ExecuSource

Happy birthday to Amanda Papso and Patrick LaBarbiera, both celebrating in May! 🎂 Two people we're glad to have on the team. Drop them a happy birthday in the comments below. #ExecuSource

We're aware of social media content circulating involving a contractor formerly associated with ExecuSource. We have ended that relationship effective immediately. ExecuSource does not condone violence or threats of violence in any form, against anyone.

Most companies understand their customers better than they understand their own people. This new Harvard Business Review piece argues that's the whole problem. Leaders are designing work as if employees are just another operational input, then wondering why engagement and retention keep slipping. Worth a read if you lead a team: https://lnkd.in/ePvW-fpc

Most recruiters spend 20 minutes with a candidate, drop them into a database, and never speak to them again. Didn't have the exact skill. Drop. Commute was too long. Drop. Wrong title on the resume. Drop. The funny part is, that person still gets a job. Just not through YOU. A year from now, they could have been your strongest placement. Promoted at a company your clients wish they could hire from. Referring three more candidates who fit the role you're trying to fill this quarter. You don't know any of that, because you stopped knowing them the moment they didn't fit the current opening. The 20 minutes you just spent is worth money. It's worth time. It's worth a relationship that could pay off for a decade. The best recruiters I've worked with over 30 years in this business aren't the best at matching resumes. That's actually the low-skill part of the job. (Anyone can do it.) They're the best at remembering people. At following up three months later to check in. At knowing someone is ready for their next move before the person knows it themselves. That's the part the database doesn't do for you. Recruiting at its best isn't screening. It's remembering. It’s building a network and leveraging it. To help yourself and others around you excel in their career. That’s what it’s all about.

No CEO has ever told me their company has a bad culture. Nobody's going to say: "We're B players. We pay below market. We blame each other when things go wrong." So the claim “we have a great culture” stops meaning anything. It’s become marketing copy. A sentence on a careers page. A line the recruiter says to close the candidate. Here's what actually tells me your culture is real: Your turnover numbers. Your Glassdoor reviews. Whether people leave and still tell their friends to apply anyway. Whether leadership holds high performers to the same standard as everyone else, even when the numbers are good. Real culture is a process. Like a sales process, or an operations process, or a finance process. It needs metrics, intentionality, and people who push the gas pedal on it every day. Culture can't be outsourced to HR. It can't be printed on a poster in the lobby. It can't survive the personality of one leader. The companies that actually have it treat culture like a discipline. They hire for it. They reward for it. They fire for violations of it, even when the person violating it is hitting their numbers. (That last part is where almost everyone folds.) Most companies don't have a culture problem. They have a culture pretense problem. They like the way it sounds when they describe themselves. They haven't done the work to make the description true. If you can't measure it, you haven't built it. You've just named it.

230+ open roles this week! Most are exclusive searches our clients run only through us. You won't find them on Indeed or LinkedIn jobs. See the full list and apply at https://lnkd.in/gShadjw3 #ExecuSource #Careers #NowHiring

Fifteen minutes into an interview, a candidate asked me: "So Ed, what do you like about working at Executive Source?" My name isn't Ed. I don't work at Executive Source. They had done zero preparation. No LinkedIn check. No Google search. No quick read on the firm she was sitting down with. Thousands of interviews later, that moment is still my single biggest red flag in hiring. Not because people are expected to be perfect. Plenty of strong hires stumble through answers, get nervous, and forget what they were going to say mid-sentence. Seriousness is different from polish. Seriousness is a candidate who invested fifteen minutes before the interview to understand who they were meeting, what the company actually does, and why this conversation matters to their career. If they couldn't spend fifteen minutes before the job, they aren't going to invest in learning your clients, your process, or your standards after they get it. That's not a guess. That's a pattern from 30 years of watching people. Preparation isn't about having the perfect answer. It's about signaling that you respect the opportunity enough to take it seriously before you walk into the room. The candidates who get hired aren't the most polished. They're the ones who took the conversation seriously before it started.