From the SEAL Teams to Staffing the C-Suite with Special Guest Jamey Cummings

[00:00:07] Welcome everyone to another episode of HR Amparal 2.0. I'm Pete Tiliakis and as always I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome, Julie. Thanks, Pete. Yes. And we have a guest. I'm so excited today to welcome a fellow veteran, an executive recruiter, and partner at JM Search, Mr. Jamie Cummings. Welcome to the HR Amparal 2.0 podcast. Pete and Julie, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Julie, you want to do the honors?

[00:00:33] I do. I do. And I think, Jamie, what I always ask folks is, how did you get into HR? I'm thinking like Navy SEAL to executive recruiting, right? I can't wait to hear this story. I know. And we will ask you if it's not obvious why you stay, but how did you make your way over into the HR field? Like a lot of people in executive search in particular, if you ask them that question, a common theme is they stumbled into it.

[00:00:58] I don't know that most people really think of executive recruiting as a career destination because it partly, I think, is a bit of a well-kept secret, frankly. It's a very interesting business. You get a chance to – you get paid to deal with people, frankly. But how did it happen? I spent some time in the military, not sure what I wanted to do, but there were some others who'd gone before me, gone to business school, and I thought, that seems like a good path.

[00:01:25] I'm going to follow their lead. And at business school, I learned a ton, but still wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do and didn't know what I didn't know. So I did consulting, and I did okay in that. Frankly, I was not hyper-successful at consulting for some reasons I can get in.

[00:01:43] I learned a lot, and I met a fellow Naval Academy alumnus at a networking event, and he was a partner in a firm called Hydrokin Struggles. And my initial thought was, hey, you can help me find a job. I didn't really understand how it worked. It turned out some of my colleagues from consulting had gone into executive search. I was very intrigued. I thought, wow, what's the connection there?

[00:02:12] Why would you even do something like that? And my observation was it was really more consulting but of a different flavor. And I felt like it was aligned with my interests and my skills, was relationship building, getting to know people, leading and assessing others from my time in the military otherwise. And there was a senior associate role open at Hydrokin, and I interviewed for it, and I got it. And 18 years later, I haven't looked back.

[00:02:43] I can get into, Julie, some of the reasons why. But that's how I ended up in HR was really a little bit of serendipity, frankly. What has kept you around? Part of it is the fact that it's a bit of a license to reach out to and talk to really interesting people across a wide range of industries and functions who, frankly, normally would not necessarily pick up the phone to talk to me if I didn't likely have something that might be of interest to them.

[00:03:11] So it has opened up a world of building really pretty amazing relationships. And I thrive on that. I get energy from that. The other is that maybe it sounds a little bit corny, but I do think we are impacting organizations in people's lives. So when we're reaching out to people, we're representing an organization that has a critical role, a leadership role they need to fill.

[00:03:40] And that role will impact the organization and the employees. But also, more often than not, we're reaching out to people who may not necessarily be unhappy where they are. But we will present them an opportunity that's compelling enough to say, wow, that could be a nice step in my career. That's very interesting. It could be very impactful for them.

[00:04:06] And even though this business can be transactional at times, when you have organizations and people who think, wow, this is a great fit, great career move. Thank you so much. And they're appreciative of that. There's a satisfaction in that that keeps me around. The other piece is very entrepreneurial. You have a lot of autonomy to go out, build your brand, build your organization's brand. And there's really no limit to the upside. Yeah.

[00:04:35] A business perspective. And I like the fact that no two days, no two weeks are the same. There's a lot of aspects to this. And on the surface, from the outside looking in, it looks pretty straightforward. Yeah. There's nuance to it. And there's an art. And learning that art and becoming better at it over time has just kept me around. And I really enjoy it. Yeah. No, it's great. Well, it's great to have you. We appreciate it. Go ahead, Julie. I'm sorry. Yeah.

[00:05:02] Well, I'm sitting here thinking, do you ever have folks, I mean, like, because you're presenting them these new and unique opportunities. And I've seen some of your stuff around, you know, like why go to a role in a private equity firm versus a, you know, a regular publicly traded firm. And do you ever have somebody reaches back and says, you know what? You're really awesome, but don't do that to me again. Like that, that was crazy. Or that was just, you know, like that. Yeah.

[00:05:29] Like I prefer one route versus another. Does that ever happen to you? I could imagine. Very rarely. There have been some times in the past where at the end of the day, you don't always know all of your clients all that well. And there have been times where a potential client will reach out and you only can really know what they tell you and what might be in the public domain or what might you find from others.

[00:05:56] And there's been times in the past where my job is to represent the opportunities the best I know, to be as transparent as I can be. Because ultimately, when someone is hired, that organization and that person are the ones that have to live with it. Yeah. Last thing I want is to disrupt someone's life and have them go into a role that's not a great fit or vice versa.

[00:06:25] You know, organizationally put someone in and they find something out that we could have discovered through referencing or for interviews. And they say, why did you bring this person to us that didn't work out? So it doesn't happen very often. But there have been times in the past where, you know, once or twice someone went into an organization and they discovered some things that frankly, had they known before they joined, they would not have done that.

[00:06:53] And I would say I still have very good relationship with this one, one candidate in particular. I think he appreciated that we did our best as a team to be as transparent as we could say, here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. I encourage you to do your own due diligence and just didn't turn out to be what he had hoped.

[00:07:12] So I think, in short, Julie, try to ask as many questions up front as you can and be as transparent as you can and let the organization and executives make their own decisions. We make recommendations, they make decisions. Yeah, I just imagine candidates more than anything that are going into executive roles can be so different from one to another. So how many, like, do they really know themselves? Do they really know what they're looking for? What's interesting, I think, about our business is on the, from the outside looking in, it can seem simple.

[00:07:41] You're just matchmaking, but the stakes are high. The stakes are really high for everyone. There's, at the executive level, the people that we're dealing with, they've reached a stage of their career where there's not that many chess moves left. Yeah, exactly. The pyramid's tight. Yeah, so making a wrong move for that person in the organization could destroy a lot of value and reputations. And so that's why the process is pretty high touch.

[00:08:11] There's a pretty intensive and thorough interview process. And, you know, candidates will do their own due diligence and find people who used to work there. And, you know, we'll reference the candidates as well to learn as much as we can. And yeah, you definitely don't want to shoot from the hip on these. It's a big decision for both parties. Yeah. Yeah. I love it, man. From the teams to building teams. It's awesome stuff, man. It's good. Did you ever do any recruiting while you were in the military at all? No, not personally.

[00:08:41] No, I was never in the recruiting role. No, no. In the Marine Corps, one of the things I always loved about, I don't know how they do it in the Navy, but the Marines, like in order for you to move up, it's a very small organization, right? As you probably know. And in order to move up, one of the things I look back on and I really admire is the fact that the Marine Corps placed every bit of emphasis that you could place on HR, basically, either in order to get promoted into the senior ranks, you had to either be a recruiter or a drill instructor. You either had to find talent or develop talent.

[00:09:11] Their attitude towards it is talent attracts talent. Yeah. And I don't know that a lot of folks look at it that way. And so you've got these recruiters that are often, in many ways, sales folks that are cheerleading and championing, trying to bring and curate talent. But I don't know that enough organizations put their best and brightest on the front lines and say, let's take the best and brightest to go and find the best and brightest. And so that was something I was just curious if maybe that was part of your pathway was maybe having some of that experience or not.

[00:09:39] Well, but there's definitely an aspect of, well, there could be a little bit of recruiting. For example, when you go to a SEAL team, there'll be cycles of where it's like about a two-year cycle where you'll platoon up, you'll get some, the team together, and then you do your 18-month workup cycle and your six-month deployment. Yeah. At least when I was in a few decades ago. And there could be some recruiting as far as like, hey, I want that guy in my platoon, and then that guy, Michael. Yeah.

[00:10:09] It's a little bit of that. But there's always a developmental aspect of things. And so do you want to develop the team that you have? So we're going to go overseas and we're going to be potentially going in harm's way. Well, we need to have our act together. But also, ideally, one of the mindsets that I learned in the military from just my training and the leaders that I respected is that we're just passing through. Yeah. I'm going to be here for a set period of time.

[00:10:38] And when I'm gone, those who are going to be in the next platoon, so the platoon commander coming behind me, those who are going to be the chief petty officers and leading petty officers, well, it's our job as leaders to make sure they're as developed as they can be. Yep. Those coming behind us will be that much more prepared. So that's where there's a little bit of that talent management and to a certain extent recruiting that comes into play. Yeah. It's part and parcel of what we do.

[00:11:06] Because if you think about those organizations, so different than the private sector where, let's just say you're one large organization, you can recruit externally into a senior role. Yeah. Well, you're not going to go to the private sector and recruit a commanding officer of the SEAL team. You have to grow your home growth, your talent. And so you develop a different mindset around apprenticeship and development that is just necessary to continue to thrive. Yeah.

[00:11:30] And I've really tried to continue that mindset as well as I know of other peers of mine, other veterans out there that they try to espouse that mindset where you can selectively bring in people into roles. You need to have some... It's good to refresh your thinking a little bit. But ultimately, to maintain a culture, you should have a lot of developing your talent from within. Yes. Yeah. That's what we learned, Pete. Yeah.

[00:11:58] You know, one of the things that I think that the military is exceptionally good at, and maybe it's not the most, I don't know, maybe it's not perfect in terms of technology yet, because I'm sure some of them are still advancing in that way, is that I think, at least the Marines anyway, they're incredibly good at knowing the skills that they have available and the proficiencies of those skills. And you talk about bringing the right people together on a team. It's all about bringing the right skills together. But more importantly, they're testing those skills constantly.

[00:12:27] And those skills, you're talking about buildups, right? You're talking about different things like that. You got to know if your force is ready to actually execute. I don't think a lot of civilian organizations have caught up to that. And I think just now we're talking about skills and inventory and skills assessments. And it's like, man, the military has been doing this for a long time. We have to be, right? We can't put people in situations where they're not ready to handle that job. Because it gets killed. Yeah. It's impossible. You have to do it.

[00:12:57] Yeah. So I want to kind of pivot to this, because before we get into kind of the recruiting world a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about the veteran world, because I think that there is... I still think... I do a lot of work with Hire Heroes USA. I try to help veterans and spouses coming into the workforce or making career changes or whatever. But one of the things I just still feel like is... I still feel like veterans are a very sadly overlooked population of rich leadership skills, talent, and capability, and just future capability, trainability.

[00:13:27] But what do you think employers maybe get wrong about veterans in terms of maybe missing that opportunity? My sense is, in a lot of ways, it's probably just a lack of understanding of what veterans bring to the table and how their skill set would be applicable and transferable into their organization. I think, generally speaking, people who have not served can appreciate that, yeah, they went and did great things

[00:13:56] and they know how to operate as a team and they know how to lead, but they may struggle to translate what they did on the battlefield or whatever into what does it mean in my environment? So that is one issue, I think. Some of it just comes down to, frankly, education. Yeah. And I think that to the extent that they can learn from maybe veterans in their own organizations and say,

[00:14:26] hey, help me understand, how did you translate your experience and what was your learning process? And so I think it's just education awareness is first and foremost the biggest thing is people don't know what they don't know. But if they can pick that up from others who have served and can help them translate that, that's a good starting point. Yeah, yeah. No, it's an excellent point. And then a big part of what I think a lot of organizations like Hire Heroes do is try to bridge that gap, right?

[00:14:55] Try to create that language connection so that they can, you know, everybody can talk to each other in the right way. But any, look, you obviously made a very different jump, right? From the world you were in and the teams to now, you know, recruiting. Any advice to veterans that are out there struggling? Because this is something I am trying to work on privately. We're going to be having a few other podcasts on the same topic because the transition process and the transition support and tools are very one size fits all. And you and I went through it at a different, you know, different time

[00:15:24] than what the folks coming out now are getting and what they're doing. It's different with every generation. But like, what do you think advice would be to folks coming out of the military right now? How to be, especially as a recruiter, how to be successful in making that pivot? Because I think it's scary for a lot of people. And sometimes it takes a long time for them to land in the right place. It does. I've got a handful of thoughts on this. The first one is, don't be ashamed or don't be bashful about asking for help.

[00:15:55] Find others who've gone before you and ask them. You don't need to go relearn the wheel because there are plenty of veterans who have had the same transitions and struggles. And talk to as many of them as you can. I'd like to think that the vast majority of veterans, if a fellow veteran whose transition reaches out to them and says, hey, I'd love to just get an informational intro with you and learn what worked for you, what didn't. And talk to as many different people as possible.

[00:16:24] That's the first thing is don't go it alone. Yeah. There's a lot of resources. You're right. There is help. Yeah. No, I love that. Community, right? That's what got us. That's what makes us successful in the military. So why not, right? Lean on it. I agree. And from that and any other resources you might have, the other thing is try to at least narrow down your search and your focus on areas that would be, as far as you know, would be of interest

[00:16:51] and where there's as much alignment as possible with your experience and what you could bring to the table with what organization you're going into. An obvious one, you know, the most obvious you could think of is if you're a pilot, go to the airlines. Well, there's a transferable skill. Yeah. But a lot of other places, you know, or maybe if you're infantry, you can go to law enforcement. I mean, those are easy. But if you want to do something entrepreneurial

[00:17:19] or going to finance or operations, whatever, well, it may not be quite as obvious unless you were a comptroller in the military or a title might be. Yeah. But I've found that if there are veterans who are in transition and reach out to me for advice, I want to be as helpful as I can. And the more you could narrow in on, here are the handful of things I've thought through,

[00:17:48] like geographically, industry, function. Like I want to go run a manufacturing site or I want to go into sales, whatever. Then that gives me a better sense of how you can, A, try to articulate your value proposition, tailor your resume, but can inform your specific tailored networking. Right. You come to me and just say, well, I think I could do anything. Like, well, they can. I don't want to boil the ocean. Like, well, give me a little bit of direction. Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:18] I'm not thoughtful about whether connections I could make or people you may reach out to. So at least try to narrow the field. And that's what helped me when I went to business school and then sub-school of consulting. At least there's a lot of value in figuring out, if nothing else, what you don't want to do. Right. I knew immediately when I heard about investment banking, I said, no, I'm out. I don't care how much money I make. You don't want to work 80 hours a week? I just, and the work didn't interest me.

[00:18:47] So as I thought about, hey, what do I want to do? There's a lot of value in determining what you don't want to do. That's the next piece of advice is at least try to have a sense of the areas of interest. Yeah. Help you in your search, and it will help those from whom you're seeking guidance to help you out as well. Yeah, agreed. I find there's a confidence issue too sometimes, and it's unnecessary, but a lot of veterans do that to themselves. They think, oh, I can't do this because I don't have that. And I'm like, listen, you are going to lap.

[00:19:15] You have the skills to lap everybody around you, and all you have to do is learn the language, the way, the systems. It's all going to work. You're going to be fine. And I think some of that is just confidence. And knowing how to talk, right? Knowing how to say the right things with what you've done and translate it, right? That's a very hard thing to do for military is translating your experience. Raise two other things that come to mind. One is learn the language of the environment you're going to. Yeah, the culture. You don't want to abandon who you are,

[00:19:44] but you want to, there's certain jargon you probably don't want to use. Roger that out here. It's like, oh, I mean, that's not how we really talk in the private sector. I know, I know. You want to start to immerse yourself into the environment where you're going. And then the other thing is that I would encourage people to be thoughtful about, like you may have, it may be a two-step process to get into the role where you think,

[00:20:14] hey, I could do that. I could go be a vice president of operations, a COO, but you know what? They may need to take a calculated risk on me. I need to go prove myself and learn how I can apply what I've done in the private sector. So sometimes you may have to swallow your pride a little bit and say, I know I could do probably the job of my boss or my boss's boss, but I'm going to take the opportunity to go prove myself and then go from there because you got to start somewhere. Sometimes if you,

[00:20:43] like if you're too, if you dig in and say, boy, no, that role is beneath me, well, then you might miss opportunities. Right. I'm not suggesting that you settle, but I think resign yourself to the fact that you may need to compromise a little bit just to take the opportunity to go prove yourself. And the last thing I would say is any organization that you join, you want to try to figure out the person I'm going to work for or anyone else, who could I latch onto

[00:21:11] who's going to be a mentor to me and help me develop? And think beyond just the first role you're taking, but what role could there be there? Or how am I setting myself up now to say, you've gotten a little bit past that chicken and egg where now I might be more attractive to another organization because I've already demonstrated my ability to adapt private sector. So those are some other things that I think are really helpful for people to keep in mind is look at it holistically, not just, I got to go take this.

[00:21:40] This is what I can do. I'm going to get that role or nothing else. Well, you might be looking for a long time if you're stubborn about it. Optimize your business with a workforce AI edge powered by Vizier. Make smarter decisions and achieve better outcomes with real-time AI insights delivered to every people leader. Explore more at visier.com. Hey, Pete, isn't this just the perfect opportunity to at least seed in this conversation and say, you know, nobody ever tries to go into HR and payroll, it seems, just land there.

[00:22:09] And so if you have the sort of skills that leaders coming from a military experience have, that is problem solving and, you know, and time urgency and, you know, detail orientation and, you know, no two challenges look the same. There's always something new and different, different, you know, and then, you know, doing something for, you know, the greater good. People get this feeling, the good feeling out of knowing you're getting everybody paid in the organization. So I'm just going to do the payroll commercial

[00:22:39] right now and say, you know, like there's, these skills are, are core skills to survival in the military. So, so yeah, nobody would ever say, why don't you go do payroll? But like, think, think about it. We're seeing people come from all over and that's what they thrive on and it feels like such a good fit. The leadership and the soft skills and the adaptability and the ability to pivot and learn and overcome things and be analytical and creative, all of that is, you know, veterans are full of that

[00:23:09] and it's perfect for the AI world. It's perfect for the future. They've got to just lean into that, right? So I love that. So what about, just quickly before we move on here, Jamie, any advice to employers that maybe aren't, aren't maybe engaging veterans yet or, or enough just for helping them be able to maybe do better with, with the veteran community? If they have interest in engaging veterans, I think the best thing you could do is educate yourself on what value

[00:23:38] they can bring so you can better understand that and then also best practices in and around not only recruiting them but setting them up for success. Yes. Go to multiple, there's multiple ways you could do that. One would be to the extent you may already have veterans within your organization. There you go. Yep. There are a lot of organizations out there. I think of the Honor Foundation for example and that's, that's very specific to the community I came from but go to them and just say, hey, as you're

[00:24:08] looking at helping veterans transition, how are you assessing their skills and what, where's, where's the fit? Yeah. And then you can also go to other organizations who've got to figure it out. There are plenty of large corporations who have very robust veterans programs and just say, hey, you guys got this figured out, help us understand. Yeah. And just, you know, don't, don't go it alone, go to those who can help you navigate the process. I just think

[00:24:38] with anything for the veterans themselves but organizations just go educate themselves proactively. Yeah. Agreed. I love that. Yeah. Look, if you're not hiring veterans, you're not thinking about veterans, I think you're really missing out on a rich skill set, a rich talent pool and a lot of opportunity there. So thank you so much for that. I love it. So look, I want to talk executive recruiting. I'm really excited about that. We all know there's a massive angst in the world with recruiting. There's a massive angst with hiring,

[00:25:09] finding talent, finding skills, all of that. Is it the case in the C-suite? Like what's the state of executive hiring right now? What's going on there? Generally speaking, there's a cyclicality I think to executive hiring and it's been a little bit sluggish lately. Partly I just, this is the world according to me, but anecdotally markets, organizations and people don't really like uncertainty. Yeah. And when there's uncertainty from a geopolitical or a macroeconomic

[00:25:38] perspective, it tends to slow down some of the churn. Organizations are going to maybe measure twice and cut once before they think about either creating a new role in a new market that can slow down the executive hiring. And then on the other hand, you've got executives who they may be very well, they're doing very well where they are right now. Yeah. And they're going to be very selective about what they consider.

[00:26:08] and if there's uncertainty about what the market may have in store in the next six to nine months, well, they may be less inclined to entertain opportunities. And that just throws sand in the gears. There's activity. I think it's a little subdued right now compared to what it would normally be, especially coming out of an election year, but that's at a more macro level. I think the market is good, but it may not be as robust as it could be. We'll see what happens in the next few months. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

[00:26:37] there's this big skills shortage, obviously, in the regular workforce. Part of that is massive technology advancements. Part of that is, you know, work is changing. The type of work we're doing is changing probably because of technology. There's a huge, there's a lot of macros and micros to this. Population, you know, size is going down, all those things. But do you see, like, are you guys struggling to find executives? Is there a skills gap in the C-suite where it's like, we can't find enough executives at this point? No, I think, at the end of the day,

[00:27:07] there is talent out there. The roles that we work on, our goal on every search is to give our clients several good candidates to choose from. You know, so at the end of the day, the biggest differentiators come back to one of the things you mentioned before, this notion of soft skills. Yeah. you can find people all day long who have on paper the experiences and the qualifications you're looking for, but you got to find, hey, is the timing right? What's the motivation?

[00:27:38] What's the real fit? And you determine, do they have the intangibles and the soft skills that our clients are looking for that are going to set them up for success? So, at the executive level, well, in a lot of times, it's very much a function of the attractiveness of the opportunity you're representing. Yeah, you could be the best recruiter in the world, but if the opportunity you're representing isn't that

[00:28:07] compelling, well, you can't force candidates to have interest in something that's just not appealing to them. So, to the extent we're fortunate enough to have clients who have really interesting roles, well, then, usually it's not a challenge having a shortage of candidates who are at least qualified in paper. It's more who would be the good cultural fit? Is the timing right? Are we affordable? Those are the things typically worked out to land the plane. Agreed.

[00:28:38] Do you see any sort of trends taking shape in the C-suite or any of the executive level as far as just kind of what's the talent that's coming? Because I wonder sometimes if companies are doing a good enough job developing their talent from within to raise to that level, right? The succession and the development. Yeah, this is a little bit of speculation on my part. It remains to be seen. But if you think about the pendulum, COVID, post-COVID, you know, on the one hand, it was a net positive

[00:29:07] that organizations demonstrated their adaptability in COVID. Like, hey, and technology obviously came to the forefront here, but a lot of organizations by necessity figured out how they could operate and keep things going in a predominantly remote environment. But that's a point in time. On a sustained basis, you know, the pendulum has swung back a little bit more. There's some where thou shalt be in the office, there's some a little bit

[00:29:37] more of a hybrid model, which is good, but I think it probably remains to be seen what might happen when it comes to developing the next generation of talent. And by that, I mean, those of us who are farther along in our career have already had the benefit of having been in the office, had the mentors, the relationships get the visibility, such that you could ascend to a leadership role of more seniority

[00:30:07] responsibility. But now, if you've got more and more of those who aspire to be senior leaders, who are not getting as much interaction with their counterparts or the leaders of their teams in the office, might they not develop the leadership skills that they would need to be successful? Or to, frankly, let's face it, at the end of the day, skills and capabilities should be most of the time table stakes for ascension

[00:30:36] or senior roles. But you also need sponsorship and mentorship and how are you going to differentiate who gets the vice president role versus another person? Well, frankly, if you're someone who's in the office more, you probably have a distinct advantage versus someone who's out of sight, out of mind on an island or otherwise. And so I think that will be, I'll be interested to see how that plays out. But then also, you and I talked about this a little bit before, is a new skill set in when you do

[00:31:06] get to that leadership position, how do you effectively manage a team who some are here, some are remote, how do you try to have a level playing field, how do you try to build rapport in a team oriented environment? That's a skill set that's going to need to be developed and I'm not sure how that's going to play out. Yeah, I would agree. I've said this many, many times, I think there's a skills gap in the C-suite for handling hybrid workforces and I think a lot of these executives, when they fail to do that,

[00:31:36] they blame the workforce instead of their leadership team and themselves and try to fix that. It's like, oh, well, you're not being productive so come back to the office or whatever. Well, maybe you're just not leading them properly. I think there's going to be some of that reconciliation happening with younger talent that's coming in that are used to doing those things and are used to being led and leading in a hybrid environment. I have a bit of a trend to test with you. It's been my observation that we have a lot of leaders that have been in the private sector

[00:32:05] that rise to some of the biggest organizations possible, right? You're always growing your portfolio of services and leadership. And so they go on to be top leaders in the Fortune 100, Fortune 50, Fortune 5. And as they hit a certain age, then I find many of them jumping into a senior leadership and executive leadership role instead in a much smaller organization because, hey, they've proven themselves. Big fish,

[00:32:35] small pond. They have a lot to bring to the table to a smaller fish. And it probably offers some better work-life balance and different challenges, but maybe not at the same level. Do you ever see any of that? Have you been seeing any of that, Jamie, at all? Well, I'd say even throughout my career, I've seen this happen with a lot of executives across a wide range of functions companies, where they built their brand and their capabilities

[00:33:05] on what we call academy companies. Those well-known companies, they're well-known for developing talent, but then they say, you know, for whatever reason, maybe it's not a big company person, or like you said, they want to be bigger fish, smaller pond, a little bit different lifestyle. They'll say, I'm glad I learned what I did, but I want to go apply these best practices in a smaller medium-sized organization, have broader scope of responsibilities, maybe a little less bureaucracy in politics,

[00:33:35] you name it. But that's something I've seen consistently throughout my career. You mentioned public versus private equity, but of course, it's one thing to be able to want to do it, but to adapt to an organization where you need to be more nimble, maybe do more with less, that's always an area that you want to try to vet to the extent you can, because some people may be willing to do it, but there's an array

[00:34:04] of abilities. Some adjust well and some just don't. They're too used to the big machine that makes things happen, and so that is always the calculated risk that you consider if you're pulling someone directly from big to small, they may indicate they want to do it, but do they really have the adaptability to be successful. You had a great quote on one of your posts, Jamie, and I'm going to share your LinkedIn so everyone can connect with you, but you had a post that

[00:34:33] I think embodies what recruiting should be today, and I'm kind of calling it a paradigm shift that I think it's funny to me or just odd to see civilian companies or private companies obviously waking up to this of, and you said hiring isn't just about filling roles, it's about building the right team, which I would interpret as skills and culture to carry your organization into the future, and I think that's so true, I think there's still a lot of organizations that are just hiring to fill seats, they're not necessarily building, you know, I think about the A team, I watched the A team when I was a kid

[00:35:03] growing up in the 80s, right, they all had a skill, right, one was really good with planes, one could do this, one could do that, like that's the military, that's what those guys came from, right, like that's how we staff teams, right, we're preparing people with the skills we need to be able to go and accomplish the mission, and I would argue there's a lot of companies that still aren't hiring to the mission, they're still out there hiring to the moment, which I think is insanity, but what are your thoughts on that, do you think we need a paradigm shift, or do you think we're getting forced into a paradigm shift that does center around the idea of more skill-based teams versus

[00:35:33] just roles, right? My observation is that a lot of the clients I've worked with fortunately think about it that way, so more often than not when we're recruiting for a role, the conversation revolves around not just, okay, what does this person need to do to be successful in this role, but how can they fit into the organization more broadly, the team, what might be opportunities for them beyond this role,

[00:36:02] and frankly, any really good candidate is thinking about it that way as well. It's not, it's really not transactional, for the most part, I mean, nothing, there are times where it's like, I need this person now for the next two years to fill this position, then we're going to sell the company, that's maybe a bit of a different animal, but for organizations, especially when I work with a lot of large publicly traded companies, they're constantly, you know, they should be constantly thinking about where are we today, where we want to

[00:36:32] be down the road, succession planning, a bench, and, you know, so I just think that's best practice is to be thinking about it that way. We're not just putting in a puzzle piece now, but they're looking beyond just the role they're hiring for. I think so, right? Again, I think hiring and staffing to the mission and preparing for that long-term goal probably would bode much more of a long-game outcome, right, than just the momentary filling some position or whatever, so,

[00:37:02] yeah. The other thing I thought was pretty interesting, like, look, I think there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of misconception with executive recruiters. I think there's a lot of that headhunter sort of mentality, but I know my experience has been very different. But talk about that because you mentioned once in another post about executive recruiters being force multipliers versus a replacement for recruiting teams, and I thought that was really excellent, right? Yeah. And I think that's true with any HR service or anything you go out and do today, it should be

[00:37:32] about amplifying your capabilities, amplifying your investments, you know, extending what you've already created and making yourself even that much better, right? So talk about that. Like, talk about that misconception a little bit, I think, that people might have about what executive recruiters are and aren't. If I could oversimplify it, ideally, I prefer to be in relationships with our clients that are just purely transactional. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we are a vendor, if you want to use that phrase,

[00:38:01] but we don't want to, I'd rather not be considered just a vendor. And what does that mean? That means that we're not, like, competing with the internal talent acquisition team. Our job is to make them look good. And our job is to, you know, sometimes there's very specific reasons, like whether it's a really highly confidential role, or if, then it makes more sense for a third party to be doing some outreach, or if it's such a unique, different position that they've not, they don't really have

[00:38:31] the experience or it's not right in the wheelhouse of their competency, or frankly, if they're just too busy and they want to offload the tougher searches and a headache for us, to us, excuse me, what we're happy to take those on. but it also manifests itself in being a client being able to reach out and just say, hey, we're thinking about this role, we're thinking about a change in organizational structure, or what

[00:39:00] skill set you're looking for in a particular area, and I'm not going to say, yeah, I'll talk to you, but I'm going to charge you for my time, right? You just don't do it. Yeah, here's what we've seen in the market, here's how you might think about it, and it could be value-add by helping them understand things beyond just the context of putting a butt in a seat, if I use that phrase, and that's what I think about being forced multipliers, is being a partner,

[00:39:31] it sounds corny, being a partner and consultative, as opposed to just playing fetch. Yeah, I mean, aside from the staffing part of it, are you guys, you are consulting, right? I mean, a lot of ways, do you do that? Do you help companies, do you consult them and help them with their design of their executive recruiting and that sort of thing? Jam Search, we don't have that as a specific offering for our firms to do. Sometimes we'll do just more of a general, hey, whether it's reporting structure, how might you organize the IT team, for example,

[00:40:01] or more of just a thought partner, because that's what we do, but not like, hey, okay, here's the invoice, we're going to charge you for... Yeah, you're not trying to do org design and a whole heavy lift there. You feel like less of a vendor when you get asked things like that, because you say, oh, hey, they value my opinion, I'm happy to provide it. How do you feel, what advice would you give, or just, I guess, tips for companies that are maybe

[00:40:31] haven't worked with an executive recruiter? Like, how do you get the most out of that? What's the best way to sort of get started, I guess, if you will, or is it opportunistic really? Or should it be? I think the best thing is to be as transparent as you can be, be clear about your expectations, over communicate, and be transparent, and expect that from your partner. Okay, here's why we're doing this, here's what we're looking for, and work together to set yourselves up for success up front.

[00:41:01] Do the heavy lifting up front the other day, and that makes a world of difference. If you don't, and you can get down the path, and you're not set up for success, it's just going to lead to a lot of frustration. Yeah, understood, understood. Well, look, I know we're getting close on our time, and we all have other engagements we've got to get to, and I could go on and on. I know I say that to a lot of our guests, but look, man, what are some of the things that you maybe learned from a talent management perspective in the teams that you feel like employers

[00:41:30] might be overlooking or really should be embracing? I've mentioned a few that I learned, but what about you? Any things that you've come away with that you draw back on from your time in the military? Yeah, I think I'm just a big believer in the apprenticeship model. Yes. People learn by doing. You give them the opportunity to, and you push them outside of the comfort zone, and you allow people the opportunity to try things and maybe have small failures and stumbles,

[00:42:00] but not fall on their face. Yeah. Stretch. Yeah, you stretch them. Just because that's how you, well, in the military, of course, Pete, we know we have a set of orders, you're there for a period of time, and you're gone. It's not necessarily the same in the private sector, but if you want to scale, if you want to improve as an organization, well then, how is that going to happen? You develop the next generation of talent, you kind of

[00:42:30] work yourself out of a job, and you take on other responsibilities. I feel like that maybe isn't happening or is encouraged to happen as much in the private sector as I might like. My sense is sometimes there can be leaders, senior leaders who, or leaders in general, who get comfortable and they don't want to push themselves out of the comfort zone, they want to stay with where they are, and they're less inclined to develop competition for

[00:43:00] themselves. I just think that's not necessarily, to my personal view, not a healthy way to look at things if you want to have a dynamic growing organization, an evolving organization, scifle people and not give them opportunities. I like to really think about things from an abundance, not a scarcity perspective. I feel like that mentality, I would like to see more of that in the private sector. We didn't have a choice in the

[00:43:30] military, and having a little bit more of that mindset I think would be healthy. Just relating that to another recent conversation that we held, Pete, is the idea that I think in the military you have a definitive period of time for that, right? So you're developing and you're growing these other skills, and it's not instant. And as corporate America starts to embrace internal mobility and let's let people test or try on different things, I feel like there's this tendency to want that to be short and immediate and short and immediate

[00:44:00] blasts. And so figuring out what is the right amount of time that you have to give somebody to flex and learn in a new role or in a new skill is not a healthy balance that we've wrapped our heads around yet in the learning and development space in HR. Agreed. Yeah. This has been fantastic, Jamie. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you taking the time. I do got to ask you one thing. I want to ask you something personal, something fun. I know you wrestled at Navy. Thank you. Thank you for

[00:44:29] your service. Thank you for all that. That's a grueling way to go to college, I got to tell you. But I want to ask you, did you watch the heavyweight NCAA championship the other night between Wyatt Hendrickson and Gable Stevenson? Amazing, right? Did you watch that? I did. I was actually at the tournament Thursday, Friday. were you? Okay, in Philly. Home over the weekend and I saw that match. Epic. It was amazing. The lesson to be learned

[00:44:59] is you always have to be top of your game. You're the best. People are going to be coming after you. You have to continue to stay on top is really hard to do. There's nobody who's unbeatable. I appreciated that Hendrickson and I think by all accounts was a big underdog. He didn't think about himself as an underdog. He sure didn't seem to. It was a testament

[00:45:27] to self-confidence, drive, work, and commitment. It was one of the more exciting wrestling matches I've seen in the long time. It was incredible. If anybody out there doesn't know what I'm talking about, I'm not the hugest wrestling fan. I'm more MMA, but I do have the utmost respect for wrestling. Basically, the NCAA championships were recently in Philly. Penn State, I think, won the team championship again for the 12th time or something. I don't know. Gable Stevens is probably one of the most sought after athletes in all of anything. They've tried

[00:45:56] him out on a couple of NFL teams. He has a developmental deal with the WWE to do professional wrestling. I know the MMA, UFC is dying to have him. He was largely expected to win this. He is a beast. He is. He is a tremendous athlete. It was an epic match for sure. If you haven't checked it out, even if you're not into wrestling, go check this out. Tremendous, tremendous event. Anyway, I had to ask you that. Thank you so much, Jamie. Tell me, where can we connect with you? I know LinkedIn and we'll share that.

[00:46:26] Where else? Where can we get in touch with you? LinkedIn is probably the best place. You can go to Jam Search website and find me. That's where I spend my time. I'm physically based in Dallas. I travel quite a bit, but if anyone wanted to find me 50% of the time or so, I'm in Dallas. I love it. Thank you so much for your service. Thank you for your time. This has been fantastic. We'll see everybody very, very soon.