Searching for Talent in a New Economy 

Laura Gassner Otting, Founder and President, & Katherine E. Jacobs, Ph.D., Vice President and COO

Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group LLC

 

It has been widely reported that the mission-driven sector is facing an epic shortage of talent, the likes of which it has never before seen.  Compounding this problem are the grim realities of a faltering economy that is forcing nonprofits, higher education institutions, and the public sector to stretch hard-raised dollars farther than ever.  The old methods of recruiting top leadership are costly, and the worldwide economic downturn is making that expense harder to bear even for the most important searches.  

Across all sectors, organizations are developing tools for doing business better, faster, and cheaper to ensure that the quality of their services are not compromised in even the most challenging of economic circumstances.  As an executive search and professional development firm dedicated to building the capacity of the mission-driven sector and its leaders, Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group has been at the cutting edge of the consulting field from its inception as a “new economy” search firm that merges the wisdom of generations of search professionals with the innovation of powerful new technologies and efficient business practices.  

A New Economy Search Firm  

The process of creating our new economy firm was simple, yet meaningful.  We asked ourselves two fundamental questions about what we believed should change in our sector:   

In an era where knowledge is readily accessible to anyone with an internet connection, why should only the largest, wealthiest nonprofit organizations be able to hire the brightest minds in executive search to address their talent needs?  

With mission-driven organizations facing greater community need and fewer supporting resources than ever before, how can we leave our clients stronger, better, smarter, and with richer capacity than we found them?   

The answers became clear.  We threw out the “old economy” search firm model and created something new:  a firm dedicated to bringing the quality and expertise of generations of search professionals into a new era in which knowledge is free, technology enables faster, better, and cheaper networking than ever before, and the commitment to leaving the world a better place than you’ve found it extends to all aspects of professional service.  Old economy search firms hoard their knowledge, offering their clients a black box, often in the form of enormous databases, into which you pour your desired qualifications and out of which pops, you hope, the perfect candidate.  We believe this “black box” approach builds organizational capacity on only one side of the relationship-- the consultant’s side-- and does so at the client’s expense.  Our new economy model values transparency, eschewing the magical omnipotence of traditional search firms, and instead partnering with clients to offer them our expertise while also acknowledging a shared evolution of learning that includes deep consideration of the challenges ahead for the organization, fresh research of the relevant networks for the position, and a tailored approach to the ways we can share the process to both keep costs down and offer training that will enable the organization to re-engage the process without consultant costs in the future.     

We also revisited some long-held assumptions about infrastructure and came to understand that wisdom, exceptional service, and deep and diverse candidate development no longer require the confines of bricks, cubicles or borders.  Although geographically spread from Seattle to Siberia, our team is united virtually both through a shared infrastructure built from technology and our personal dedication to the mission-driven sector.  We maintain real-time virtual office space that enables us to be there for our clients around the clock.  This allows us to be everywhere at once and to broaden our networks in the regions where we each live while uniting in our commitment to improving the mission-driven sector both in our professional and personal lives.  Our clients see this innovation not only in our ability to offer exceptional service and networks at all times, but also in a bottom line free of the overhead of exorbitant, albeit glamorous, downtown office space.   

In the end, what matters most is that our clients benefit more from our new economy approach.  Clients accustomed to paying for old economy models, old service delivery options, or old solutions assigned to their unique needs are often surprised at first by our flexibility and business design.  As we explain the stages of our typical search for them, however, the logic of the new economy model becomes clear.  From our flexibility at the start of any engagement, tailoring search offerings to a client’s budget, needs, and capacity, all the way through to the search end game, when all final salary negotiations are done free from the conflict of interest tensions that are inherent in traditional search firms’ fee structures, our hourly model is fully transparent.  Moreover, at every step of the way we build the capacity of our clients through interweaving training, teaching, or the odd tip here or there into the work that we do.  We measure our success in knowing that while our clients may want to use our services again – and many do – that they could also stand on their own and do better search in-house than they could before they hired us.  

Looking to the Future:  Potential Lessons for Professional Service in the New Economy

As we have developed we have learned some unexpected lessons, lessons that can and should be adopted more broadly by other professional services firms within our sector and beyond.  First, new economy firms can afford better staff.  Without the overhead of our less technology-savvy competitors, we can charge our clients less than our old economy counterparts.  At the same time, we are able to pay our employees better than industry standard.  In this scenario, everyone wins.  Second, new economy firms understand traditional corporate charitable giving but also explore new, more integrated methods to generate good-will while giving back, such as company building activities around service projects, corporate charitable match programs to encourage philanthropy among their employees, flextime or time release programs for their employees to be more actively engaged in their communities, and donations of knowledge and time to organizations in need.  Next, new economy firms can offer increased flexibility to address the ever-challenging issues of work/life balance, thereby generating a more highly motivated, more dedicated, and happier staff.  Utilizing virtual management tools may be a key to bringing back into the workforce mothers and fathers, graduate students and retirees, the sandwich generation and encore careerists by offering an employment proposition that is, like their needs, nontraditional. Finally, new economy firms are socially responsible.  As a virtual firm, we have no carbon emission-producing commutes, we pay no extra air conditioning and heating costs for empty overnight office space, and we reduce the need for redundant and difficult to recycle computer equipment.   Unlike many companies, as we grow we make the world greener.     

Lifting the Veil  

In summary, the pressures, challenges, and opportunities of a new economy are causing organizations on both sides of the client/service relationship to find ways to do business with each other better, faster, and cheaper than before.  Clients who were once satisfied with the veiled accountability of old economy models are growing increasingly unsatisfied.  In the nonprofit sector, lifting this veil is becoming particularly important as organizations find their funders and stakeholders more and more interested in measurably growing internal capacity to take on future talent development. The sector has gotten smarter and more sophisticated, and its service providers should too.  Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group is excited to be at the forefront of this change, setting new expectations for the professional service industry and the executive search industry in particular.  Our clients deserve no less.