Phil Boland: How Top Companies Hire the Right Executives Faster and Avoid Costly Hiring Mistakes

In this episode of the Passion Millionaire Podcast, Robert Roth speaks with executive headhunter Phil Boland, who brings over 20 years of experience and more than 1,400 successful hires across finance, insurance, and technology.

Phil breaks down what really happens behind the scenes when companies hire directors, VPs, and C-level leaders. He explains why traditional job postings are no longer effective, how direct outreach changes the game, and why executive hiring is less about screening and more about negotiation, timing, and positioning.

The conversation also uncovers the hidden costs of bad or slow hiring, the risks companies face when roles stay unfilled too long, and how top candidates evaluate opportunities before making a move. If you are scaling a business and need the right leadership in place, this episode gives you a clear advantage on how to attract, assess, and secure high-level talent.

Contact Phil:

http://linkedin.com/in/philboland

Podcast Website:

https://rockandrollyourdreams.com/podcast/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Create a life of entrepreneurial freedom with insights from successful creatives, entrepreneurs, and investors. Discover how they overcame challenges and turn their biggest dreams into reality. They share their personal success playbook so you can build the business and life you truly want. Welcome to Passion Millionaire, the podcast by Robert Roth. Rock and roll your dreams.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to today's episode of the Passion Millionaire Podcast. I'm super excited again. We got some new topic going. Something that is of interest if you have a company that is already, let's call it, at least mid five figures, better, seven figures, eight figures, nine figures, really big companies, and you are looking to hire the right people to grow your team, especially executives. And Phil, our today's guest, he specializes in executive head hunting. Not only since yesterday, but he's doing this since two decades as a professional that has worked in really big corporations. And now he's doing this in the free world, so to speak, still for big corporations, but also for those smaller companies in the size that I've just mentioned. Tons of experience, more than 1,400 hires, which I find quite exciting. So let's learn from Phil. Phil Boland, welcome. Please reintroduce yourself the way we need to get to know you.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Robert, thanks so much for having me and uh and the beautiful warm intro. Um hello folks. I'm Phil Boland. I am, as Robert said, a 20-year headhunter. I've worked in several methods of recruiting, uh, but now I do executive recruiting. Um, I have my own firm called Eagle Executive Search. We specialize in directors, VPs, and C-level searches. Uh, we operate mainly within the financial services, insurance, and technology verticals. We do get business outside of that, but those are kind of our honey holes. In terms of the way we work, we are uh we're all contingent. Uh we do that intentionally. We are uh not a retainer-based company. We believe our work shines through that. Um you know, we we'd love to have a conversation. We're kind of a low-risk entry if you're having trouble hiring. So it's pretty easy to test us out and see what we're all about.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Sounds exciting. Yeah, great to have you. And you are in the DC suburbs area. And uh for some of your clients, you said that that matters, it makes a difference. So uh good to know also for everybody who's listening. But you work internationally and you have done projects across the US and even outside the US. So super curious. Like, I'm I'm also always interested to to learn something. And I mean, you have a lot of expertise, executive headhunting. So I'd be curious what do you think many people might get wrong, even if they have hired executives before? Like, what have you observed that can be done better by a professional that does only this one thing, like you?

SPEAKER_03 3:27

So executive headhunting is a lot about respecting people's time. Um in the in the world of recruiting, you know, as a recruiter, your job is to size someone up and see if they're a good fit for an opportunity. So presumably, in a lot of cases, the more time you spend with someone, the better picture you'll have of them, right? So, but in executive headhunting, that kind of doesn't work because executives don't have time. They, you know, a lot of my recruiting conversations are over text. They're, you know, 9 p.m. phone conversations, they're, you know, a 6 a.m. Zoom meeting. It's not, it's not the typical uh, you know, hour, half hour interviews, you know, during a lunch break or something. You really have to be kind of ultra flexible to kind of get into these people's calendar. Um and the the actual screening part of it is is not as big as a factor as it is the negotiation factor. Like I find at lower level recruit entry-level recruiting, experience recruiting, you're focusing heavily, heavily on can this person do the job? Are do they have the skills for the job? Do they have the right culture attitude for the organization? In the executive world, you still do that, but executives are usually more impressive. They have a lot more accolades, they've done a lot more, and in a lot of cases, it's I I think the skills to be a good executive recruiter are are much more negotiation-based than like um selling someone good on an opportunity as opposed to talking to five or ten people that could be good and figuring out who the right one is, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

I didn't hear that last question. I think you might be muted, Robert.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

This negotiation component uh that it just mentioned, I'm curious, like how how would that look like in reality?

SPEAKER_03 5:46

So it's let's say I have a CFO role, okay? And it's at a bank in Chicago, and it's a mid-sized bank, okay? That's that's a pretty clear-cut role. They have a couple things they probably want and a couple you know opinion-based things that they might like to see in the hire, but i if you s if you look at the job market practically, there's probably two or three hundred people in the country that can do that job. Um there's not thousands, right? So then you find all 200, you talk to all, you send them all a note. Let's say 60 are interested. At that point, you're not really screening people. You're you're going through the negotiation of what is their long-term comp incentives look like? What is the base salary versus the equity? How, what kind of team am I going to be able to bring with me? Are there any new positions underneath my org once I get hired? How is the how is the team organized organized inside? Uh, do I report to the CEO or do I report to the COO? Um and in some cases, you're just explaining how it's set up. In other cases, you're kind of actively negotiating on the side of the company where they might like, for instance, I had a I had a situation one time with a CTO. Um, we were recruiting him to a financial organization. He was very interested, but the um the architecture, the architecture group was underneath him, but the development engineering shop was not. And he made that a serious point of contention. He's like, I can't move unless that's under me. Um and the negotiations went back and forth, and the company ended up doing that. But it's not, it's you're not just filling a role against a person. Like you find a person, and then sometimes you're actively talking to the company to change the role in real time to fit the person they want. It's it's much more of a back and forth negotiation of instead of a this is the job, not him, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Quite interesting. And if you are doing this with all your experience, I believe there is a difference compared to, let's say, a company doing it that is lacking all of those experiences. Like, what would you say is the difference there? Like, how could you succeed better? Maybe bring the better fits, maybe bring even fits that wouldn't have been onboarded um at all. You know, what's the difference there?

SPEAKER_03 8:33

I think, you know, it I hate to play the experience card, but like when you've seen enough hiring efforts, like things tend to get put in buckets. Like you can you can notice trends, you can notice, you know, human behavior and how it kind of shakes out naturally with people. Like, I mean, I mean, I've hired 1,400 people, as you said earlier, but I mean I've probably interviewed 30 or 40,000 people. I mean, I've I've that's like Yeah, I mean, like 20 years doing it every day, it adds up, right? So, like, but you know, once you see kind of the whole, not the whole market, but a good chunk of the market, it gives you a really good picture of how people are going to react to certain conversations, how how you need to word things to get their opinion without offending them. Um, you need to. There's also an element of don't ask, don't get. Like a lot of junior recruiters that I used to have on my teams in corporate, like, they wouldn't ask those questions. They would just say, oh, sorry, it's not set up that way. They wouldn't even think to go back and say, this guy's really good, but he this is his only problem. Are you guys, do you guys want to move on that or no? Um so it's kind of treating it comes down to treating the opportunity, the search, as like a business conversation, as opposed to like finding the candidate.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Okay, that's quite interesting. And um would you say is there a difference also between you have been employed long time ago, right, by corporations and doing that, and now you're doing that as an external partner? Is there maybe even an advantage to doing it like that?

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Sure, sure, because I've seen I've seen behind the curtain. You know, there's a lot of agency folks that don't understand the corporate budget cycle, or they don't understand, you know, the level of approval you need to get to go external to an agency, or um, you know, how how billing can change in first quarter versus fourth quarter. Um and, you know, just like old kind of the random idiosyncrasies of corporate life and how that affects hiring and people that want to go outside with a consultant. Like I've I've kind of seen the, you know, I I used to be the gatekeeper against guys like me at corporate. And like it shows you a lot of, you know, I got to see every tactic they used to get in. I I got to see um, you know, the ones that were successful, what they were doing, how often they were meeting with managers, if they focused on managers or candidates more. Um and you know, a lot of it just comes down to relationships and like being a good person and like following through on your word and like not being a liar. It's it a lot of it's just being a good human, but like it's it's it's hard to it's hard to kind of conceptualize it until you've you've kind of seen it wide scale, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah, quite quite interesting. And then um maybe this kind of depends on the size of the company. Um, to to hear, like if let's say there's a company, maybe maybe we can answer this from two ends, like a smaller company, let's call it maybe a seven-figure company versus a company that is much bigger, eight or nine-figure company, for example.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Having the need for an executive role to fill ASAP, not getting it fixed, what is the cost? What is the cost? Like the real cost to the company, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Well, the fee cost to me is 20%, which I think is very reasonable. But the actual- That's not what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

What I mean is like what's the cost for the company? Like if they can't fill the role and then they things are not getting done, and maybe a couple failed hires and that kind of stuff. I figured, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Well, I I'll even make it simpler than that. I mean, like when I was when I was in corporate, I was on a team of 10 recruiters before I got into management. And there was a period of about six months where two of them quit at the same time, and they spent six months backfilling those two. So those six months were awful for me. Like, I had a 20% higher workload. I worked another hour or two every evening. I I was more stressed and more annoyed generally. Um, and the company didn't really do anything wrong to me. They were my workload just increased, and it was no fault of my own or no fault of theirs, really. But like, if that continued longer, I might have quit earlier. You know, like it's it's just a general aggravation for your people if you have a need that's not met. Uh, you know, I would say for a comparison, it's the same thing as having an awful employee that you won't fire. You know, if you have a team cancer in your in your office or someone that just hates the organization or doesn't work hard or is, you know, getting everybody against the boss, like that's just as damaging. I mean, it's it just kind of shows your people what you put a high priority on. And if you're not putting a high priority on people, they are people.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

So then how long does it take until the damage is getting bigger and bigger in that let's say this exaggeration that is right?

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Usually the three to six month mark is where it gets because you know, a a normal recruiting process at a big corporate company is going to be a couple months, probably two or three. Once it goes beyond that, that's when people start getting a little angry about it. You know, I mean, if you're if you got a position open for six months, I mean, that's a big chunk of time that people are doing someone else's job. And you know, it's not it's not a week or two. You know, imagine hating going to work for six months straight. It it eats at you, you know?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yep. So what is your way to compress this timeline to actually find the right executive as quickly as possible?

SPEAKER_03 15:19

We're just super direct. Like in the in today's world, I I think job postings are completely dead. Like, I don't post jobs on my LinkedIn, I don't advertise jobs on any social media at all. I when I get a role, if I got a role right now, I would the first thing I would do is find, I have two methods really. I use LinkedIn Recruiter, like most recruiters. I also have, I also will build custom search engines that will search parts of the internet that aren't maybe mapped the same way. Um and I'll use those two combined to build a list of people that could do the job. I hit them all up, and then I set appointments with everyone who's interested. I try to write a really um engaging and really descriptive JD in the message to them. Um and I try to customize it to them to a certain point. And, you know, I can do the and then I'll send a message out and then they get back to me and meet with me. But that those first few steps are like four hours, maybe three hours. And then once I get the messages out, people will meet with me over the next four or five days, and then I present the best couple. I mean, it's it takes about a week at higher executive level. It usually takes two or three weeks just from people meeting with me with their calendar. But like I I find like in the world of advertising, like that that work path is dead, I think. It's just AI and easy apply, and all these all these tools that make it easier to apply are just destroying internal HR companies. Uh it's they're getting so many resumes they can't handle it. And sometimes they go to guys like me, which I don't mind. But um I I think it's the direct approach, direct sourcing to direct people, telling them why they're awesome, telling them why this job's awesome for you. They feel better. They it's you feel good, you feel good when you're recruited. It's better than chasing something down. Yeah. I mean, direct method is always what I go with.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

That's quite interesting. Yeah. So like no I I I I wouldn't have guessed that that you are not doing any show posts at all. I just reach out directly to them. And then um, like what's what's usually let's say the timeline after that? That's let's say you found your your top candidates, you present them to the company, and then um so that has taken maybe three weeks, something like that. Yep. What's the timeline after what? Like usually in that pool of of executives that you're presenting, is there the one that is being hired and that also sticks, or does it take a second round sometimes? And how would those cases be different? So let us know how this would play out typically.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

Yeah, there's a huge range of kind of what happens from there. The first thing that's gonna dictate the range is how well do I know the client? How long have I been working with the client? How well does the client know me? Because, you know, there's a lot of cases where I'll get a new client, um, they give me my first job, and maybe they're super busy and they give me like five-minute phone call with a couple bullet points about what the job is, and just go find somebody, quick, quick, quick. Um like I hit on those too, but like a lot of cases with something like that, I might send three candidates over and they're like, oh, well, none of these guys have this cert, like, did you and you know, something they forgot to tell me or something, and I'll retool and do it again. But um typically, like if it's a client I know well or a position I've worked with them before, it's pretty straightforward. I mean, I send over three to five candidates. They pick two or three they like, they set up interviews. That usually takes at the executive level, they usually take like a month because they're usually meeting three, four people, three, four teams really. Um then we get to the negotiation offer process, which some companies will run that through me. I like them when they do because I'm very good at it. Um some companies like to do it themselves, which I get it. You know, it's it's their brand. That's fine. Um, but it's it's pretty straightforward after that. You know, every interview process is custom, every offer process is custom. It kind of depends on the client directly.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Interesting. And do you also assist those companies with optimizing their interviewing process part? Like once you hand the executives over, or is it just they do whatever they do, and then hopefully that's the best to start? Or how would that look like?

SPEAKER_03 20:22

So I can and I have done that, but I don't do that much. It's not like a core marketing thing that I put out there. But I mean, I've I mean, I'm trained in interview methodology. I've built, you know, interview packets hundreds of times when I was in corporate. I mean, I know how to interview people fairly well. Um people are clients can be a little defensive in that arena, only because, like, so I'll speak from my own experience. When I was in corporate and I would deal with guys like me on the outside, they would offer that, or they would ask for, you know, what is the interview process like? Can we see some of the questions so we can prepare them? You know, a lot of clients aren't going to want you, the agency, to know what the interview is specifically, because they don't want you to over-prep your client and have them maybe falsely overrepresent themselves. So usually I'm I'm kind of intentionally kept in the dark on certain aspects of the interview process. Um, but again, that depends on the client. Some more trusting ones will tell me more details about what's going on. It's kind of it's all about how long I've been working with them and how well they know me, usually.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Okay, that's that's interesting. And do you think um sometimes they think they are doing a high quality job, uh, but really they aren't? And if okay, you're nodding. So how would a company actually be able to figure out if they are Really doing a high quality job or not? And if yes, awesome, thumbs up, we're gonna do it ourselves. But if no, and now we have just discovered that that we should improve there because we're gonna be doing good for the company, and we basically should get advice from somebody like you. Um what would be the questions that they could go through for themselves? Or what would be what would they be looking for in order to see okay, we are doing a great job or not?

SPEAKER_03 22:31

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, opinions are everybody's got an opinion, right? The thing with interview questions is it's a very subjective science. There is a science to it, but you know, there's very little hugely universally agreed upon. There's different camps that believe different things. Um I'm there's a lot of the there's a lot of talk in the world about um kind of experiential interviewing, or or um where a lot of the questions kind of focus around like, you know, tell us about a time you did X, or you faced adversity and you came through it, or talk about a time you did XYZ. And like most interview questions are based around either the skills for the job, usually in technical stuff, and then experiential, what have you done in your last few jobs will apply that to this. And there's nothing, you know, conceptually wrong with that, but I just think they're very, very used nonstop for 30 years. Everyone knows what they are. Every Reddit and Google Forum has 50 answers for them. Like when you and when you ask those questions, you get fake rehearsed answers, I think. I think it's way more valuable to ask people questions about the job they're applying for and more like um perspective type questions of like, hey, you know, you're interviewing for a program management job here at Amazon. This program handles all the logistics for our toy division. Um, what, you know, what are some of the big problems you would think, you know, we have or, you know, kind there's very little questioning today that asks about the job they're applying for and what they think about the job they are potentially walking into. Um ask them about an upcoming project, ask them about an upcoming initiative, ask them about how they would approach the big thing you're doing right now. Ask like pretend they're a consultant or a current employee and ask them about your current setup without revealing too much. Like, that's gonna tell you a lot more than tell us about a time you had a difficult coworker and you made it nicer. Like, who cares? Like, I mean, I want to hire nice people, but like that story doesn't help me, you know? I think it's I think the focus of interviewing is not like the human psychology focus of interviewing is misplaced, I think. I think we need to focus more on what do you think of this? How would you approach this? What's your stance on this? If you were given this situation, what would you do as opposed to tell me about tell me your five best stories from your last job, you know?

SPEAKER_01 25:38

I think that's a great piece of learning that it just dropped across. Awesome. It makes so much sense to me.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Yeah. I mean, like, here's here's a good example. So, like, whenever I interviewed entry-level people or people kind of lower positions on my team, the first question I always asked him was Who was your best boss ever? And who is your worst boss ever? And tell me why. I treat it as a softball question, kind of make things comfortable, easy question to answer. I don't care who their boss was. What I care about is why that was their best boss and why that was their worst boss. Because that's going to tell me what they care about at work. That's gonna tell me what's gonna make them annoyed. That's gonna tell me what gets them energized. So, like, first question just kind of sets up okay, this person doesn't like being micromanaged. They love being given freedom, you know, something that's you know, a real thing that they're probably answering honestly on.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yeah, wow. That's that's amazing. Makes total sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

And also, you know, since you are finding those executives or executives head-hunting, I'm assuming that at least some of them, when you're finding them, are still in a position in some company. Most of them. Right? Most of them. So therefore, there is a little bit of tension, I could imagine, maybe for themselves, not maybe not knowing what to do. Maybe then also uh when they make a decision uh and then with the company they are they're with in case they they decide to switch, or maybe also not knowing what should I do now, the headhunter? What if my company figures this out uh while I'm still not decided? Risks you know for the executive, risks also maybe for the company who is hiring you to find the executives. Let's talk about that. What what what are those risks and typical scenarios and thoughts that are going on for everybody in this situation, including you?

SPEAKER_03 27:42

So the number one is PR risk. Like and hiring for a job is not a bad thing for any company in most cases. Certain executive jobs that are posted, especially when you have multiple executive jobs posted at the same time, can give the customer base or the market a bad feeling. I'll give you an example. I had a client a couple years back who had a big service outage and a big IT problem, and they fired their CIO, CTO, and CISO the same month. So all three of those positions are open, and they're using me for it. So I'm meeting with the um I'm meeting with the COO about it, and he wants to use every resource and advertise it everywhere and you know, and say, you know, Tony, what do you think our customers are gonna think if we post a CIO, a CISO, and a CTO on the same day?

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Yep. Something's falling apart.

unknown 28:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

All the IT guys in the organization are gonna start looking, is what's gonna happen. Um, so don't post it anywhere. You know, just tell your friends that might have a, you know, don't tell the world. Um it's the same, you know, whoever needs to know needs to know. Not everyone needs to know. That's that's the first thing. Uh another big risk for me is, you know, there's always sometimes, not always, but sometimes um the company, the client I am working with is not in agreement about using me. And I'll explain what I mean. So I had a client probably a year and a half ago. He was a CFO hiring for like a treasurer position, and he was not happy with his own internal HR. So he he felt that they were trying to recruit for it and they weren't doing a good job. So he wanted to go to me. HR disagreed. He obviously disagreed with HR. Um so the first month of the process, HR is kind of watching me with a fine tooth comb, looking for any reason for me to screw up. You know, just waiting to ax me for anything they can. Um it's not always like that. A lot of times I work with HR directly and we're friends, and you know, I came from HR. I'm a good guy, trust me. But um, you know, that's just kind of how it plays out sometimes. And I do the best I can to stay out of internal corporate politics of another company. Um you just, you know, be polite, be respectful, be humble, you know, answer your questions and move on. But um yeah, PR risk, there can be some like internal tension risk like that I just mentioned, umperational risk or um reputational risk. I mean, because let's say we you have a very important position and you give it to a recruiter who's maybe not that sharp or not that senior or doesn't really fully understand what you're looking for, they could burn up your uh candidate base. They could go through if they're talking to 200 people that are qualified and some are interested, and they're misrepresenting it, or giving the wrong ranges, or saying different focuses, and you know, 10 guys who would have been good saying, oh yeah, I don't want to do that. You know, they could blow up your position. You know, there's there's a lot of ways it can go, but um most of the risks tie back to kind of the reputation of the person that's representing you, I mean, at the end of the day. That's what it's about. Do they understand it? Do they respect it? Are they do they understand PR and who needs to know and who doesn't? That kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah, quite interesting. So you're helping mitigate all of those risks that you have seen. What happens in all of those situations? I assume. So what about the executives, you know, that are still in a drop? Like what's that situation usually and how does it resolve?

SPEAKER_03 32:13

It depends on how high they are usually. When they're it's it's interesting. Working with C-level folks, they don't care. They'll email me from their company email. They a lot of times they'll have their assistant set something up with me. Wow. Like they're going on. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's odd to deal with. And then and then I'll deal with like an SVP, and he's you know, on the phone in a stairwell, you know, talking to me in secret. And, you know, don't send me any emails. Don't, you know, we can't be friends on, we can't be connected on LinkedIn. Like, I don't want anyone to know about this. So I get the full range, which is kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Um, we're not not guessed at.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

Yeah. And it they they tend to like um kind of act that way by function. So like if I so if I talk to a chief of sales or a head of sales, they they're very open. They tell me all the drama of their company, they they tell me why they hate their boss and you know, stuff about their marriage, and you know, they're very, very, very open and we'll talk about anything. Where like if I deal with a controller or a um, you know, maybe a risk-based person.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

A lot of two two-word answers. Uh, I get asked a lot of questions to get the same info. You know, um, you know, people's personalities end up sifting them into jobs sometimes. And, you know, you can kind of predict a little bit how something's gonna go based on someone's personality at times.

unknown 33:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Yeah, that that made that makes sense. Quite interesting. And let's say somebody decides to actually make the switch, like what makes an executive make or take the new offer, basically? Like, how does that usually look like this negotiation? Like, are they coming at you with like, okay, I you have mentioned a little bit, like I need to have this in place, right? But is it usually that they want to step up whatever they have in salary compensation packages by a lot? Or is it usually more like, okay, kind of the same, maybe a little bit better, but that they are just happy to have a different environment or different challenge going on, or what would be the typical scenario there?

SPEAKER_03 34:36

So, like, why why are some ex executives successful when they transition? Or yeah, and why would they switch?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

And and how does that switch also look like? I mean, they they need to tell the the their employer at some point, etc. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Well, it's typically not a two-week notice. Uh a lot of times they're doing, they have to give a four-week notice or a six-week notice. Some really big companies they ask for like months of notice, like if you're in a C-level position, because they have to do you know long-term corporate planning. Um a lot of it is tied around timing of bonus cycles. Um like there's a lot of the most high-end executives at big companies get an annual bonus or a quarterly bonus or some kind of something on top of their base salary. And a lot of the timing, negotiation, logistics around the offer start time period is based on that. So, like if I have if I have uh an executive leaving a bank and he gets a significant bonus in April, but he got the offer today. He doesn't want to leave till April. I mean, that's just the deal. So if the other company wants him before that, they got to pay for the bonus or part of the bonus, or they got to negotiate something else, or they got it. So, like once you get to the offer stage, then it becomes kind of a complex logistics exercise of okay, how much notice do you have to give? When is your bonus cycle time out? You have a long-term incentive of equity stock that you're gonna be vested in in four months, and then a second set at 12 months. Um, you know, it gets kind of complex realizing what they're walking away from and like what's the best scenario for them to land at the new one. So, like one thing I've noticed that that process is annoying for both sides. The company doesn't like it, the candidate doesn't like it, both are trying to stay as whole as they can. Like, usually the messier that is, the worse the executive startup is. Um, it kind of shows you a lot of the attitude of the company of how flexible are they, how how much do they want this to work, how much do you want them to come, how much do they want you to appease them kind of thing. Um that that can be kind of an interesting thing to watch go back and forth.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Um yeah, another aspect is um are they bringing people with them?

SPEAKER_03 37:28

So, like when you at the C level and the EVP SVP level, most of the time, if you're doing it at a big organization, those people have hundreds of people underneath them. And in a lot of cases, they'll say, Hey, I've got three guys that will come with me. This guy's, you know, head of engineering, this guy's head of test, or whatever it is. Um and usually when guys bring or when executives bring folks with them to kind of champion their cause, that typically does very well because they're bringing like a whole culture with them, and they have advocates backing up their vision, lower down the ranks. They've got that's that's always been a very good kind of tactic. Um, it's not always practical, you can't always do that, but yeah, it works. Um, it can go a lot of ways. It's it gets crazy.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah, I can't imagine that. Wow, that's quite interesting insight as well. Like uh basically the the world of executive pet hunting just opened up thanks to all the stories that you have told. Your experience that you have uh brought to us. And before we hop to the last question that I would have prepared for you, I'd be curious, is there anything that would be you know good to know additionally to what you've explained, and that was a missing piece.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

That would be the place.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

I don't know, Robert. I don't have a good sound by right now. I am I'm a human recruiter. I'm not all AI. I am a um I care very much about touching both sides of the process and making sure everyone is happy and human and well covered, and we uh we're old school customer service-wise. That's what I'll say.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Yeah, it makes total sense, and that's probably also a reason for for your success. I mean, you have I hope so. Left left the safe world or uh what they think is the safe world, right? Of being deployed, you have your own business established successfully, which I find uh so congratulations. I'm always super excited for everybody who achieved that. And therefore yeah, 100%. So and I I think that that statement just made you super trustworthy, like for me. Like I personally also care about that a lot. I think it makes a difference. Like there are some people who care only, or it looks like they care only about the transactional value of whatever business transaction, right? And then there are people who of course you need to care about that transactional value, otherwise, I mean you go broke, right? And um but this yeah, human component, I I believe it's um it builds out a certain culture and it's a match for a certain type of in your case, executive and a certain type of of company that you work with. So um I find that quite exciting that you yeah, work like this.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Just on last question for you.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

I'd be curious what is the um the biggest mistake that a company that is hiring for executives is making that you baby see all the time, and what is the best it for it?

SPEAKER_03 41:00

The the biggest mistake I see is the candidates trying to convince the recruiter. The recruiter basically has no power. Like I've I could tell you 500 stories of when I had a candidate I loved more than anything and the manager didn't care. Um you're not trying to convince the recruiter, you're trying to convince the hiring manager. The recruiter in most cases will happily pass your resume along unless you're way, you know, underqualified or something. But like don't waste your time on the recruiter. They can only help you so much.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Your other one was uh best advice? Yeah, best fix for that. If there's a fix. Best fix for that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Maybe there's none because scenario is not a fit for this second part of the question, I guess. Or is there?

SPEAKER_02 41:57

I don't know if there is a fit for that.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

Probably should have given you a different example. The um Yeah, there might not be a fit for that one. Because higher managers always get a choice.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Yeah, but that's that's an interesting insight you you're leaving us with that for the end. Really appreciate that. And if somebody wants to work with you, no matter if executive interested in finding the right position or hiring company or maybe soon hiring company, um, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_03 42:25

I'm on all the normal channels, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on I've got eaglexecutive search.com. If you want to check me out, um, and my email is Phil at eagleexecutive search.com. I'm pretty easy, I'm pretty low key. Set a meeting. I'll tell you all about it.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Sounds great. We also linked that in the show notes. Phil, again, thank you so much. Really appreciated all your insights that you left us with. See ya soon. Yeah. Thanks a bunch, Robert.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Go to rock and rollyourdreams.com forward slash podcast.