Do I use a specialist search firm or not???

A lot of our clients are calling us lately and saying "I love you guys and want to use you.  My VC's are telling me to use a specialist for this or that.  How should I think about this?"

Our answer?  Tough call.  We'll be really balanced here.

Some Pro's:

Our CFO specialist, Steve Popper, has built an amazing business and he and our #2 person in that practice, Jeremy Levin really know the market cold. Know every CFO out there in every space, who are the best people, who came from the best companies, who made money for people, who are their number two and three people, etc.

So why are most of our people generalists?

Simple: the market has wanted us to be generalists.  Our clients think of us as individuals, and then they think of the firm.  Many have gotten to know us well enough to have this conclusion "If I can get anyone at SPMB, I'm happy because there really aren't any weak links there." This is our primary goal as a firm.  But until this is universal, here is why you should possibly worry about specialists and may consider using search people you really trust, whether they're deep in a given function or not.

Con's:

1. Candidate contention/conflict.  Specialists are always doing 5-10 of the same projects at the same time.  Most won't admit this, but they're parallel processing a lot of candidates.  We do this occasionally, but not as a matter of daily practice. We do it to maintain mind share with awesome candidates.  Specialists do it because it's easy and they can make fast money.  How do you know that your candidates won't get vultured to another company by the search firm you're currently paying?!

2. Network saturation. There's no incentive to be creative, to go outside a crowded market, go national.  Specialists rarely invest in research.  The network becomes too easy to mine, candidate lists get replicated over and over again, the cash is unbelievable, they can look awesome by filling a ton of searches and they can get lazy.  And inevitably, they hit the wall with clients who pick up on this.  Our team is paid and highly motivated to uncover new people all the time.  We invest over $1M a year in research and tools to make positively sure that our clients get maximum coverage in a given market.

3. Limited aperture. There is no way that a specialist can get meaningful references.  By being generalists, we can get the true story, which is the only story that matters, on a candidate.  Because we know the head of sales, the head of engineering, the head of marketing, Board members, the CEOs, the CFOs.  We have meaningful relationships with a broad spectrum of people who can tell us what's really up with a given candidate in a specific functional area.  Without the broad view, how do you know what you're really getting unless you, the client, really knows the candidate's references and are willing to do the heavy lifting to get to that story?  Isn't that what you're paying a search firm to do?

4. Massive hands-off lists.  Take a look at the specialists' client lists.  They're 10 miles wide, and only an inch deep.  This is a problem.  Where are they supposed to go to recruit your candidate?  Their client lists are just too big.  We make sure not to go TOO deep in a given function or a given domain, because we need inventory.  We need people to pursue.  This is a key issue for specialists, though they do a great job of marketing around this reality.

5. Narrow mindset.  Generalists are more intellectually curious. A generalist wants to understand a space fully, they want to understand companies more completely.  They want to understand various functions and how they relate to one another.  How do you pick a VP Eng now, when people really want deeper technical domain and product and engineering are more tightly coupled?  The functions of marketing, sales, engineering, finance--everything is different now.  CFO's can't be CPA's.  They need to be FP&A oriented.  Marketing people have to be ultra analytical now, slaves to demand gen, frictionless selling, etc.  Sales people have to nail efficiencies, conversions, be very operational, drive spectacular growth and build inside sales machines.  These are new challenges, new realities.  Functional specialists will miss the changing landscape, and they're not typically wired intellectually to truly "get" the changing landscape in the context of the big picture.  Lastly, generalists are who you call multiple times over a decade.  Specialists are who you call if you think you have a one-time problem and aren't interested in building a long term relationship with a search firm, or professional, with whom you can have a meaningful relationship over a long period of time.

So why us?

We're interested in those relationships, but will still take your call and show you 100 searches we've done in engineering, any day of the week.  Or marketing.  Or sales.  We're turning 25-30 a year, in just about anything you can want.  And the firm shares 100% of its information, so our people are interchangeable, as are our networks, within this firm that has now become a serious institution of excellence proven over several decades...It's a gimmick-free, candidate generating, search closing machine and we all think of ourselves as greasy mechanics underneath a very elegant exterior.  We're not the people who are selling the used car, making it look and sound new.

Want a specialist?  We're all specialists: in technology. In retained search. We're not messing around in contingency, not messing around doing staff recruiting at low levels.  Not messing around looking for fast bucks.  We specialize in retained executive search for technology executives.

So we recommend using technology generalists, unless you're looking for a CFO ;-).

Yours,
Andy Price