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!

5 Common Sense Tips for Crafting a Beneficial Candidate Experience

Paul Freed 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

Paul Freed 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.

For the Candidate: 7 Tips to Shine in the Eyes of Your Recruiter

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

Looking for a new job is full of challenges all of which can be distilled to one essential struggle: making yourself stand out to recruiters. Even the most technically qualified candidate still has to impress a recruiter who is likely already inundated with nearly identical resumes. Keep reading for seven tips to help catch the eye of executive recruiters.

1. Do Your Homework and Be Prepared

Winging it might work out for a weddings toast (it might not), but it certainly won’t for a job interview. You already know that your resume and cover letter need to be tailored to the position you’re applying to. Your interview performance is no different. Show recruiters that you understand the company and its history. Recruiters are likelier to hire someone who shows they’re not just interested in a job, but a career.

2. Show Off Your Personality

You are more than just a resume. The best recruiters seriously consider personality when hiring, so let yours shine. In part, this means relaxing during your interview, showing enthusiasm and talking about your ideas, successes, and goals. It also means providing links to your portfolios and social media profiles. Be upfront with all the information recruitment teams are looking for. It should go without saying that you should clean up your social media profiles before sharing them with recruiters.

3. Project a Can-Do Attitude

All the qualifications in the world mean nothing with a bad attitude. In your cover letter, in your correspondence, and in your interview, project positivity and enthusiasm for the position and company you’re applying to. Attitudes are contagious and a healthy dose of passion and drive can trump experience when recruiters are comparing candidates.

4. Have a Real Conversation: Don’t Use Your Resume and Cover Letter as a Script

If you’re in an interview, there’s no need to list off bullet points from your resume and cover letter, your recruiter has already read both them. That’s why you’re there! Hand-in-hand with showing off your personality, sharing a real conversation shows off your dynamism and dimensionality.

5. Ask Questions Beyond Salary and Benefit Details

Prove to your recruiter that you’re not interested in a job, but the job that they’re hiring for. Certainly be prepared to discuss salary and benefits (remember, do your homework!), but focusing too narrowly on those topics will suggest to a recruiter that your interest in the position is solely monetary. Take the opportunity to learn as much as you can about the company and the position you’re applying to. Recruiters want to hire someone interested in the company and deliverables and you’ll gain a better sense whether the position is a good fit for you.

6. Show What You Can Offer the Company in Terms of Actual Work and Deliverables

Recruiters will want to know in measurable terms what you can offer the company. Answer the question before it’s asked. This can mean identifying a problem or need the company may have and outlining how you might resolve the problem or satisfy the need. Similarly, you can provide an example of the work you might do if hired: outline a marketing strategy; design a landing page; write a press release.

7. Focus on Accomplishments Rather than Skills

Job listings call for desired skills and characteristics. As a result, recruiters tend to see scores of similar looking resumes that simply list relevant skills. A great way to make you and your resume stand out is to describe measurable accomplishments made possible by your possession of those skills. How many people did you manage? How many clients did you serve? How much did you save or earn for the company? Precise information will make you stand out and give recruiters a much more precise sense of your capabilities.

Paper qualifications can only take an applicant so far on their own merit. If you have the experience, give yourself the edge and use these tips to shine in the eyes of recruiters.

If you’re searching for executive talent, contact us today.