Donald L. Phillips’ career consists of high-level senior management and career development businesses, including management assessment and organizational planning. His extensive search experience has included assignments for senior staff executives in manufacturing, real estate, banking and other financial services areas. Don Phillips can be reached at www.don-phillips.com.

Before joining O’Shea, Divine & Company, Inc. in 1991, Don was associated with Heidrick & Struggles in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, and earlier, was manager of the San Francisco office of Mitchell, Larsen & Zilliacus.

Previously, Don was with Lloyds TSB Bank, plc, both in the U.S. and Europe, with his last position as head of the Multinational Division for the Western United States. His earlier experience includes Assistant Director of the Space Science Laboratories and, subsequently, Director of Administration of the Applied Technology Division of Litton Industries. Don began his career with Bank of America.

A native Californian, Don holds a MA in Finance, a BA with Distinction from the University of Arizona and is a graduate of the Executive Management Program at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University. He is active in the Drucker Graduate School Alumni Association where he received the Outstanding Senior Executive Achievement Award for 1999. In 2001 he received the prestigious Alumni Pioneer Award. In 2002 he won the Claremont Graduate University's Alumni Distinguished Service Award.

Carol: What is Executive Search and what do search folks do?

Don: To begin with, there are two basic kinds of executive search, contingency search and retainer search. If we talk about the first type of search, this is probably for early or mid-career people who are not generally looking to change jobs.

Carol: Contingency?

Don: Right. In contingency search, think real estate -- real estate sales people. They get paid after you have purchased the house, when escrow closes and the money has transferred hands. A contingency recruiter gets paid only when the person goes to work at a company that has issued the job order. A retainer firm, contrary to payment for a contingency search, is paid for the search process. They sign a contract, they are paid one-third of the fee at the beginning, one-third of the fee usually thirty days later and the final third about thirty days following the second payment, whether or not they have provided a candidate.

Carol: So a retained search firm is hired by a company. If I am a company in town and I am looking for someone in my management ranks, I might hire a retained search firm and say help me do that, help me find the right person and I pay you whether or not the person is found. Is that correct?

Don: That's right. However, firms will not rehire you if you have not provided good candidates on a consistent basis.

Carol: Exactly. Now, is it true for the audience that there is better success for most people when they pick up a phone and call a contingency search form. So that if I'm now somebody out there looking for a job, and I want the help of a search person, am I to call someone in the contingency search business? And, if so, how do I find them?

Don: Number one, there is a book published which you can pick up at any public library, it's "The Directory of Executive Recruiters" which list both contingency and retained recruiters, some 6,500 plus in the United States. The best thing is not to call the recruiter. The recruiter is usually very busy either looking for candidates or on the phone with new clients. Therefore, if you send the recruiting firm your resume, that will give them an opportunity to review it, and if they have a current opening that fits your background, they will call you.

Carol: As you know, I spent a lot of years working in the university sector and helping people who are making job transitions over and over again. Folks would come to me and say, "Well, I'm doing a job campaign and I'm going to send out 200 resumes to executive search folks," and then take the little red book you were talking about and scroll through the pages and just send out massive number of letters. And then I would also get a whole lot of complaints from people who would say, "Well, I picked up the phone and I called some of the local executive search people, and no one would ever talk to me." So when you say that the search folks are usually busy trying to fulfill their obligations, that is to find individuals for any given search assignment, does that mean that they are not real open to responding to someone who sends a resume or who calls?

Don: Normally, they will not return your phone call if the recruiter is a contingency recruiter, unless your background fits a specific job they are looking to fill right then. If it's a background they may want to file for the future, then they will talk to you. In fact, you'll think you are part of their family, and you are joined at the hip. Particularly, if you are a candidate or a prospective candidate for them, and then they'll spend a lot time with you, dressing you up, getting you information on the new job, on the position, what the salary is and what's the new job's career path, so they can present you correctly to the hiring company.

Carol: So, if someone in this role is not going to talk with me if I'm a job candidate -- who really is not going to respond to me -- why would I use them?

Don: You use them because you're looking for one job, and you don't know if that particular recruiter happens to have the particular job you want. So, you really need to make sure you have a great resume, that it quantifies your successes, what you have been doing, and what you want to do. You need to be complete, so when you send it to the recruiter, figuring that you'll get a maximum of thirty seconds review on your resume, you will get their full attention for that critical thirty seconds.

Carol: Very depressing. How is it that an individual who is listening today can become equipped to writing the kind of resume that a recruiter will want to read, or the scanner will want to read?

Don: I think one thing you can do -- is in your library or at various bookstores or on the Internet, you will see a number of books on resume writing. They are all good; there is no particular format that is better than anyone else's with the exception of the Functional Resume. No one I know, likes that format. It too difficult to pick out where you did what.

Carol: Even from they eyes of an executive search recruiter?

Don: An executive search consultant is looking for specific things. He or she is looking for what you did. Where did you do it? And, what were your career accomplishments quantified as much as possible. Most recruiters will also look at where you went to school. What is your educational background?

Carol: How does that matter?

Don: It matters because in today's world, a great number of people have difficulty in writing, difficulty in speaking clearly, and in communicating generally. So recruiters are looking at your undergraduate degree, primarily, where did you go to school? Did you go to a good school where they give you that kind of background? Is your resume well written? Is the cover letter well written? I know recruiters -- that if there are grammatical errors or incorrect spelling in the cover letter; the cover letter and resume are tossed.

Carol: I think I would do the same. I have to tell you. If you can't put your best foot forward when you are sending out a resume and a cover letter, then you probably don't want to try and get a job. You know what I'm saying. You probably aren't going to be the best hire. Let's go back to the whole issue of how to use search people. Let's break it down a little bit. If I'm someone who is young, and starting off with my career, I'm early in the game, would I use any kind of executive search person, and how would I do that?

Don: Again, in the early stage of your career, you would make sure that the contingency recruiters in your particular field of expertise have a copy of your resume and cover letter. You could try to call them; however, most contingency individuals are making sixty-five plus phone calls a day, so it is pretty hard to squeeze yourself in. But, I would make sure they did have a copy of your resume and every three to four months, send them an updated copy to make sure they have a current copy on file.

Carol: That's a great idea. I remember years ago when you and I were actually talking about my possibly going into search, and I remember thinking about the fact that I would be on the phone all day long. I think I still am with my current occupation, but my goodness, that's a hard one and no wonder people can't get through. So, if I'm relatively young and I'm starting out my career, I probably want to make sure that my resume is in the hands of both the contingency and the retained search firms, although mostly contingency. Would that be fair to assume?

Don: I would say that the bottom line on retained firms would be about $75,000 a year and that would generally be for local, smaller firms. Most major firms are probably in the area of $125,000 base salary, before they would even consider taking on a search assignment.

Carol: Let's assume that I'm in the middle of my career, that is maybe I've had ten, twelve, fifteen years in my career, how would it differ?

Don: You should now take time to look at retainer recruiters, although we find some contingency recruiters taking higher salary assignments due principally to start-up companies. The financial people at start-up operations normally don't like to pay for something before they get the product. So, they will hire a contingency recruiter for a fairly significant mid-level job and pay the fee when the individual is placed. They will not use a retained recruiter because they are not sure they are going to get a candidate. The only thing they are sure of is they will get "process."

Carol: I know in your ears, all of this sounds logical because you've been at it for so long, but my experience is that in the ears of most individuals, when you start having this conversation about retained search and contingency search, most people tune out because there is a lot gobbledygook, there is a lot of gibberish and terms which are unfamiliar ones to most individuals. So I keep wanting to break things down a little bit, because I think that happens, and we tend to lose people. When you say that start-ups have changed the mix, tell me a little bit more about that, because there are lots of people in Orange County who are working for small companies and/or entrepreneurial companies. Whatever the case may be, possibly they haven't had a base salary in the six figure range, and yet they may have held a management job. In a smaller company, they may have been helping to run the company. Now, where does someone like that go?

Don: The best place to go is your network. Your network is people you know and the people they know. If you have a trade organization or association that you belong to, or if you're in the start-up mode, then you should belong to the Orange Coast Venture Group or the CorpTech Group. Both groups meet at the University of California at Irvine. Those venture groups are good networking groups. You get your name out, talk to people with like interests, let them know you're available, and that is the best way to make a job move. The latest statistics out, say that 75 percent of all jobs are gained through networking. The latest figures that I've seen have networking at 95%. What that means, is you're talking to everyone you know, and finding out who they know in organizations you might want to go to work for.

Carol: Is that only at the senior management levels?

Don: Oh no! That's almost at all levels. We hear about people who get jobs through answering ads in the newspaper, we hear about people who get jobs through recruiters and occasionally someone gets a job through the Internet. However, for the most part, people get jobs through other people.

Carol: I think you just hit on the most obvious question, because if 90 percent of jobs are being filled through networking, the next logical question is, so what on earth are recruiters doing? Because recruiters are out there making a ton of money and would imply that they're only filling a very, very small amount of job opportunities.

Don: You're entirely right, Carol. They are filling a very small number of searches, but with the high salary levels they work at, the recruiters are well compensated.

Carol: For people listening today then, those who will access a recruiter, whether it's a contingency recruiter or retained recruiter, those individuals would probably be in mid-level management or more senior levels of management. That's the likelihood, is that correct?

Don: That's more true than false. However, if you are a software engineer, there are contingency recruiters that specialize in your particular area of expertise, and they will want to get to know you. You need to get your resume to those folks.

Carol: Let's get very microscopic for a moment. Often times people send out resumes that are decent but they don't know what to do with the cover letter. If I'm communicating with an executive search person, what should be in that cover letter?

Don: The cover letter should be short, no more than three paragraphs. The first paragraph is probably two lines. "Enclosed is my current resume for your review, etc."

Carol: So I don't have to get fancy and use my literary talents and so on.

Don: No. We're saving that for paragraph two. In paragraph two, you pick out one of your significant career accomplishments from your resume, and you expand on it. You need to show that you would be value-added to that employer in a particular area. The third paragraph is very short, and in the paragraph you do not only say "hoping to hear from you," or "I will call you." But you should also say -- and this works really well with recruiters -- "If you have any searches where I might be of some help to you, please call me."

Carol: That's the hook, the intended hook. Let's look at this process through the eyes of the recruiter. What is it that an executive recruiter does when he or she has a search? So, now lets assume I'm an executive recruiter. I get a search looking for someone who is Vice President of Marketing or Director of Information Services, or whatever the case may be -- and the person has to have very specific criteria in his or her background. What do I do to find that person?

Don: The first thing you do is look up the industry and function in your database. Even smaller firms these days will have up to 20,000 individuals in its electronic database, all classified by job function and industry function.

Carol: So, if I'm an individual that sent in my resume to a recruiter, let's say I'm in marketing, I then become part of that database and probably get categorized in one way or another having to do with marketing or area of expertise within my repertoire is that right?

Don: That's right. You would be in marketing and with your industry background, and your industry experience. That's the first place the recruiter goes. You use these names not necessarily as candidates. But as referral sources. Its just like networking, only reversed. Sometime your database candidates come through as candidates but not normally. As referral sources they can lead you to the right person. You use them as sources and if they happen to be a candidate, so much the better, it's a lot easier and saves a lot of time. Some time ago, when I was with a major firm, a number of our searches were completed from its 60,000 plus names database.

Carol: They have a large pool from which to select.

Don: Right

Carol: I have this question I've always wanted to ask you. Suppose I'm someone out there in the work world and I do a very good job, maybe I'm a manager, vice president, senior vice president, director, it doesn't matter, I've been in my business for quite a while, and people know me. But I never get a call from a search person saying, "You know, I've got a job in XYZ Company, are you interested?" Why not? Why isn't my phone ringing off the hook?

Don: The retained search individual will do from one to three searches at one time. That's all. And, in a given year, you're going to be doing twelve to fifteen searches a year. Even more than that now, because everybody is really very busy. How many of those open searches are going to fit your background and your expertise? Usually very few. So what you are hoping for is that lightning will strike and one of those searches will be a great fit for you.

Carol: Yeah, but I don't understand why it is that some people say things like, "You know, executive recruiters call me every month," or "I get a call regularly from an executive recruiter asking me if I'm interested in such-and-such job." I think to myself, well, that's quite interesting because I know a whole lot of people who are equally as talented, maybe even more so, who don't get calls from recruiters. How does that happen?

Don: They haven't opened themselves up as referral sources to the recruiting community. The easiest way to get on a recruiter's side is just to say, "If you need help, and I can help you, please call me." And then as the saying goes, you get "atta boys." When someone helps a recruiter, it's put in the computer and recruiters have a habit of "adopting" people who help them. If a position comes up that's close to your background, you will get a call from that recruiter you helped.

Carol: Now, if I work for a large company, let's say in the Orange County area. Is it more likely I will hear from an executive recruiter at some point or another, if I'm in a management role, than if I worked for a middle sized company or a small company?

Don: It depends on how well you are known in the community. Have you sent your resume to the recruiters? Are they aware of you? Have you kept your background current with them? Keep recruiters up to date on what's going on with you. Maybe you moved and your address didn't get changed and all your letters went astray and they have been trying to get a hold of you. This is a good reason why you need to keep your recruiters current with your background, address and telephone number.

Carol: Should an individual wait until he or she is looking for a job before sending a resume to a recruiter or is it fair game while you're happily employed in a company to send your resume to a recruiter just to have it on file.

Don: I think you should send your resume. Recruiters are looking for people who are very happy where they are. People who are not thinking about leaving, but would leave for a great new opportunity. You may not hear about the opportunity unless the recruiter has your background.

Carol: So it isn't an illegitimate thing or an inappropriate thing to do, to send off you resume while working.

Don: The only thing you don't want to do is answer a blind newspaper advertisement, because that can come from your own company.

Carol: You mentioned networking earlier today and we know that executive search folks are very busy right now. The market is hot, and they're looking for good people. However, we also know that networking is a huge part of successful job campaigns. What quick advice can you give to the listening audience today about how to use networking as part of this larger process?

Don: I believe that the best thing to do is probably to try to find twenty-five people that really know you well. These are twenty-five people who really know your background, know what your capabilities are. Then keep in touch with them at least once a month. You can send them a note, send them a clipping from the newspaper, talk to them on the phone, take them to lunch, or breakfast. Keep in contact. Every month, these twenty-five people must hear from you. These twenty-five are the ones that will spread your name out into the community. Now some of these might not stay up in the prime twenty-five. But other people will raise to the top. The idea is when you have a network, never let it die.

Carol: Isn't that one of the biggest mistakes that folks make? You and I see this all the time, people who are very accomplished. All of a sudden, they're on the street and they say with guilt plastered all over their face, "Uh, I've been working so hard for the last couple of years, I've forgotten to keep my network alive. Then they're in a bit of a pickle.

Don: They really are. Recently, a gentleman who was president of a company for over seven years sold the company for the owners. He received a nice settlement and then realized that while he was there, he had let his network die. He spent the next six months after selling the firm, redeveloping his network.

Carol: I think one of the most frustrating activities when we are making a transition, is trying to reinvigorate our networks. Its really difficult to awaken those relationships when you're out of a job, especially if you've let them die or go to sleep -- you know, lay dormant for a lot of years. It's not easy to do that.

Don: In your network, remember to include people you used to work with, vendors, family, neighbors, almost everybody you know and everybody they know, that will be a good solid network for you.

Carol: We've got about thirty seconds left, what last advice would you give to folks listening today in terms of how to make use of the executive search people in the community?

Don: Keep the executive search community informed of where you are, what you're doing, and what your capabilities are on a current basis, and then when they call and ask for help, give them help and don't just hang up on them.