"Every Search is Highly Customized" - Camille Fetter of Talentfoot

In this episode of the Land and Lead podcast, Dr. Josh Elmore interviews Camille Fetter, founder and CEO of Talentfoot Executive Search and Staffing. They discuss Camille's journey into executive search, her innovative approach to hiring, and the importance of understanding both the candidate and organizational needs. Camille shares insights on best practices for candidates, the significance of onboarding, and the value of leadership assessments. The conversation also touches on the role of AI and the value for leaders in developing competency in these new tools.

Transcript

Dr. Josh Elmore (00:00)

Welcome to the Land and Lead podcast, where we explore the real stories behind leadership transitions, the setbacks, strategies, wins, and moments of growth, all aimed at helping other leaders land well and lead effectively. 

I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore of Court Street Consulting. Today we're speaking with Camille Fetter Founder and CEO of Talentfoot Executive Search and Staffing. Camille is a nationally recognized executive search expert who helps grow stage companies from $5 million to $500 million, scale by placing the top 1 % of executives in sales, marketing, technology, and finance. 

As the founder and CEO of Talentfoot Executive Search and Staffing, Camille has spent two decades advising founders, private equity partners, and C-suite leaders on how to build high impact leadership and go to market teams that drive growth and transformation.

Her forward thinking approach rooted in the belief that the job can change a life has redefined executive search in the digital age. Camille's insights have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Insider, and CIO.com. She is a member of the Forbes HR Council and founding member of Chief. Welcome to the show, Camille.

Camille Fetter (01:05)

Thank you, Josh, so much for having me. And gosh, 20 years, seems like it's been two years. ⁓ I guess you have officially dated me.

Dr. Josh Elmore (01:13)

Well, time flies when you're having fun, I guess, So Camille, can you share a bit about your background and how you came to found Talentfoot?

Camille Fetter (01:15)

That's right. That's right.

Absolutely. gosh, at the ripe age of about eight, I was the child that loved to host lemonade sales more than I did enjoy playing on the playground, right? So I'd love to meeting new people. I love innovating. I was the kid that was up selling to the raspberry lemonade, the chocolate chip cookies, right? The list goes on. 

And so, my parents were exceptional leaders in my life and still are today. They told me at a young age, you just have a knack with people. You've got to do something in the profession of people. Fast forward in my college years, I was studying ⁓ advertising in school. And I realized that while I was really enjoying my studies, that there was probably a lot more meaning in life that I could probably find in those four years on campus.

And I randomly came across a flyer the Denver Metropolitan Crisis Line. And I thought, wow, let's talk about an opportunity to impact people's lives and make a difference. Fast forward, I became a trainer at this crisis line for years, three years, my undergrad. And I took on suicide calls, sexuality calls, domestic violence calls, the list goes on.

And so it was at the age of 19 where I realized, wow, the power of conversation can not only change the trajectory of someone's life, but actually even save people's lives. so, ⁓ I eventually fell into corporate America, would say, living in a cubicle in Excel spreadsheets all day. And I thought, ⁓ gosh, this just isn't for me. There's got to be more. ⁓ and so I randomly met a recruiter.

and looking for what's next, right? And trying to find what my real North star was life. And halfway through the interview, I paused the conversation and I said, if I may interrupt you for a moment, can I ask you, do you enjoy what you do? Can you not wait to get out of bed every day? Because that's what I'm looking for. And she said, I get to ⁓ every day.

I get thank you notes frankly for just doing my job and I get to impact people's families. ⁓ So that was the moment at 22 years old that I found my fast forward, so I worked for a staffing firm for four years, was a top producer there. Then I moved to executive search, which was the logical next step in my career.

And then four years later, I said, I wanna make up my own rules, my own processes, my own procedures that are best for the candidates and the hiring teams. And that's what I founded Talentfoot Foot 15 years ago.

Dr. Josh Elmore (03:59)

Wow, what a story. And one rooted really in that kind of pursuit of being with people, helping people through their journeys, whatever that journey was from, you know, traumatic moments in life to kind of those career pathways that people have. And then also deciding for yourself that you wanted to kind of do it your own way. What made you decide kind of that you needed to come up with your own rules? What was that insight that you saw?

Camille Fetter (04:24)

Yeah, great question. So I was 28 years old and I was within a working within a firm that had over 500 associates. And I saw that there were areas of the business that just felt broken to me for the candidate experience, the hiring experience. And so ⁓ I would raise my hand and I would say, hey, I think we can fix that. I think we can build a process globally. Right. Well, guess what? No one was listening to the 28 year old in the room. Right. 

With fairly little work experience at the time. And so that's when I realized, you know what? I think I just need to build it myself.

Dr. Josh Elmore (04:59)

Yeah, wow. And kind of seeing that opening and taking it. And so you tell us more about TalentFoot and how you work with hiring organizations and prospective candidates?

Camille Fetter (05:10)

Absolutely. So ⁓ we are essentially headhunters, right? So organizations hire us to find the highest impact players in business today. So these are organizations that cannot afford to make a mistake, right? It's high risk, ⁓ high reward organizations that are oftentimes either private equity backed or have investors involved that are really focused on value creation.

So they're focused on, for example, taking a $50 million business and accelerating its growth to $300 million within five years and exiting the business. So that's when it's high stakes and they need the proven players that have the playbook, who've been there and done it before and can repeat the win again. So we recruit across marketing, sales, technology, accounting, finance, operations and HR. So the main corporate functions that really are focused on driving growth, really accelerating innovation and ultimately profitability for these businesses.

Dr. Josh Elmore (06:16)

And you mentioned this idea of like a playbook, somebody, a candidate who has a playbook. So for hiring organizations, what is the kind of best practice that they should follow for placing leaders?

Camille Fetter (06:27)

Great question. we're hired to mitigate risk, right? So in order to do that, we have to look for the talent that has the track record of accomplishing exactly what that business is looking to accomplish. So that's how we avoid rolling the dice, right? So in our process, ⁓ we're extremely passionate around really understanding what the business strategy and goals are.

If we understand where the business sees itself and wants to go, right, we can then back into the right skills and the right level that that business needs and the various functions within the business to achieve those goals. And most importantly, identifying the individuals that have the track record of accomplishing just that.

Dr. Josh Elmore (07:15)

Hmm. And so it sounds like an evidence-based approach, right, rooted in kind of the track record of the leader, but also the needs of the organization. And how do you kind of assess those two things?

Camille Fetter (07:26)

Great question. So we are really big on behavioral interviewing. are big on what I call taking the car for a test drive. So we design interview questions. And this is a little peek behind the curtain for those job seekers. There is a lot of thought that's put into these interview questions that we design, right? And it's really ultimately focused on uncovering, are they the individual that happened to be the brains behind that organization's success?

Or did they just happen to be in the right place at the right time? So an interview question might be along the lines of, now that you learned more about this organization and you understand that they're looking to scale their $30 million direct to consumer CPG business to $100 million in three years, primarily by way of Amazon and other marketplaces, tell me how you get the business there.

So we want to hear how they think on their feet. That tells us a lot. And they can truly articulate what their vision, their strategy, and even the tactics that would be involved in getting the business there. we're calibrating every candidate against those same interview questions. And then we're using a candidate scorecard where every candidate is getting scored on various functional areas of the business, very hard skills, soft skills, et cetera. 

And the weak tend to surface, they stumble on those questions and they don't quite know where to go. And the strongest players have a great instinct and playbook that they're able to share that tells us that we've got a winner on the phone.

Dr. Josh Elmore (09:04)

Hmm. And when you're thinking about kind of the hard versus soft skills, how do you weight those two?

Camille Fetter (09:09)

So it depends on the position. So there are some positions that we weight soft skills higher than the hard skills, right? ⁓ Typically the more senior the position, the more the soft skills are important, right? So the leadership chops, right? The communication chops, the ability to take complex subjects and distill them in very simple terms to drive an organization forward and get all of the parties on board rowing the same direction, right? 

So it also depends on, again, the business strategy and the goals. So the more we uncover in terms of what the business is looking to accomplish, who the business has, frankly, today from a talent perspective and who they don't, right? We want to avoid redundancy and skill sets. 

We want to make sure we understand the weaknesses of a function, right, to make sure that that's the strength of the leader. And the list goes on. So there's a lot of nuances, no search is ever alike, ⁓ and every search is highly customized.

Dr. Josh Elmore (10:17)

Yeah, yeah, just like every situation is different when the leader goes in and has to navigate those dynamics. And thinking about from the candidate side, how can leaders help ensure success when they're going through the candidate process?

Camille Fetter (10:30)

So a really important one and I think this is a topic that's overlooked. I always tell executives that you're interviewing the organization just as much as they're interviewing you, right? So that's it's just like you're dating, you're about to go down the aisle, right? It's I mean, we spend a lot of time with our colleagues, right? More time, frankly, ⁓ than sometimes with our own family members. 

So, that fit, that chemistry, that alignment is just as important for the candidate as it is for the hiring team. So a couple of things I would encourage job seekers to do. Ask what success looks like in the role. What does success look like six months into the role? What does success look like a year after on board? How do you, Mr. and Mrs. Hiring Manager know that I was the one for the job 12 months after you hired me, right?

Secondly, how is success measured? And frankly, you'll hear from a lot of hiring managers that struggle with this, right? And it's actually, and it's okay if they struggle because it's an opportunity to collaborate and really also turn that interview into a working session where you're determining what the KPIs are together, right?

Then ensuring that their goals and expectations are not completely outlandish, right? And are achievable from your perspective. If not, run for the hills, right? Or it's just maybe not the job for you, right? Because obviously if you're not aligned on what the goals are and what success looks like, then no one's being set up for success. And there's only going to be disappointment from one or both parties.

Once you are selected for the job, I highly encourage job seekers to collaborate with their leader on what a position scorecard looks like. So distilling the job description into a framework where you are aligned with what a success look like in every aspect of the role, right? 

And then setting up a quarterly cadence and these inflection points ⁓ where you're determining with your leader, what are the goals for the quarter? What does a successful quarter look like? Right? And then after the end of every quarter, doing a recap, did we accomplish what we thought we would accomplish and we sought out to accomplish. And so I would just say, oftentimes it's the direct reports that make the leaders better leaders, right? Where they're managing up and they're really driving alignment and frankly, over-communicating from the start.

Dr. Josh Elmore (13:03)

Hmm and kind of speaking to that dynamic between you know your boss and also your direct reports and you're going into this new assignment what's some best practices that you've seen leaders employ or organizations employ in terms of supporting leaders for them to come effectively on board and integrate and onboard with their team with their leader and kind of navigate those kind of early moments of challenge and assessment.

Camille Fetter (13:27)

Yeah, a couple things. So I'm really big on leadership assessments. Some of our listeners may say, yes, I'm so glad to hear her say that. And some may say, I can't stand those. We use Hogan as our leadership assessment within our executive search process. It spits out a 60 page report.

We end up learning more about the leader than we'd like to say oftentimes their spouse or partner knows about them. And it ends up being an incredible onboarding tool. So ⁓ it drives self-awareness, especially we have a coach involved in the onboarding phase. 

So an executive will be coached by our Hogan certified consultant to basically share with them what their blind spots are, how they tend to behave when they're derailed or in a moment of stress, they tend to treat others and how they lead through sometimes turbulent times, right? And then it also, we coach the hiring manager, how they can best work effectively with the new report. And oftentimes we'll have the hiring manager take the same Hogan. And then our consultant will coach both parties how to effectively work with one another.

So I think the more you can truly in that onboarding phase be really open and honest and frankly asking for feedback about yourself as a leader based on some of these assessments and tools is such a great start. For me, we do detailed reference checks too. 

And I've had a lot of CEOs and executives over the years say, reference checks hold no weight. They mean nothing to me. They're only gonna give you the best, right? But what it does is it allows you, if they're done properly, it allows you to understand as the hiring team and as the leader, what their strengths and weaknesses are based off of their previous work experience. And so you don't spend 90 days trying to figure out their strengths and weaknesses.

Dr. Josh Elmore (15:21)

Yeah. for the I like the Hogan because it's rooted in the big five factors of personality. I use deeper signals, which is similar but different. But it has kind of the big five. And I think using a scientifically validated tool in those early days to give people that kind of early insight into ways of working, it's such a powerful technique. 

Camille Fetter (15:43)

And think that's established culture too, Josh, right? It establishes a culture of, we're here to learn together, grow together. And hey, we have different strengths and weaknesses and that's what's gonna make us a better team that's going to go further together.

Dr. Josh Elmore (15:57)

Certainly, yeah, kind of setting the tone of development and curiosity and not that everything has to be perfect, but that we're still kind of adjusting to each other. It gives everybody the opportunity to kind of reflect on the fact that this is a transition and a reminder that they're not gonna get it right the exact first time. Super critical and it's a great practice for kind of giving it to that. They're ⁓ hiring manager as well to kind of develop that relationship and so different directions. ⁓

Camille Fetter (16:24)

You got it. It tells the new hire, wow, they're really invested in me. They really want to see my growth and self-awareness is the first step to growth, right? So.

Dr. Josh Elmore (16:32)

Certainly, yeah. kind of thinking to those kind of past experiences and the new experience, if you think about kind of where they've come from, and maybe they're in kind of the transition, know, succession world, it's like, is this person an outsider from industry or an outsider from just this organization, or they are an insider? How do you conceptualize kind of the, or weight, the outsider of industry versus outsider in industry, but just going into a new organization versus an insider and how an organization can determine what they really need for a role.

Camille Fetter (17:07)

Yeah, so this is a fun one. I believe there's a lot of search professionals that I call, they take the cookie cutter approach. They believe that, okay, this is a large FinTech business that's looking to scale. We're only going to look at talent from FinTech, right?

 Or this is, a online retail business and we're only going to look at talent that comes from online retail. So that's not what every organization and every search requires to meet its business goals and objectives. So I can't tell you how many times, I've been doing this a long time as you shared, how many times an organization will come to us and say, we want to disrupt. want to innovate. We want to be the trailblazer in our industry. 

And then they keep pulling talent from within industry and they wonder why they're not innovating and they're not building new products and right. And really becoming that trailblazer. Well, guess what? It's because you continue to hire more of the same thinking, right? So it depends again, it goes back to what are the business goals and objectives and if innovation is an aspect of that business strategy, then you must look at talent from outside industry.

Dr. Josh Elmore (18:26)

Wow, such a great insight, right? From those many different moments of seeing across and placements, because it's not always, there's conventional wisdom, and then there is kind of the practice and seeing what works. You look at organizations who need somebody to shake it up.

⁓ And getting somebody from the outside gives them that opportunity to kind of dig in to ⁓ ask questions that maybe they get a little bit of leeway on. And, you know, because they're not biased by the current climate or culture or ways of working. And they get that pass. People give them the pass.

Camille Fetter (19:01)

Yes, that's right. And so that's one reason why we're not, we don't go too deep in any one industry. We're industry agnostic and functionally focused, right? Again, marketing, sales, tech, accounting, finance, HR, ops, and it's from lower mid market. We do work up to fortune 50. 

So it allows us to understand what industries are really driving the change within those functional areas of business, right? So for example, the software industry is really good at lead generation and marketing, right? And really good at creating online customer acquisition funnels. 

And so when a healthcare organization comes to us and they say, we need to drive more leads online and convert those leads to the call center, right? We're typically able to say, okay, well guess what? Education or SaaS, for example, those industries really are ahead of their time and far ahead of where healthcare is. So we're going to look at talent coming from these more progressive industries. And so it really is an advantage point.

Dr. Josh Elmore (20:08)

Wow, yeah. And so kind of thinking about these various ways of placing people and kind of across situations, what is your version of a placement gone perfectly?

Camille Fetter (20:19)

Great question. So a placement gone perfectly typically requires a similar to what we've talked a bit about a very detailed intake. So whether you're working with the search firm or you're conducting the search internally on your own, there is a very detailed knowledge gathering and intake session with any and all stakeholders, right? And this is where we typically rip up job descriptions, right?

All right, let's actually talk about the business and where the business is looking to go. Let's talk about the resources we have today. And then from there, you're building a position profile, right? And that profile is so much more than a job description, right? It's a piece of marketing collateral that tells the story of the company, that tells the vision where the business is going and why this role will make an impact in someone's career. And most importantly, to attract the A players.

they want the opportunities where they know that they can really move the needle. So being able to articulate the importance of the role for the organization. From there, really distilling and determining what the search strategy is, right? So similar to what we've talked about, should we have 50 % of the candidates like come from industry, 50 % come from outside industry? We do talk a lot about pie charts. 

Do we need an individual, for example, that has maybe come from enterprise, but they've spent the bulk of their career in lower mid-market with scrappier budgets. We do a lot of cleaning up hiring mistakes where a startup hires a talent specifically from enterprise because they saw the Harvard MBA and they fell in love with the candidate on paper. And so really determining what is the search strategy? Who is it that we're looking for? What's their track record of success?

And then determining what are the interview questions? How are we going to ensure that only the best talent gets through our filter? And obviously ensuring that again, if you're working with a search firm or conducting it internally, that there's headhunting involved. And headhunting is very different than recruiting, right? Recruiting often can be you're posting and praying, right? You're posting a job and you're praying the right candidate applies. We do very little of that, maybe 2 % of that.

Our postings are really more for marketing ⁓ and branding for the firm, not how we fill jobs. So, ensuring that again, against the search strategy, that your talent acquisition team is headhunting and really telling the story of the business, telling the story of the opportunity and hooking those passive job seekers who aren't looking, right? And then ensuring that you're vetting the talent ⁓ against the scorecard. It's been a very, you know, obviously a thoughtful point in any search process. 

And then having an already determined interview process. So the more you can determine what that interview process is upfront, the better the candidate experience will be overall. I'm sure there's plenty of job seekers listening where...it's been weeks, right, between rounds and it just feels disjointed and unorganized. ⁓ Oftentimes it's because they don't have that process already designed prior to kicking off the search. And then from there, typically we like to see a final bake-off and it's a final presentation. Again, where you're taking the car for a test drive, right? 

You're giving either a case study, it doesn't need to be on behalf of the prospective hiring manager's challenges, right? It can be just a basic case study as long as every candidate gets the same case study. then allowing them to present how they would tackle the challenge and then turn that into a work session. So you're getting a sense for really what it's like to work with the individual. And then after that, ensuring that.

You follow the steps like we talked about earlier in our conversation, right? And ensuring alignment with the hiring manager. check-ins the first 90 days is critical. Hey, what do you think is going right? What's not going right? Having a neutral party, do those retention call check-ins. We do retention calls. We take it very seriously. Make sure that any concerns are really addressed as quickly in the onboarding process as possible.

Dr. Josh Elmore (24:22)

Wow, super powerful in terms of the of the data-driven approach and that early intake. It sounds like that intake informs a lot of what the program ends up looking like. Is that right?

Camille Fetter (24:50)

It's everything. sometimes there's a lot, we always say to our hiring teams, eat your Wheaties before the intake, because it's a big brain dump, right? And so the more we do that proper foundational work from the onset, the more successful the search is, the more successful the end hiring decision is, right? And setting that executive up for success.

So yes, it's everything. And that's typically where we're coming in when mistakes have been made and we realize, wow, they weren't looking for the individual with the track record that the business needed. So it really wasn't the new hire's fault. It just wasn't the right process.

Dr. Josh Elmore (25:32)

Yeah, certainly. I know from my own consulting work, I leverage intakes as the core piece to any given engagement. If we're going to do work together, I have to talk to everybody and it has to be detailed. And so I can get that picture and I have to sit with that data for a good period of time to really kind of suss out the real story here. Like what's happening? Where do we need to start? ⁓ It's important.

Camille Fetter (25:53)

Yes, and it can feel slow, right, to some of the stakeholders involved. They just want to get going, right, but it can be detrimental if it's not done right.

Dr. Josh Elmore (26:01)

Certainly, And so thinking about the whole conversation, kind of where we went from talking about the organization side to the candidate side, is there anything we're missing here? Any kind of that are coming to mind for you as we're having this conversation?

Camille Fetter (26:16)

Gosh, you I would just say, be picky for both parties, right? The hiring team and the job seeker, really be thoughtful and intentional about your search, right? Put it on paper, know, the scoping the role very seriously, scoping the KPIs very seriously. For the job seekers, really thinking about, where can you make the biggest impact, right? Because those are the wins you want under your belt as you continue evolving in your career, right? Because you wanna go to every interview with, look what I accomplished, right? 

And so, ensuring that you identify the right organization at the right stage of growth in the right industry with the right business goals that all fuel your strengths and really will be dependent upon your strengths to ultimately help that business achieve its goals. That's going to be the win-win for everyone. I just really would encourage everybody to be highly intentional, selective, and picky on both sides of the table.

Dr. Josh Elmore (27:19)

Yeah, be picky. All right, I like it. So thanks, Camille, for taking the time to chat with us. Is there anything you'd like to share with the audience for what's going on with you or coming up for you or with talentfoot?

Camille Fetter (27:30)

Sure. Well, I've become pretty obsessed with And one of our missions is to not only identify the leaders of tomorrow, but to build the leaders of tomorrow. So we're busy hosting AI webinars, workshops across the country, and ensuring that we're not only future-proofing the businesses that we serve, but also future-proofing careers. 

So it's changing rapidly. And we believe that the leaders of tomorrow are embracing all aspects of this evolving technology landscape and that the future leader is going to have to learn how to manage agents and humans.

Dr. Josh Elmore (28:08)

Yeah, agreed. It's a evolving space and it's evolving quickly and everyone's trying to wrap their head around it.

Camille Fetter (28:14)

That's right. That's right. And if you feel behind, you're not alone.

Dr. Josh Elmore (28:18)

Yeah, certainly. And that's kind of the nice thing about it, right? It's kind of like when you come into a new job, you're not behind because you just started. So kind of start from there.

Camille Fetter (28:27)

That's exactly right. And so for any job seekers that have time on their hands right now, I've been telling them it's actually to your advantage because you have time to really study AI, sign up. have a partnership with Section School. It's a great AI Academy. 

And just really go deep because when you go in for the interview and you're able to speak to how you can drive efficiencies and innovation with AI today, your competition that may be gainfully employed in a full-time position, they don't have necessarily the time to really stay ahead of these trends, that that's gonna be your potential value proposition in your next interview.

Dr. Josh Elmore (29:06)

There you go. Wonderful. Well, Camille, thanks so much for sharing everything with us. It's been super wonderful to have you on the show.

Camille Fetter (29:12)

Thank you, it was a true honor.

Dr. Josh Elmore (29:13)

Thanks so much for listening to the Land and Lead Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore. Tune in next time for more stories from leaders navigating high-stakes role transitions.