Isola Homes announces new VP of Land Acquisition for future growth

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

Herd Freed Hartz announced today that it placed Nick Ridgeway as Vice President of Land Acquisitions at Isola Homes. The position is based in Seattle, Washington. Mr. Ridgeway was previously Principal at The Ridgeway Company in Seattle. The search was conducted by Scott Rabinowitz, Managing Director, and Karen Bertiger, Director, at Herd Freed Hartz.

ABOUT ISOLA HOMES

Isola Homes is a multi-generational Northwest builder dedicated to building homes that reflect the evolving needs of homeowners and communities in the Seattle area. By continually implementing innovative sustainable design and environmental stewardship in their construction techniques, Isola’s homes stand for their livability, quality construction, and energy efficiency. All of Isola’s properties include environmentally friendly features. Their commitment to design and craftsmanship results in a home that is not only beautifully designed but is built to last while reducing waste and pollution.

Isola Homes, one of the largest home builders in Seattle, was started in Washington and remains a Washington company. This local, family-owned company is dedicated to sustainable design, environmental stewardship, and making a valuable and enduring contribution to the communities in which they live and build. The Isola Homes CEO is Colt Boehme.

Jeff LePage, Executive Vice President of Isola Homes, says, “We are eager to see Nick join our team. We expect great things from him based on his extensive background in land acquisitions.”

Additional information about Isola Homes is available on the company’s web site: http://www.isolahomes.com

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

Paul Freed 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

Paul Freed 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.

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

Paul Freed 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

Paul Freed 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.

 

Hook job candidates with your “company sizzle”

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

(By Karen Bertiger – 2/18/17 published in The Seattle Times)

Most company pitches to job candidates tend to start out the same way: either with an innocuous question (Do you want to make a difference by working for an exciting company?) or a dry statement (Company X is a $100M company in the aerospace industry).

Does this work? While it may not deter candidates who are actively seeking new positions, you aren’t going to see much traction with sought-after talent through this approach. Instead, your company must tell a compelling story to reel in desirable candidates.

As recruiters and hiring managers, we’ve all heard the term “employee value proposition,” or EVP, tossed around inside corporate cultures. A new term that is starting to gain traction, particularly as the hiring market remains heated, is “candidate value proposition.” The difference is subtle, but speaks to the need to understand and market to your target audience — in this case, potential employees — by having a well-thought-out answer to the question, “Why should I work for your company?”

As a marketing organization, the best way to hook your audience is to understand what it is they want to know, rather than telling them what you think they should know. Place yourself in the shoes of the customer — or, in this case, the candidate — to develop a personalized, relevant introduction to your company that will engage their interest by asking yourself the following questions.

Every company is compelling in some way; the key is to understand and articulate what differentiates your company’s products and culture. Did your company make a “best place to work” list? Is it active in the community or focused on environmentally friendly solutions? Does your company boast a long average tenure? Is your product the first of its kind, or on the cutting edge of the latest evolution in a mature or crowded space? Leverage public opinion of your company, but in a concise and meaningful way. Identify the ways in which your company deliberately fights the status quo.

What unique challenges does my company face?

Companies tend to pitch themselves in a glossy, Photoshopped light, but your toughest problems can actually be an attraction to potential talent. Everyone wants their work to be recognized and meaningful; show potential employees how they can step up and be a hero.

Most job descriptions provide a laundry list of responsibilities that don’t vary much from one description to the next. Instead of focusing on the tactical work, focus on the results the successful candidate will achieve in the role, and how those results will directly impact the big picture.

Keep in mind that not everyone will be the right fit for your company, and that’s OK. Don’t be afraid to use language that will deter candidates who wouldn’t likely be successful in your environment. Not only will this save you time on the back end by filtering out candidates who aren’t a fit, but it can actually make the right candidate even more attracted to the position.

It takes time to hone your company story, and it’s important to stay consistent with overall company messaging. However, don’t fall into the trap of being too uniform in your candidate approach; tell a story that will grab the heart as well as the intellect of top talent.

Karen Bertiger advises companies throughout the Puget Sound area as a managing director of the Seattle-based firm Herd Freed Hartz Inc.

Why Hire an Executive Recruiting Firm?

Paul Freed 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 Ways Ineffective Recruiting is Hurting Your Business

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

You rely on your employees to keep your business running and your customers satisfied, which makes finding the right candidates critical to your success. But let us remind you, in the U.S., managers have an average hiring success rate of only 50%. That’s far too many missed opportunities, and too many unfortunate consequences as a result. Aside from being a headache and a time drain, hiring the wrong candidate can cost a business an incredible amount of money, increase employee turnover, diminish morale, productivity and product quality, just to name a few. Here are five of the typical consequences that come with bringing on the wrong hire, and five things you’ll want to avoid to keep your organization’s on track.

1. Hurting Your Bottom Line

Even the right candidate is expensive: the upfront costs of interviewing, travel and hotels, training, testing. The wrong candidate multiplies those costs and carries additional hidden costs of diminished productivity. The Center for American Progress reports that a bad hire can cost as $6,000-$15,000, or 20% of an average employee’s salary. However, in their best-selling business book Who, authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street, calculate the cost of a wrong candidate to be as high as 15x that employee’s salary. That means an employee salaried at $100,000 could cost a business $1.5 million in both hard costs and productivity loss.

2. Lowers Employee Morale

In a recent survey from Robert Half of more than 1,000 small and midsize businesses, 53% of respondents reported that teams that work with bad hires experience increased stress. In the same survey, 20% of respondents said mistakes in hiring led to decreased confidence in management. Those results spell disrupted workflow, diminished productivity and increased customer dissatisfaction.

In a larger, wide-reaching organization employee morale is everything. If you’re empowering individuals to make important decisions on their own, then you’ve got to make sure they’re happy with their role and responsibilities, and often times that sense of happiness depends on stability provided by management. When management competence is questioned, which often happens as a result of bad hire, employee morale suffers.

3. Creates More Work for Team Members

Terminating a bad hire isn’t the end of that mistake. Between termination and finding a suitable candidate to fill the vacancy, other team members typically have to pick up the slack. That can take a serious toll in Portland or Seattle where, according to Glassdoor, the average time it takes to interview is 25.3 days or 25.0 days respectively. Not to mention the demands that interviewing, training and monitoring new hires puts on management and human resource departments.

At Herd Freed hartz, our time to candidate metric is typically around 37 days, which means that in that time we will present you with the candidate that is ultimately hired. That may seem like a long time, especially when you have a role to fill, but trust us, it’s better to hire slowly (combing through candidates to find the right people) and fire quickly (when it doesn’t work out) than it is to do the opposite.

4. Increase Employee Turnover

For all the reasons above, choosing the wrong candidate creates an environment that can lead team members to seek out new jobs, multiplying the problem you’re trying to resolve. People can only pick up the slack of a vacant position for so long. And the damage of poor leadership or management level hires is even greater. Rather than simply decreasing a team’s productivity and lowering morale, bad leadership leads to mismanagement of whole teams or departments that can ripple throughout a business. One Gallup report found that half of all employees have left a company to get away from disagreeable management at some point in their career.

The more responsibility for a role that you’re trying to fill, the greater the fallout from a bad hire is likely to be. That’s why, when attempting to fill an executive position, it’s best to work with executive search consultants that have experience sourcing and placing the very best executive talent available.

5. Wastes Your Time

The extra hours you put in should be to grow your business, pursue new ideas, and develop with your team. When managed in-house, it can take far too long to find and hire the right candidate, meanwhile typical responsibilities and workflow suffer as a result. There’s no need to bog down management and human resources with a problem that companies like Herd Freed Hartz strive to resolve so that your time stays your own.

Your business is what you do. At Herd Freed Hartz, saving your business time and money by finding the best leadership with the highest ROI is what we do. We understand that executive recruiting is as much art as science. At Herd Freed Hartz, we look beyond résumés and keyword-matches. We understand personality and the importance of culture fit. Our executive search consultants will work with you, listen to your story, utilize a business-wide approach, dynamic interviewing, and epic storytelling techniques to deliver peace of mind in the form of top-level executive talent.

If you’re interested in the ways that Herd Freed Hartz’ Executive Search Consultants can help you, connect with us today.

How to Strike through the Competitive Talent Market in Order to Find the Right Candidate

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

The current competition within the job market is pretty steep, for both employees and employers. Everyone is out there looking for the best candidates, and likewise, candidates are searching among employers to see where they fit best, and fit involves everything from job title, to salary, and more recently, company culture. In many ways, employers are under more scrutiny to appear attractive to top candidates than vice versa. These days, to find the right candidate, you need a solid strategy in place.

1. Develop Your Goals Into a Written Plan

The benefits of a thorough plan are manyfold, but first and foremost, it will help you find the best candidate in the least amount of time. In developing a written plan, consider expectations you have for candidates, realistic demands of the position, and even broader departmental and organizational goals.

Creating an accurate and specific description of the job, it’s demands and the requisite qualifications necessary to meet those demands will help your HR, executive recruitment partners, and interview teams screen candidates more quickly and thoroughly. Likewise, it will give prospective candidates clear expectations from the outset. All of this leads to a stronger candidate pool in less time.

Pulling in broader departmental and organizational goals will help you identify the team your candidate will work with. Through this, you can create your job and candidate descriptions through consensus.

Just like an executive search firm, a fully fleshed plan will take the grandview. To push hiring-based decisions beyond the subjective, define your company culture and how it affects the role candidates will perform.

2. Create a Fantastic Job Description and Make it ‘Sizzle’

You’ve written your plan, coalesced the information you need to describe your ideal candidate and their role in your organization. While that will help to screen better candidates more quickly—especially on your end—it won’t do much to attract the most sought after candidates all on its own.

Whatever your business may be, finding top candidates for executive roles requires a bit of marketing. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal candidates: you have a valuable, desirable skill set and are eager to continue developing them. Would a sterile list of figures, facts and revenue reports attract you to apply to a job listing?

In Seattle and beyond, the best executive search firms work to understand and market to a target audience of potential new employees. Your job listing should be a compelling response to the question, “Why should I work for your company?” That answer is developed through your company story.

Where did you begin? Before Apple was the most ubiquitous multinational electronics company, it was just two hopeful guys in garage. Origin stories provide a great way to make a personal and humanizing introduction and show that growth is inherent to your business.

Where you are now is why employees want to apply for job you’re advertising. Whether you’ve received company culture accolades like placement on a “best places to work list” or are providing the first product of its kind, identify what sets you apart. Every business has something that sets them apart. In a concise, meaningful and genuine way, let prospective candidates know what that is.

Likewise, let them know what will set their tenure with you apart from other jobs. Don’t be afraid to use realistic language that might deter candidates unlikely to thrive in your business. You want the best and the best will be excited to face the unique challenges of your business.

3. Utilize Inspirational Story Telling

Your story doesn’t have to be just a story, it can be an epic story. So many of the epics we revere as a culture are timeless because they speak to a larger narrative and inspire us to act. To us, that is the true art of executive search firms perform: telling your story in a way that will inspire candidates to become inspired employees.

Try to incorporate the three common elements of an epic into your listing: the hero, the quest and the villain. Your story’s hero is the candidate you will hire. Your detailed job description and sizzle will help to outline the challenges and successes they’ll experience. Their quest is your organization’s broader quest, something your hero will complete along with the team of heroes you already employee. The villain is a top competitor you plan to outpace; reasons your company presents the best fit or breaks the status quo in your market.

4. Hire for Culture First, Not Résumé Keyword Fits

Your company’s culture describes your core values and how your organization is aligned around them. Establishing those values has been a project unto itself and it takes the right people to maintain it.

When it comes to company culture Zappos and it’s CEO Tony Hsieh are lauded examples. In Hsieh’s own telling, he has built Zappos into a business with annual revenues in excess of $1 billion by maintaining the company’s culture: “If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.”

Hiring for culture helps maintain your workplace as a place that employees are excited to come to every day and ensures smooth workflow and good communication. Talent doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t thrive in the context of your company culture.

5. Make Sure Your Candidate’s Experience is Top Notch

A candidate’s experience throughout the interview process will certainly affect their interest. In a LinkedIn poll, more than 80 percent of participants stated that a negative interview experience can change their mind about a job; similarly, more than 80 percent stated that a positive experience can sway them the other way.

Beyond a candidate’s interest, the interview experience you provide can have an impact on your public image and employment brand. Consider each candidate interview as an opportunity to create a new fan of your business.

The number one key to providing a candidate with a positive experience is communication. Whether to schedule a first interview, request more information or respectfully decline their application, try to reply to every applicant within 48 hours. Throughout, keep every candidate abreast of timing and next steps so that candidates can focus on giving their best interview, not logistics.

A chief complaint among job applicants is never being officially “closed out” of the interview process. It’s of little cost, but significant consequence to send a respectful brief email to candidates who will not be moving forward. However, if a candidate has dropped out of consideration after a round or more of interviews, consider making a brief phone call to let them know personally.

6. Using the Right Tools

These days, social media operates at the very center of the business world. LinkedIn is still the biggest platform for executive recruiters and search firms, but there are others—TalentHook, Gild, Hiring Solved to name a few—that you can incorporate into your candidate search.

Social media tools are also essential to developing an employer brand. Your website may be your foundation, but an attractive social media presence can nudge the most passive candidates into considering career opportunities with your company.

7. Consult Herd Freed Hartz, Seattle Executive Search Consultants

Finding the best candidates in today’s job market is a time consuming and expensive process, one that is multiplied many times over by selecting the wrong candidate. New hires can have profound impacts on culture and productivity, especially within management or executive positions.

We at Herd Freed Hartz pride ourselves in delivering peace of mind to clients by finding greatness, not just good hires. Executive recruitment is an art that we at Herd Freed Hartz have proven ourselves in. Since 2001 top Seattle and NW companies have trusted Herd Freed Hartz to find their executive hires. Over 90% of our business comes from returning clients or referrals. Helping businesses build great executive teams is our passion.

If you’re on the hunt for your next great Executive hire, Connect with us today!