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Executive headhunter: The days of stalking the elusive ‘purple squirrel’ are over
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Timothy J. Tolan, a partner in the East Bay Street office of Sanford Rose Associates, an executive search firm, described a recent series of reports on the nation’s declining work force as a wake-up call to the region’s businesses.
By 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there will be 11.5 million more jobs than workers to fill them, and the situation is only expected to become more critical with more than 76 million Baby Boomers expected to exit the work force during the decade that follows.
That exodus, expected to peak at just over 16,000 retirements a day by 2020, is already making itself felt in the executive board room and the corner office.
But if the statistics themselves are bracing, Tolan said, “What businesses need to recognize is that what I call the elusive ‘purple squirrel,’ the executive that flawlessly meets all their criteria and expectations, is extinct,” Tolan said.
“The days of looking for the sure bet are over. Today, what you’re looking for is the best fit for your company and business culture.”
For Tolan, who moved his Sanford Rose franchise to Charleston from Atlanta last year, those challenges couldn’t be better for business.
In each of the past three years Tolan has seen his business grow by 35% and his yearly
revenues grow into seven figures. “That we’re so busy shows that people are pursuing the purple squirrel as hard as ever,” he said.
His new book, “The CEO’s Guide to Talent Acquisition,” co-written with fellow Sanford Rose franchisee Ginni Garner and Air America Radio host Dr. Russ Riendeau, is an attempt to channel that pursuit into better hiring positions.
“In tough times, people try all the harder to minimize their risks,” he said. “Hopefully, this will impart some actionable and implementable ideas,” he said.
Krispy Kremes and the streets
As far back as Tolan can remember, salesmanship was an important component of his personality. In fact, he said, he owes a great deal of his entrepreneurial success to experiences related his childhood near Columbia.
“My mother would drop us boys off, each with a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and said she’d be back to pick us up only after we’d sold them all,” he said. “You learn a lot about salesmanship in a hurry in that kind of situation.”
As an adult, Tolan continued to hone his skills as a salesman. Over the course of 25 years, he worked in executive positions for both public and private companies, including Healtheon/WebMD, ePhysician and Citation Computer Systems.
The travel was brutal, he said. Moving from the executive suite to executive staffing has allowed him to stay closer to home, and it has allowed him to leverage the network of contacts he developed from two decades in the sales industry.
“I used to sell very high-end technologies, and today I sell human capital,” Tolan said. “Now, those are two very different things, but not as different as you might suspect. Both are very much relationship businesses that require you to be a master of networking. I see what I do as making connections.”
Matching people to culture
The most difficult parts of an executive search are finding the ideal candidate for the position and matching the candidate to the culture of the business doing the hiring. After that comes preparing them for their interviews, Tolan said.
He never combs employment services, preferring instead to reach out to the gainfully and, seemingly, happily employed as opposed to active job seekers, he said.
Once he sets his sights on a prospect, his initial outreach is through a cold call. While this might seem a low-odds approach, Tolan said experience has given him an advantage.
“No matter how happy executives project themselves to be, the reality is they tend to stay in their positions only three to four years,” Tolan said.
Most, he said, know within 18 months at their current job that “it’s not going to be utopia for them.”
Relocation
Since moving to Charleston last year, Tolan said he and his wife Sue have become involved with Lowcountry Orphanage Relief, continuing an involvement in the community that started in Atlanta where the couple established a shelter for abused teenage girls.
Tolan said he keeps his philanthropic activities low-key, because “if it’s all about you, it really doesn’t matter.”
In addition to their work at Sanford Rose Associates, where Sue Tolan handles many of the administrative duties, the couple also actively invests in real estate.
Tolan’s most recent acquisition is a building at East Bay and Charlotte streets that he hopes to move his office into by the end of August. If all goes according to plan, he said, the top floor of the two-story building will house his existing business, while a kind of “executive temp agency” will be located on the ground floor.
“I see it as the next step in trying to fill positions that will be harder to fill as time goes by,” Tolan said. “We know there will be a need there, and we also know that there are many executives who will find it difficult to slip completely out of the business mainstream.
“This will give them a chance to continue to work on a contract basis for a period of 13 weeks to a year.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@scbiznews.com.
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