director Scott Rabinowitz, who noted that 65 buildings are under construction downtown.

Rabinowitz was quoting a recent Downtown Seattle Association report, which also said construction expenditures for projects downtown now being built are at $3.5 billion.

Herd Freed Hartz has represented firms in real estate and construction before, but the new practice group will focus entirely on them. “Our real estate work has tripled in the last three years and it just seems like the right time to share the story and be dedicated as part of that industry,” Rabinowitz said.

Herd Freed Hartz was founded in Seattle 15 years ago and opened a Portland office in 2010, where the new practice group will also work.

The firm has clients in a range of industries, including technology, health care, finance, manufacturing, and not-for-profit. It has done searches for BECU, F5 Networks, T-Mobile, Starbucks, Getty Images, Alaska Airlines and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.

Herd Freed Hartz is a private firm with nine senior recruiters who Rabinowitz said deal directly with clients. He declined to release revenues.

Herd Freed Hartz has done senior-level searches for Seattle design firms, including NBBJ and NK Architects, for subcontractors such as Cochran Electric, for homebuilders that include Isola Homes, and for real estate firms, such as Windermere Real Estate and Zillow. And it recently found a Seattle-based market leader for self-storage properties for Rosewood Property Co., a Dallas real estate firm.

It recruited residential and commercial broker Nick Ridgeway for a Seattle job as vice president of land acquisition for Isola Homes, which primarily builds houses, including single-family and townhouses.

Ridgeway said he was finding development sites for builders as a broker for Real Property Associates when the recruiter contacted him in April.

At first, he turned them down. “I kind of branded myself, and I was just fine dealing with my clients,” he said.

But Herd Freed Hartz contacted the busy Ridgeway again, offering more detail on Isola Homes. He said the recruiting firm was excellent at conveying the vision and values of the Isola people — and he liked what those people stand for. “I am a big believer that people go to work for people not for companies,” he said.

Ridgeway said Herd Freed Hartz coached Isola on the best way to vet candidates and himself on the firm’s high expectations, so he could decide if it was a good fit.

It was an exhaustive hiring process, with meetings and a test, he said, but the recruiter made sure he was on board with the process. “This was a very professional executive-level experience,” he said.

Rabinowitz said construction and real estate companies need someone to tell their story to candidates, including those not in their network.

Those leaders want people with local connections and industry knowledge who can get projects done. “They like straight talkers who have the expertise, are detail-oriented, and do what they say they will do,” Rabinowitz said.

People in this small community know each other, which can make it more difficult to approach someone about a job.

Rick Hermanson, president of Hermanson Co., a Kent-based mechanical contractor, said Herd Freed Hartz was excellent at helping the company fill a director of human resources position.

It presented him the candidates and their qualifications every week, ranked them and kept him in the loop.

“Obviously they started out with job description,” he said. “They did a nice job of just racking it up, extracting what I was looking for, putting it in writing, and finding the right candidates that met our requirements.”

Rabinowitz said top candidates in any industry are reluctant to make a move, so you must be quick and effective in telling your client’s story. “You think it’s hard to make a bid on a house, try making a bid on somebody’s life,” he said.

Submitting a resume to an online job site can be like tossing it into a black hole, he said. “It’s an activity but not real action.”

Rabinowitz said his firm screens candidates to make the hiring process more effective.

It recruits for “C-level” jobs, such as a chief financial officer or chief marketing officer, down to the director positions.

Rabinowitz said project managers are needed for larger, complex, and more costly construction projects.

Seattle has gone at least two years beyond the typical real estate cycle, he said, and “there is a bit of hesitation that something should change soon.”

However, he said, there are dozens of projects set to start in the next year and a half, so “it looks like this market and this sector is very well positioned for a least another couple of years.”

Rabinowitz said Herd Freed Hartz is best at helping companies manage change in leadership, scale and direction, and this new real estate and construction practice group “is a sign for our firm of the importance of that sector to us.”

Last update of the article: 06/05/2020.

Understanding Retained Search

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

With a more stable economy, a generational change in business leadership, and increased competition for highly experienced executives, relying on finding your next executive hire through traditional means like colleague referral or networking won’t necessarily find you the right fit, or fill your role quickly. And as the Northwest becomes a magnet for more technology, consumer, biotech and healthcare businesses, even the most reputable, profitable and successful companies will need to boost their competitiveness to attract top executive talent.

Working with an executive search partner can bring significant benefits not just to your immediate hiring need but also to the ongoing health of your organization. Many companies dismiss this option either because they fear the cost might be prohibitive, or they don’t understand the longer-term value of this particular service. However, partnering with an executive search firm on a key, critical hire for your organization will not only be beneficial in the short term (finding the right fit) but can actually save you a considerable amount of time and money in the long run.

Some key contributing factors to today’s competitive market at the executive level include:
* The Conference Board, in a recent study, reported that the average tenure of S&P 500 company CEOs was 9 years in 2014.

* Temple University pinpointed “the optimal tenure length” for a CEO at 4.8 years, compared with the average at big corporations of 9-10 years.

* Nearly half of new CEOs don’t make it past 18 months, according to the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC).

* CIO tenure is under five years; according to CIO Executive Coach Larry Bonfante in CIO Insight magazine.

* And a recent CMO longevity study reported in the Wall Street Journal found the average tenure for CMOs fell to 44 months in 2015, down from 48 months in 2014.

In this tight market, companies are considering approaches to hiring that are new to them. Where in the past contingent search or a “friends and family” approach may have worked, many companies are now requiring the boost to executive hiring that retained search can provide.

While repeat customers of retained search (like venture capital and private equity backed companies) are advocates of the results and the process, other companies are unfamiliar with this approach to executive hiring. We’ve found – in talking to board members, executives and HR professionals – that there are some misunderstandings about the role of retained executive search.

Myth #1 – Executive Search is Expensive

The costs of replacing an executive can be exorbitant, and not always from a cash perspective. Especially when nearly half of new CEOs don’t make it past 18 months.

In fact, 53% of failed hires ended up failing because “the hire’s personality was not suited to the role or company,” according to the 2016 McQuaig Global Talent Recruitment Survey of nearly 450 HR professionals from around the globe.

In a world where leadership is critical to business success, the costs of a mismatch in personality, leadership style culture or even geography can, and likely will, lead to underperformance, and can have a ripple effect on the morale of the organization as a whole. By ensuring a rigorous screening process, in the long run you’ll save your company significant pain and cost by finding the right fit, the first time. In addition, most search firms will guarantee their placement for six months to a year, mitigating your risk and costs.

Retained, executive search professionals spend the majority of their time doing research – matching personalities, culture, and business acumen with business leaders, board members, partners and their prospective executives. And we screen your candidates for the role, the company and the area – in the case of relocation.

We do so to maximize fit, and minimize disruptions to the business as new leaders are assimilated into new organizations. We work together to ensure everyone establishes long-term successful relationships throughout their careers.

When you engage with a retained search firm you should expect the following return:

  1. Intense and exclusive attention to your business, culture, leadership team and fit. The best retained search firms don’t take on too many searches so they can truly be the driver, mentor and strategist for the entire time it takes to fill your role.Executive search partners are advisors on both sides of a successful placement, holding hands with each party and guiding them down the proverbial aisle. Both the candidate and the organization are entering into true partnerships – almost a marriage – with leadership teams, company cultures, even geographical lifestyles. It is the search firm’s responsibility to find the right match for you in every respect.
  2. It takes time and commitment to develop a deep understanding of a leadership role, successfully identify the relationships any candidate will need to cultivate, and ensure that out-of-state candidates would be comfortable with relocation to the Pacific Northwest.As candidates go through the process, the questions they ask and the emotions they need to go through in order to make their decisions can be very tricky. Your executive search partner will ensure candidates and clients are comfortable and all questions and concerns are addressed in order to move them through the process as efficiently and effectively as possible.
  3. A highly experienced retained search partner will control and manage the entire process for your team. At Herd Freed Hartz, for example, our executive search professionals have held leadership roles in the corporate world. We understand our clients’ perspectives because we’ve been on their side, sitting in their seats.
  4. The most successful candidates for your company will be currently employed. They will not be found on job boards, nor will they be thinking about making a career change. Through competent and strategic research and preparation, in conjunction with years of professional experience, the successful retained search executive can convince even the best of the best to consider new, often competitive opportunities.

There’s an art to telling your compelling story in the marketplace in a way that will convince happy executives to consider a move. Combining the best of “old school” search and “new school” search, your retained search partner should be able to deliver great candidates through personal relationships augmented with software based research that can speed results from first touch to final offer and acceptance.

Myth #2 – The Executive Search Fee Model is Inflexible

Retained, executive search firms charge for their connections, their research, candidate vetting, their handholding and their deep understanding of your personality, company culture and even the indescribable needs of your organization and the role you’re filling.

An executive search partner focuses solely on offering the most value for the business during the search, reducing stress on both parties, so that by the time the first highly-qualified candidate is considered, the client and candidate are prepared equally to understand the probability of landing a successful offer.

Most retained search firms offer fixed, time-based payment terms. At Herd Freed Hartz, we are flexible in our payment arrangements. And there’s an agreement up front as to payment milestones. Each milestone is connected to our client’s satisfaction.

We measure our results in a “Time to Candidate” metric– which is our average number of days from search kickoff to when the candidate who was presented to actually got the job (which is what we all care most about). Today, our average Time to Candidate is 37 days.

In other words, we’re happy when our clients are happy. And that can happen pretty quickly – even with a rigorous qualification process.

Myth 3 – You Don’t Need to Understand the Market When You Have an Internal Candidate

Benchmarking your internal candidates against a highly qualified pool of external candidates can protect both your company and your employees from risk.

Legally, every candidate should flow through the same process as you consider new roles. An executive search partner will ensure your internal candidate will be fully vetted for the right background, skills, fit and compensation; and provide comparison to to a selection of external candidates so you are able to make an informed decision.

Bringing an executive into your company and culture is a big decision, and the right executive search firm will allow you to focus on a carefully selected short list of highly qualified individuals that are right for your organization. Hiring a search firm may not be the right decision in every case, but by debunking some of these myths we hope that the idea of engaging with a retained search partner is something well worth exploring when it comes to your key executive hires.

About Herd Freed Hartz

Herd Freed Hartz is the premier executive search firm in the Northwest, with offices in Portland and Seattle. At Herd Freed Hartz, we listen to understand your story. We do a deep dive on your business, the role you’re trying to fill, and help identify the key outcomes to target the ideal candidate. And we’ve successful placed executives in more than 150 businesses around the Northwest – from Zillow to Starbucks to REI to Les Schwab Tires.

We know you can’t find a cultural fit through keyword research. We know how to look beyond the resume to find the right candidates for your business. And we take responsibility to represent your brand extremely well in the marketplace. We help you stand out from your competition, to attract the best prospective candidates, and ensure a great candidate experience throughout the time you connect with them.

We can quickly deliver executive talent to help you win. And as our team delivers great results to your business, we want to earn the right to be your long-term, trusted recruiting partner.

We get the Northwest. We get the importance of personality and cultural fit on both sides of the aisle.

We’d like to help you build a great executive team.

Connect with us – in Portland – 503-535-0713 or Seattle – 206-525-9700.

Meet the CEO: Michael Schutzler – WTIA

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

Michael Schutzler is the CEO of WTIA, the largest technology association in Washington state. Michael brings over 30 years of experience in the technology industry, launching products and building companies as a product manager, co-founder, and angel investor. In 2013, Herd Freed Hartz placed Michael in his current position and we recently caught up with him to learn more about his philosophy as a leader, WTIA’s mission and his work leading this successful organization over the last several years.

1) Tells us a bit about WTIA:
WTIA is the unifying voice of the 10,000 tech companies in WA state. We inform and motivate industry, education, and government leaders to build a better world for all of us. Our programs and services help attract, develop, and retain the most talented and creative entrepreneurs and engineers in the world.

2) What is the pitch on why someone should join WTIA and use your services?
WTIA has served the tech industry for more than 30 years. WTIA is dedicated to help tech companies achieve their goals in every aspect of talent management.
* We recruit hard-to-find talent
* We run the only nationally registered apprenticeship
* We provide a turnkey HR benefits platform for small and mid-sized companies
* We provide peer level introductions and facilitated professional networking in education, government and industry
* We are one of the most influential state advocacy organizations

3) What was it about WTIA that attracted you to join?
The WTIA was at an inflection point in its evolution. The board gave me a very wide mandate – almost a blank slate – to try to reinvent what it means to be a viable trade association in the 21st century. Plus it was a great opportunity to develop public policy chops.

4) What challenges keep you up at night?
Running a non-profit is a lot like running a startup. You are always in fundraising mode and you long for the ability to focus more on building a product or running the business. Non-profits are inherently unstable and must be especially vigilant about their value proposition and delighting those who donate funds. Companies who provide unearned income are just like investors in a for-profit company. It’s a highly leveraged act every day of untenable schedule requirements and far more demand for our effort than we have supply of staffing. Without strong partners and delighted donors, we are dead.

5) What are you most proud of at WTIA?
We have built a really smart, engaged board of industry, education, and government leaders. We have built a really smart, skilled, loyal team of execs and staff. And we are getting a lot of good work done that delights those whom we serve.

6) What makes a good CEO?
Actively listening in the present, compelling storytelling about the future, skillfully negotiating in multiple dimensions, and always attracting talent. The greatest of these is attracting talent. A CEO working alone is delusion. No CEO can get anything valuable done without the help of others who are smarter, stronger, more skilled, or more experienced.

7) What experiences have best prepared you for this role?
Trying. Failing. Getting up and not making that same mistake again. Over and over and over. I did that as an athlete in high school and college. I’ve done that as an engineer on a workbench in a lab. As a salesperson dialing for dollars. As an entrepreneur raising money or building new products. And most recently acting like an overly eager labrador puppy in a public policy china shop, having to ask forgiveness more than once, learning from those mistakes, and building credibility anyway on principled integrity and genuine intent to serve.

8) Who are your influencers?
My first hero as a human and leadership archetype is Mahatma Gandhi. He’s my go-to role model. My dad was an entrepreneur (he was a cofounder of Mapquest after some other less successful efforts earlier in life) so I have the DNA and also had a professional role model since birth. My mom taught me the love of cooking and the joy of experimenting with flavors, intentionally reinventing recipes to see what might happen and celebrating failures as more entertaining and inspiring parts of success. My wife, who taught my kids (and me…) that every person has value to offer, even those few people we don’t like very much.

Recruiting and Hiring Executives to Protect Your Bottom Line

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

Got an extra $1.5M lying around?

According to Geoff Smart and Randy Street in their best selling business book Who, the average hiring mistake costs 15x an employee’s base salary in hard costs and productivity loss. So the cost of a single employee making $100,000 a year leaving your company with or without cause has a significant impact on the company’s bottom line. While no company has complete control over who will stay and who will go, the best way to protect against these losses are to ensure you are hiring the right people, the first time.

No one is immune to poor hiring decisions. Even the most progressive businesses make hiring mistakes. Zappos’ CEO Tony Hseih began paying unhappy employees $2,000 to leave the company because hiring mistakes have cost him more than $100M. He recognized that paying employees who were not fully committed after two weeks in the role was actually more cost-effective than allowing a more natural process to weed them out over a longer period of time.

The Economist called unsuccessful hiring “the single biggest problem in business.” And leadership-hiring mistakes happen more often than you might think. In the US, the typical hiring success rate of managers is only about 50%, according to Peter Drucker and other researchers.

When only 50% of your leadership hires work out, the costs to your bottom line can be astronomical.

How is that possible? As Smart and Street spelled out in Who, costly hiring mistakes are made when business leaders:
* Are unclear about what’s needed in a job
* Have a weak candidate pool from which they can choose
* Don’t know how to pick out the right candidate from a group of similar candidates
* Lose candidates they really want to join their team

First let’s dissect how that single $100,000 employee’s $1.5M can add up:

A global study of 6,000 HR leaders by CareerBuilder explored the direct and indirect costs of hiring the wrong employee. The study’s participants cited the following wrong hiring costs to their businesses:
* 41% lost worker productivity
* 40% lost time due to recruiting and training another worker
* 37% expense recruiting and training another worker
* 36% negative impact on employee morale
* 22% negative impact on client solutions

To underscore the costs of lost productivity:

A survey of CFOs reported that supervisors spend 17% of their time (almost one day a week!) overseeing poorly performing employees. We’ve all been there, and realize that lost productivity is a black hole that affects the entire leadership team, employees, customers and shareholders.

To better understand the lost time due to recruiting someone else:

According to Glassdoor’s Economic Research team, the average time it takes to interview in Portland is 25.3 days, and in Seattle is 25.0 days.

That’s an average for interviewing candidates from franchise workers (shortest time) to government workers (longest time); and Portland and Seattle take the second- and third-longest times in the national study. Believe it or not, we’re ahead of fourth-place San Francisco, and behind only Washington, DC!

Add to the interview time – especially for business executive candidates – the time it takes to negotiate, to wait for the candidate to wrap up their obligations and come aboard, and the time to successful onboarding (not even productivity) can literally take months, unaided.

(At Herd Freed Hartz, we track quality and speed in our average “Time to Candidate” metric of 37 days. This is our average number of days from search kickoff to when the winning candidate was presented.)

To underscore costs to employee morale:

A high stress environment or an environment in which employees are disengaged can cause a loss of employee productivity. A bad hire often causes both stress (to the poor hire and/or others) and disengagement (of the poor hire and/or others).

The American Psychological Association, in their Annual Stress in America survey, estimates that more than $500 billion is siphoned off from the U.S. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job.

Studies from the Queens School of Business and the Gallup Organization found that disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects than workers who were engaged.

Enough Bad News! How Do We Hire More Effectively?

In short, business leaders must take a more disciplined approach to sourcing and interviewing all candidates – especially executives.

In HBR’s Definitive Guide to Hiring in Good Times and Bad, they noted:

“A company can increase its yearly profits and market value by about a third through the disciplined generation and assessment of candidates for a CEO position. The typical cost of a search… is negligible when compared with the expected return on investment in candidate assessment.

Even for a company with a market value of $100 million—a 10% improvement in the quality of candidate assessments would have an expected return of almost $2 million in additional profits per year and mean an increase in market value of $30 million to $40 million.”

What are the attributes of “disciplined generation and assessments of candidates?” At Herd Freed Hartz, we take a programmatic approach with our clients, layering art and science on top of strategy:
* Strategy: Have a written plan to achieve your hiring goals
* Science: Leverage technology tools for efficiency and scale
* Art: Craft inspirational storytelling and candidate experience to ensure your company stands out from the pack

 

Successful Strategy: Building Your Plan and Goals

A written plan accomplishes several critical things: focusing your search; setting expectations for HR, your recruiting partner and the candidates themselves; and supporting the interview team as candidates come through.

First, defining the specific demands the job will require will help you screen for candidates more quickly, and help potential candidates understand your expectations from the very beginning.

Specifying the relevant skills and experience for the position will speed time to a strong candidate pool, and guide the interview team.

Identifying the team the candidate will need to work with – across and beyond your organization – will help build consensus among constituents as to job and candidate requirements.

And defining the way culture and context will affect the role (not the person) will elevate your hiring process beyond decision-making based on subjective, personal preferences

Science: Tools and Technology Speed Results

LinkedIn is still the biggest platform for recruiters, and recent studies have shown that 87% of professionals on LinkedIn are open to speaking with a recruiter. You might explore other social aggregation tools – like TalentHook, Gild and Hiring Solved – to more quickly find candidates through search. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) research shows that HR professionals are leveraging social media to tap into the talent pool and to promote their organizations’ brand, culture and benefits offerings to attract and retain new leaders.

Building a great employer brand online – especially through social media – can help even the most passive candidates consider a career opportunity. Your website is your foundation for success, but increasingly potential candidates are turning to social media and LinkedIn (and other professional networking sites) to gather brand impressions.

Art: Inspirational Storytelling, Candidate Experiences Set You Apart

And finally, the art of recruiting and hiring leaders for great fit is the area that has the potential for the very best ROI in the successful hiring process. The art of executive recruiting is measured, inspiring and strategic.

The art of executive recruiting is:
* Adding just the right sizzle to the job description to make it so compelling, even passive candidates will consider a switch.
* Creating a seamless candidate experience so that every single candidate will walk away with a positive impression of your company.
* Helping everyone in your organization become a great brand advocate – everyone in your business should be a recruiter.
* Boosting your interview team’s skills, to focus on rational vs. emotional decisions
* Using epic storytelling techniques to set candidates and your eventual hire up for success in their first year on the job.

How does your business measure up?

We hope that illuminating the true costs of a bad hire and how to better prepare your organization for hiring success will help your organization to protect your bottom line and prepare for growth in a positive way.

An executive search partner can make the search process almost seamless for your leadership team, your candidates and your employees. And a retained search firm can often accelerate your search to a successful hire.

About Herd Freed Hartz

Herd Freed Hartz is the premier executive search firm in the Northwest, with offices in Portland and Seattle. At Herd Freed Hartz, we listen to understand your story. We do a deep dive on your business, the role you’re trying to fill, and help identify the key outcomes to target the ideal candidate. And we’ve successful placed executives in more than 150 businesses around the Northwest – from Zoom+ to Starbucks to REI to Les Schwab Tires.

We know you can’t find a cultural fit through keyword research. We know how to look beyond the resume to find the right candidates for your business. And we take responsibility to represent your brand extremely well in the marketplace. We help you stand out from your competition, to attract the best prospective candidates, and ensure a great candidate experience throughout the time you connect with them.

We can quickly deliver executive talent to help you win. And as our team delivers great results to your business, we want to earn the right to be your long-term, trusted recruiting partner.

We get the Northwest. We get the importance of personality and cultural fit on both sides of the aisle.

We’d like to help you build a great executive team.

Connect with us – in Portland – 503-535-0713 or Seattle – 206-525-9700.

Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board Names Vincent New CEO thanks to Herd Freed Hartz

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

MADISON, Wis., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board of Directors has named Chad Vincent its new Chief Executive Officer after an extensive national search.

Vincent is a seasoned executive with experience successfully taking startups, turnarounds, family owned brands and Fortune 50 divisions to record levels of sales and profitability. He brings to WMMB extensive dairy marketing and branding experience as well, having served as chief marketing officer and senior vice president of strategic development at Sartori Cheese in Plymouth, Wisconsin for the past seven years. Prior to joining Sartori, Vincent held executive positions with H.J. Heinz, Miller Brewing Company, Fiskars Brands and other consumer products and beverage companies.

He will begin his tenure at WMMB December 1.

“I am extremely excited about our new hire, Chad,” said WMMB Board Chair Connie Seefeldt of Coleman, Wisconsin. “The board is really impressed with his experience, and we are excited to see how he will improve upon the fantastic work our team has been doing.” Seefeldt said she believes Vincent will help WMMB enhance the already strong promotional work and help strengthen partnerships with processors, farmers, industry partners and consumers.

Seefeldt added that the search firm, Herd Freed Hartz of Seattle, Washington, did a tremendous job of fielding a distinguished group of candidates for the board’s consideration. “The outstanding slate of candidates is a testament to WMMB’s strong reputation around the country,” she said.

“The universal positive response I received during my national outreach to potential candidates during this executive search speaks volumes about the excellent reputation of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and Wisconsin dairy products,” stated Fred Pabst, Dairy Industry Practice Leader for Herd Freed Hartz Executive Search Partners.

Vincent, a native of East Lansing, Michigan, received his undergraduate and MBA degrees from Michigan State University. A resident of Waunakee, Vincent and his wife Wendy are the parents of four children.

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board is a nonprofit organization of dairy producers that promotes the consumption of milk, cheese and other dairy products made in America’s Dairyland. For more information, visit www.EatWisconsinCheese.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/wisconsincheese) and Twitter (Twitter.com/wisconsincheese).

Contact Info:
Patrick Geoghegan
Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board
8418 Excelsior Dr.
Madison, WI 53717
608-836-8820
pgeoghegan@wmmb.org

SOURCE Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wisconsin-milk-marketing-board-names-vincent-new-ceo-300362263.html

Meet the CEO: Janis Avery – Treehouse

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

Janis Avery is the CEO of Treehouse, a top non-profit, supporting the needs of foster kids in Washington State. In 2016, Janis worked with Fred Pabst of Herd Freed Hartz to place their Chief Financial & Administrative Officer. We recently caught up with Janis to learn more about her philosophy as a leader, and hear more about her passion for the mission of Treehouse.

1) Tell us a bit about Treehouse.
Established in 1988, Treehouse’s mission is to give foster kids a childhood and a future. In our early days, we filled gaps for youth in foster care by funding the normal childhood experiences that all kids deserve and Washington State could not fulfill. Over time we have evolved to become a strategic partner to the state, foster parents, and youth, offering services that help level the playing field for kids in care by facilitating improved educational outcomes. Treehouse serves over 7,000 children and youth each year with activities that range from the simple: a special holiday gift to the complex: intensive educational coaching and intervention to help youth graduate from high school ready to achieve their post-secondary plans.

2) What do you consider to be your greatest professional accomplishment?
In 2011 our management team realized that our approach to filling the educational gaps for our youth was helping individual youth but not moving the educational outcomes needle for the population of youth in foster care in Washington State. The high school graduation rate at that time was about 36%. We courageously set a bold, ambitious goal for King County youth in foster care to graduate from high school at the same rate as their peers with a plan for their future. With discipline and dedication, we’ve implemented and adjusted our plan to achieve a five-year graduation rate of 82% for the class of 2015. I am proud of setting the goal, reaching powerful milestones toward achievement and recruiting the team that is making this great progress.

3) What has been your biggest professional challenge to overcome?
During this generation of non-profit leadership, I have participated in shifting the field from “doing good” to “having measurable impact.” This entails strategic use of data and our staff is entirely committed to the rigor this demands. The challenge has been to quantify some of what matters the most – relationships and experiences – both of which remain tremendously important to the whole child.

4) If you were starting another company tomorrow, what would be its top three values?
Equity – Racial and income inequality are eroding the potential of our country. I am a champion for equity through the impact of my organization in advocacy and intervention as well as in world class workplace practices.

Accountability – Clear goals, data-based decision making and transparency are very important to me. Accountability requires these three behaviors.

Optimism – Hope and optimism are interwoven. I nurture both to maintain energy for addressing difficult conditions while challenging myself to recognize and document progress.

5) What is your favorite interview question?
“Why are people poor?” My team is strongest when members can describe some of our societal structures that create and maintain conditions of poverty.

6) Who are your influencers?
I am inspired by local leaders Superintendent Susan Enfield from Highline Schools, TAF founder Trish Dziko, Annie Lee from Team Child, and the entire Tacoma community Graduate Tacoma initiative. I read broadly, seeking unfamiliar perspectives. Recently I have been reading a lot of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

7) What challenges keep you up at night?
I literally wake up worrying about the pace of change. A couple of generations ago it was perfectly acceptable for high school students to quit school and go to work because they could be productive and achieve a middle-class lifestyle. Today that is not the case and we must urgently unite in a no excuses goal to facilitate young adult success for all of our children.

8) Favorite way to spend free time is…?
I love singing, participating in Dances of Universal Peace, and gardening. These are contemplative and energetic activities that connect me to others and the infinite.

9) Cause closest to your heart?
Treehouse and our mission: giving foster kids a childhood and a future!

10) In closing, what are you most proud of at Treehouse?
I am most proud that Treehouse is a collaborative community effort where supporters invest their time, talent and treasure to find the way for children in foster care to thrive. I am very grateful for the generosity and creativity that help us do what’s best for our youth.

 

Why Hire an Executive Recruiting Firm?

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

If you’re struggling to place the right executive in your organization, you’ve probably wondered about the merits of hiring an Executive recruiting firm. Is it worth the investment? Shouldn’t my internal HR staff, who knows and understands the needs of my organization, be able to handle the hire? The painful truth that we often remind our clients of is that it takes additional skill and proven experience to attract the top talent.

Of course, you need to aim for the best possible candidates you can get, but it’s equally important that you steer clear of wrong candidates. And while the time honored method of relying on referrals from acquaintances and colleagues seems to be the instinctive reaction when you’re trying to fill an executive role, the current business climate and the natural rate of executive turnover are both too quick so that you’re going to need assistance if you hope to stay competitive. But, that’s not all. Here are other reasons you should hire an executive recruiting firm.

You Can’t Afford Not To

It’s estimated that the wrong hire can cost your company around 15x that employee’s salary once all is said and done. As we’ve covered in another post, if you hire the wrong person at 100,000, that could wind up costing your company 1.5 million! But that’s not all. The truth is that the cost of hiring the wrong candidate for an executive position can have all sorts of consequences aside from the financial sort, especially when you take into consideration the fact that only half of all CEOs make it past 18 months in a given position.

According to a study from CareerBuildier, the direct and indirect costs of hiring the wrong candidate actually affect your current roster much more than you would have thought:

  • 41% lost worker productivity
  • 40%lost time due to recruiting and training a new hire
  • 36% negative impact on employee morale
  • 22% impact on client solutions

Consider the investment you’ll make to find the right hire, and then consider the cost you’d incur from the wrong hire. This simple cost benefit analysis of whether or not to hire an executive recruiting firm can yield particularly helpful insights.

We’re not here to fill a position, we’re here to find you the best candidate

When you hire an executive search firm, you pay for us to conduct the search, not to fill the role. Contingency recruiters are those that are paid only once arole has been filled. You might think that that route sounds like a smarter investment, but contingency recruiters are paid to find a hire, not necessarily the best hire, which could wind up hurting you.

Retained, executive search firms charge for their connections, their research, candidate vetting, their handholding and their deep understanding of your personality, company culture and even the indescribable needs of your organization and the role you’re filling.

At Herd Freed Hartz, we work with your organization to find you the best candidate that we can. We are flexible in payments and in our payment milestones, each of which are connected to the satisfaction of our client. We know your satisfaction is our number performance indicator, and nearly 90% of our work comes from repeat or referral business.

Our Time to Candidate Metric is Unbeatable

As we’ve touched on earlier, success in executive recruiting comes down to both finding the right candidate and finding them fast. At Herd Freed Hartz our average time to candidate is 37 days, which means that in that time, we will present you with the candidate that is ultimately hired for the position.

It might seem counterintuitive, but outsourcing recruiting is in fact the best way to expedite the process of filling an executive role. Why? Because it’s our only focus. Your HR team has internal tasks to manage, and you’ve other things to focus on, but we’re solely concerned with finding, and vetting the best possible candidates. We do this by first working with you to understand the needs of your organization, and then leverage our experience, networks, and connections to put together a pool of candidates that are perfectly tailored for your organization.

Peace of Mind

This is the foremost benefit that the executive search consultants at Herd Freed Hartz provide for our clients. Working for a large organization can be stressful enough and most of those that are looking to hire an executive have separate responsibilities they have to keep up with as well. We work with you, we listen to the story of your business and we do a deep dive into your operations, your team, and the skill needed for a candidate’s sucess int he given role. We also identify key goals and outcomes. Through all of this, we’ve developed a time-teste approach for targeting the ideal candidate for some of the Northwest’s largest organizations – from Zillow to Starbucks to REI to Les Schwab Tires.

An executive search partner focuses solely on offering the most value for the business during the search, reducing stress on both parties, so that by the time the first highly-qualified candidate is considered, the client and candidate are prepared equally to understand the probability of landing a successful offer.

A keyword search is no way to judge if a candidate is a good cultural fit for your organization. At Herd Freed Hartz, we go beyond the resume to find the right candidate for your organization by taking the appropriate responsibility to accurately represent your brand in the market place. We provide job descriptions that truly sizzle, helping you stand out from the competition.

So why do you need an executive search firm?

A keyword search is no way to judge if a candidate is a good cultural fit for your organization. At Herd Freed Hartz, we go beyond the resume to find the right candidate for your organization by taking the appropriate responsibility to accurately represent your brand in the market place. We provide job descriptions that truly sizzle, helping you stand out from the competition.

Interested in having HERD FREED HARTZ help with your executive recruiting? Get in touch today!

5 Common Sense Tips for Crafting a Beneficial Candidate Experience

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

When you really get down to it, recruitment and hiring is about building your business; creating opportunities for your company to achieve its full potential. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the hiring process contains another, hidden opportunity to grow and develop your company’s image and brand. Whether or not you actually hire them, prospective candidates leave the application process with an impression of your company based on the experience they had. According to a survey by Kelly Services UK, 70% of applicants would talk about a negative experience with family and friends and 31% would go public. But more than that, the way that you hire and onboard prospects really reflects how your organization is run, both inside and out. As such, it’s important that team members start off on the right foot when they are brought on, and that those who aren’t leave with the best possible feeling. Here are five common sense tips for crafting a better, more beneficial candidate experience.

1. Turn Candidate Experience Into a Company Policy

We touched on it before, but this point can’t be over-emphasized. Pooling company-wide support into creating a positive recruitment experience might seem like overkill, but it really goes a long way. Make sure team members politely greet candidates when they come in for an interview, and designate a few current team members to make themselves available for candidate questions. These may seem like insignificant things, but in reality, the benefits of a positive candidate experience reverberate far beyond the recruitment process. Virgin Media found that new business could be acquired through the recruitment process for one tenth the cost of traditional marketing channels, for example. Take every opportunity you can to be great, even in recruiting.

2. Create a Stellar Job Description

A job description is the earliest point of contact in the recruitment process. Before your recruitment team can even respond to the résumés flying in, candidates have formed an impression of your company’s brand and identity through the job description you posted. A good description will wow candidates and generate excitement about your company the open position.

3. Make the Application Process as Simple as Possible

Making the application process simple and straightforward is very simple way of improving candidate experience. Your recruitment process will be thorough in order to on-board the best talent available, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a labyrinth for applicants with various hoops to jump through. Format should never supercede substance; if applicants are having trouble adhering to the specification s within your application process, there’s something wrong. If the application process is simple and legible, applicants can focus on only including relevant information and bringing their A-game to the interview. Some businesses even pepper the process with tips, advice, or guidelines on how to successfully complete applications.

4. Think About how You’d Like to Be Interviewed

Another example of common sense thinking: a little respect can go a long way. Think of the golden rule and simply treat your applicants like you’d want to be treated. When it comes to recruiting, a good first step is to set up an automated email response to all applications. Every candidate should be in the loop at every turn of the application process. When it’s time to decline, do so respectfully with a professional note or a phone call. This step is particularly important if the candidate had multiple interviews. In general, it’s best to imagine that you’re interviewing a friend. Imbue the candidate’s experience with all the respect you know they deserve.

5. Remember, Onboarding is Part of the Candidate Experience

Onboarding is the final step in the recruitment process. Don’t leave new hires hanging. Just as you’ve done in the application process, give them all the resources, tools and information they need to be successful in their new position, and then share that success with your company.

Providing a more positive candidate experience is a practice taking the business world by storm. It doesn’t just feel good to treat people better; the ROI on making significant, systemic changes to your recruitment process is measurable and, frankly, too good to ignore.

We at Herd Freed Hartz understand the importance and the challenge of hiring top talent. There are so many executive recruiters in Seattle, but we have proven ourselves time and again to be the most successful at bringing to hire the right top executive talent from around the country.

If you’re on the hunt for top executive talent, contact us today.

Time to Candidate: How Herd Freed Hartz Helps You Find the Right Candidate in Record Time

Colby Faisst on April 12, 2024

According to a study conducted by Temple University, the optimal length for a CEO’s stay at a company is just 4.8 years. However, the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants reports that almost half of all new CEOs don’t make it past 18 months. Turnover of that rate creates vacancies that can cost potentially cost your company millions, especially if your new hire isn’t the right fit.

HFH understands that, especially when recruiting top-talent candidates, time is money, and we incorporate this understanding into all of our recruitment operations from the very beginning. That’s why, of all the executive search firms in Seattle, we consistently provide the fastest average time to candidate: 37 days. Here’s how:

Telling Your Story

The story of your business isn’t so different from the all-time epics of our age: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Game of Thrones. Whether destroying the ring, defeating the Galactic Empire, or ascending the Iron Throne, every epic story revolves around a quest. Your business’s quest might be delivering a quality products or services at competitive prices. Whatever it is, it should set your business, your teams and your potential recruits in the context of a larger narrative and give everyone something to feel inspired by.

Of course, every quest needs a hero. At Herd Freed Hartz Executive Search Firm, we see every person in every person and every role as heroic in some way. That’s why, as executive recruiters, we don’t seek out people to fill seats, we look for heros, to carry out your quest!

Getting Beyond Résumé Keywords

Keyword searches may be effective at screening out under-qualified candidates, but they do little to determine a candidate’s cultural suitability for a given role. That’s why we make it our business to not only accurately represent your brand, but to help you stand out against the competition in attracting the best prospective candidates and providing the most positive candidate experience.

Looking at Culture First

Though company culture itself is hard to quantify, its impact on candidate and overall company success is not. A 2016 McQuaig Global Talent Recruitment survey reported that 53% of failed hires fail because “the hire’s personality was not suitable to the role or company.” Even a candidate whose CV might make them the most technically qualified to a role can create costly disruption if their personality doesn’t match your company culture.

Creating a Positive Candidate Experience

Creating a positive candidate experience is more than a way to incorporate the Golden Rule into your business practice: it’s also an invaluable branding and marketing opportunity. A survey by Kelly Services UK found that 70% of applicants would discuss a negative candidate experience with family and friends and that 31% would go public. Depending on what your company does, potential candidates can also be potential customers!

Average 37 Days—It’s What We Do

Our time to candidate averages just 37 days, because we know your business can’t wait any longer. Vacancies can cut deep into your bottom line and at Herd Freed Hartz, we want to see you and your business experience the fullest of your potential. That’s probably why over 90% of our executive search work comes from return business or referrals.

Since 2001 HFH has been one of the most trusted retained executive search firms in the Pacific Northwest. Traditional means such as colleague referral or networking aren’t likely to find the right candidate or find them quickly enough. We see executive recruitment as an artform and part of the art is providing clients with one of the fastest times to candidate available.

If you’re tired of waiting for new executive talent to invigorate your company, contact HFH today.