My Best Call Last Week

It wasn’t a client calling to make an offer.  I didn’t get any offers last week.

Nor did I close any deals last week. So it wasn’t that.

And it wasn’t a client or prospect calling with a great new search for me to work on; I didn’t get any new searches last week.

I did set up a great sendout for a client, but that wasn’t the best call of my week.

My best call of the week came late Thursday afternoon from a woman on the East Coast who I have been working with in my mentor program.

Now, I have to admit, when I saw Veronica’s name come up on my iPhone, I wondered what problem or concern she was having that we would be addressing.  Let’s face it, when you take on the responsibility to be someone’s coach, they usually don’t call and tell you about an average day when everything went great.

But that is exactly why I got this call from Veronica Mollica of Indigo Partners last Wednesday.

She simply wanted to thank me for pushing her to move away from her contingency only method of working with her clients to one where she added engaged search to her mix.  Working that business model exclusively was her long term business goal.

Veronica was thrilled to have finally arranged two sendouts with one of her first engaged client searches, a particularly challenging client in that they were looking for a candidate who possessed two mutually exclusive set of skills (how often do we all get to deal with that?).  The feedback after one of the interviews was exactly what she had hoped it would be, great enthusiasm for a candidate who really didn’t have everything they wanted technically, but had the intangibles that she ferreted out from them in her excellent work with them to earn the engaged search.  Veronica nailed it, and now had their complete respect.

What is engaged search?

It is my favorite way of doing search, it is a hybrid between the contingency and retained business processes.  I get paid a non-refundable search initiation fee of anywhere between a third of the expected fee (in good markets like 2007) to as little as a few thousand dollars (in not so good markets like 2009) to “engage” me on their search.  Upon the completion of the search, the balance of the fee is due.

In my career, I have completed 94% of the engaged searches I have written.

I have only failed to complete 4 of the engaged searches I began, and in all 4 of those searches I got paid a partial fee for the partial work I did on my clients behalf, as it should be.

But more important than that, and ask anyone, I think a 94% completion rate is very important, as is getting paid for hard work expended on searches my clients don’t complete with me; the most important part of this whole process is something Dave Knutson tried to teach me years ago when I first stepped into the world of engaged search, respect.

In the end, that was what Veronica was most excited about when she called me Thursday of last week.  She was beaming with the confidence that a search professional has when their client has genuine respect for them, the kind of respect that they will pay for upfront because they believe in you and the ability of your service to deliver successful resutls that much.

That was what made my day.

It is not every day that a search process coach like me gets to see a exceptionally talented search professional, one who would be more than capable of staying successful without making a single change to what she was doing, take the risk, do what was uncomfortable and fraught with risk, and succeed in a way that surprised even her.

My reward was hearing the confidence in her voice.  I knew that her business and success were forever going to be at a new level because she had the guts to try.  I got to hear the transformation take place in her in that one call.  She was really going to make the transition to engaged search which would change the way she did business, was seen by her clients, and brought success to her business and herself.

How cool is that?

It was the best call of my week.

Jeff Skrentny, CERS, had an inauspicious start in the recruiting profession as his first placement quit after 93 days.  Then he was sued.  Despite that start, Jeff  has been an executive recruiter for 23 years, and has also been a trainer, author and motivator for his profession for the last 15 years, as well as being a business consultant and adviser for its producers, managers & owners for the last 10 years; all while still running a busy IT search business in Chicago at his firm Jefferson Group Search.

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Watch for my forthcoming white paper and webinar on transitioning your contingency practice to engaged search right after Thanksgiving in the first week of December.