Interim Executive Hired In
Less Than a Week?
Yes, If You Have the Right Connections
By Anne Stuart
Quick quiz: How much time can a company
realistically expect to spend searching for a highly
qualified project manager or an interim “C-level”
executive?
-
Six to eight weeks
-
Ten to twelve weeks
-
Four to five months
-
Six months or longer
-
One week or less
These days, the correct answer
is “5.”
Until recently, that would
have been a wildly ambitious, if not downright
impossible, timetable for finding the ideal
executive for a contract job. But at one pioneering
contract firm, such lightening-fast response has
been the goal from the start.
“The days of going through the
typical search process and waiting seven or eight
months to get the right executive are over,” says
Douglas W. Ruth, managing director of Vallon LLC, a
Minneapolis-based staffing firm that specializes in
providing top-level talent for interim and
project-based positions.
What’s wrong with that
traditional timeline? It doesn’t keep pace with the
speed of change in today’s workplace, Ruth says:
“Over those seven or eight months, your company’s
needs are likely to change substantially.”
Vallon’s market research
indicated that Twin Cities companies recognize the
need to move both quickly and confidently when
hiring contract executives. “We found that senior
executives at many organizations were excited by the
opportunity to bring in a talented professional for
a non-permanent position in a very short time
frame,” says Darren Benoit, Vallon’s other managing
partner.
For that reason, Vallon
focuses on not only finding the right
person--whether it’s a CEO, a COO, a general
manager or another executive--to fit each client
company’s needs, but doing so in record time. In
fact, the company took just three days to place its
first few contract executives in interim positions
at Twin Cities-area businesses.
Vallon achieves such
high-speed results by using the same model as its
venture partner, SALO LLC, the Minneapolis-based
accounting and financial-services staffing company.
Like SALO, Vallon draws its consultants from a large
pool of talented professionals who are seeking
interim or project-based assignments.
“We use a similar structure
and approach that happens to be aimed at a different
functional area,” says Darren Benoit, formerly
SALO’s director of business strategy. “We fill
another piece of the puzzle that companies are
looking to address.”
A True Win-Win Proposition
Both sides stand to benefit
from Vallon’s groundbreaking approach, the managing
directors say. “The prospective consultants we’ve
met with have been raucously positive in their
response,” Benoit says. “They see the advantage of
having our networking engine behind them, and they
also recognize the value that we bring to the table
in terms of medical and dental insurance, a 401(k)
plan, vacations, holiday pay, handling their
billing, handling their contracts, handling their
liability insurance and so on.”
Working with Vallon can also
break the all-too-familiar “feast or famine”
consulting cycle.
“Typical independent
consultants find themselves working 60 or 70 hours a
week for one six-month period,” Benoit says. “Then
they roll off that project and have to spend a
couple of months looking for the next engagement
because they’ve been so busy they haven’t had time
to network.”
By continuously handling the
networking on its consultants’ behalf, Vallon can
help alleviate what Benoit calls “the
uphill-downhill, constant see-saw way of life.”
Freed of such concerns and
tasks, executive contractors can concentrate on what
they enjoy most and do best: the actual consulting
work.
Meanwhile, client companies
get precisely the type of managerial talent they
need, literally on a just-in-time basis. Positions
for which Vallon can provide seasoned executives
include CEO, COO, president, general manager, VP of
sales and marketing, VP of supply-chain management
or international sourcing, VP of manufacturing
operations, business unit director and special
project director, among others.
Target Audiences: Top-Level
Talent and Fast-Growing Companies
As at SALO, Vallon looks for
consultants who prefer flexibility and thrive on
change. “They like to be consistently challenged;
they like variety,” Benoit says of ideal consulting
candidates. “If they’ve ever said to themselves, ‘I
get bored too easily in my traditional corporate
role,’ they may be very interested in this
opportunity.”
The best candidates are
leaders with cross-functional skills and
backgrounds. “Often, they’ve come up one functional
silo in particular--operations, sales and marketing,
IT, or another area,” Benoit says. “Then they’ve
taken on a more general role in their companies, or
perhaps they’ve taken over a particular group.”
Currently, most consultants
have 10 to 15 years of work experience, and some
have even more. But, Benoit adds, resume length
isn’t the biggest factor Vallon uses in selecting
consultants for its network. “The skills and having
taken on a leadership role in their organizations
are the most important aspects,” he says.
As for client companies, Ruth
describes Vallon’s initial target as midmarket
organizations, those with roughly $50 million to
$500 million in revenue and some serious growing
pains. “A good client for us is a corporation that’s
got a lot going on,” he says. “It’s growing
extremely quickly. It has a major project launching.
It needs to replace a top executive. Maybe it’s
involved in a merger. It may even be in receivership
or beginning a turnaround. In any case, it’s going
through change and chaos—and that’s where we want to
be.”
Often, those companies are
seeking somebody with highly specialized skills and
expertise for a specific short-term assignment.
“They don’t just want
a ‘C-level’ person,” says Ruth, previously managing
director for Cherry Tree Securities LLC, a
Minneapolis-based investment banking and management
firm. “They want someone who’s right for a specific
strategic initiative or tactical project. They want
someone who’s run a company, grown a company,
someone who can come in and take charge right away.”
For example, a local
manufacturer might decide that, to stay competitive,
it needs to go global fast. “But they want to keep
their domestic team focused on domestic business,”
Ruth says. “So they need to bring in a specialist
with worldwide supply-chain experience to oversee
the global part for, say, the first six to twelve
months. We’ll tap our network to find somebody with
exactly that expertise.”
(Although Vallon focuses on
serving Minnesota-based companies, the firm is
building a worldwide network to assist those
organizations wherever they need it. For instance,
Vallon could provide a global-sourcing expert based
in India for a company needing such an executive in
that region.)
Vallon’s founders believe
their responsive, cost-effective model--already
widely used in Europe--will quickly grow in
popularity with both local contractors seeking
flexible, yet challenging, assignments and Minnesota
companies balancing budgetary demands against the
need to stay competitive.
“We believe this is going to
be a complete paradigm shift even for companies
seeking permanent employees,” Ruth says. “Over time,
it will change how recruiters go about the process
of hiring.”
Meanwhile, the new firm hopes
to grow rapidly itself, duplicating its
three-year-old venture partner’s record of success.
Founded in late 2002, SALO has grown from $3.4
million in revenue in 2003 to about $21 million in
2005.
“Vallon is a nice strategic
fit with SALO,” Benoit says. “We plan to
co-exist--and to build something very strong
together.”
About the Author
UpSide contributor Anne Stuart writes
frequently about business, workplace and career
issues. A former writer and editor for Inc. and CIO
magazines and The Associated Press, she is now a
freelance writer based in Boston. You can reach her
at Anne.S@BeTuitive.com.
Copyright © 2006 BeTuitive Marketing
For more information, please
contact Doug Ruth at:
612.230.7139
dougruth@vallonllc.com |
