Bill Epifanio - Onboarding: Make the Right Offer, and Closing the Right Sale

Bill Epifanio

Welcome to a special Inside Recruiting Channel edition of Total Picture Radio, with Peter Clayton reporting. When George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut set out to write Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time (affiliate link to Amazon.com),  they invited a select group of experts to share their knowledge in the onboarding process.  In this special series here on Total Picture Radio, we'll be interviewing, in depth, the individuals chosen by the authors to contribute their experience, expertise, and perspective. 

The Experts Series — Onboarding is sponsored by PrimeGenesis. Founded in 2002, PrimeGenesis' mission is singular: use executive onboarding and facilitated transition acceleration to help new leaders and their teams deliver sustainable, Better Results Faster. Based in Stamford, Ct. PrimeGenesis is led by senior operating executives and organizational development specialists with deep and varied business experience.

This is the fifth Guest Expert podcast in the series. Bill Epifanio contributed to Chapter 6 of Onboarding: titled Create a Powerful Slate of Potential Candidates

Please Note: We've tried to schedule the interviews in this series sequentially, as presented in the book. Because of scheduling conflicts, that will not always be possible.

New: Full Transcript now available.

Bill Epifanio: Interview Transcript:

When George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut set out to write Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time, they invited a select group of experts to share their knowledge in the onboarding process. In this special series here on Total Picture Radio, we'll be interviewing, in depth, the individuals chosen by the authors to contribute their experience, expertise, and perspective.

Welcome to a special Inside Recruiting channel edition of Total Picture Radio. This is Peter Clayton reporting.

The Onboarding Expert Experts Series is sponsored by PrimeGenesis. Founded in 2002, PrimeGenesis mission is singular, use executive onboarding and facilitated transition acceleration to help new leaders and their teams deliver sustainable, better results faster. Based in Stamford, Connecticut, PrimeGenesis is led by senior operating executives and organizational development specialists with deep and varied business experience.

Visit Prime Genesis on the web at www.primegenesis.com.

Bill Epifanio is the managing partner with Stratis, a premier human capital consulting and search firm specializing in clean technology, renewable energy and financial technology sectors. Bill serves technology and financial services clients seeking to fully capitalize on the strategic capabilities of technology, recruiting leadership to implement innovative processes and services while negotiating integration issues. Drawing on career experience and growing a global business, he closely collaborates with clients to structure global teams. Bill contributed to Chapter 6 of Onboarding: Making the Right Offer, and Closing the Right Sale – the Right Way.

Bill, welcome to Total Picture Radio.

Bill: Thanks Peter. It’s a pleasure to join you today. Peter: The bold type in your chapter contribution reads, Bill Epifanio: On Closing The Sale which brings us to an interesting point Bill, that being overlooked in a lot of the mainstream media, there is still a war for talent for A players, am I right?

Bill: Absolutely. I believe you’re right. I’d say there’s still a war for top talent because, in my opinion, there’s always been that war and I expect that as long as the global economy continues to grow, there will always be such a war. I’d also say that in most cases, employers have to keep in mind that that top talent that they’re seeking is already happily and successfully employed.

Peter: And to that point, you being an executive search recruiter, I’ve heard from a number of people that it’s very difficult in this economy, what’s going today to get people to change jobs if they are happily employed and feel relatively safe within their current job, is that what you’re finding?

Bill: You know, it is – it really depends on what the situations are there. Specifically, I believe that it is more challenging but it doesn’t paralyze the entire recruiting process. All but one placement I have made most of which are CEO and CFO level placements started with my phone call to a candidate during which here she proclaimed assuredly that they were both happy in their current position and uninterested in looking at anything new, this is the recruiter’s challenge. You’ve got to turn that no into enough of a discussion to highlight the attractive differences that the new opportunity offers. Ultimately, I find that the scale, the scope, the trajectory and some other cultural factors for the new opportunity must cumulatively attract your otherwise happily employed candidate. Financial security of the employer is always a factor in moving employed executives around and given these recessionary times we’re in now, this is certainly more important a criterion than there ever has been before.

Peter: Yeah, because we’re not only just talking about a job and job security, we’re talking about perhaps someone having to relocate and sell their present house which, depending on where you’re living, can be very challenging as well.

Bill: Exactly. The relocation process is a challenge and what’s interesting is in my recent placements that did involve relocation, the issue is not so much the house, believe or not; the issue became the schooling arrangements for the children. Most of these executives have found very exclusive, terrific private schools for their children and they view pulling them out of those schools is a real barrier and so it increases the perceived risks of the job change and also often delays any relocation.

Peter: You work in the areas of clean technology, renewable energy, and financial technology, can you tell us a little bit about these areas and what kind of opportunities exist there today?

Bill: Sure, I’ll start with financial technology. FinTech is a very broad field that includes everything from automatic telling machines to financial software to exchanges and trading systems, and it’s this last sector that I have been focused on primarily because of the significant changes that are occurring in that area. Put simply, trading of various financial instruments has rapidly evolved from the open outcry trading that was typical on the floor of all exchanges specially of New York Stock Exchange years ago to first a more point and click electronic trading approach and now increasingly to algorithmically driven and high-frequency trading where really most of the trading volume is executed by computers at speeds no human could match.

As you can imagine, just hearing that progression, this represents a true revolution and it fundamentally has changed the skill sets necessary for not only strategic advantage but also success in that field. So it’s been an interesting one in which to work.

The other area I’m working in broadly, as you mentioned, is CleanTech and renewable energy, and I think between the two sectors I would certainly say that most exciting of the two is certainly CleanTech. I would say that for the following reasons. Again, it’s a broad category and what I’m referring to here is primarily renewable energy sources like solar and wind. I’d include water filtration and water sector along with that and lastly, I would include also smart power metering. As everyone knows CleanTech has gotten quite a bit of media attention and a lot of stimulus support via the Obama administration.

Also, CleanTech is certainly one of the largest recipients of both venture capital and private equity investment over the last 12 to 24 months. Clean energy alone, based on my numbers here, attracted more than $3 billion of US investment in 2008 and globally if you look at the combined venture and private equity investments in this sector, they totaled over $13.5 billion. So there’s a lot of money going into that sector and along with that money, are inevitably upgrades to management teams and so it’s an attractive sector from the recruiting perspective.

Peter: Back to your point that these are relatively new industries and new types of skill sets that are required to fill these jobs, where do you find executive level leadership for your assignments?

Bill: Very good question. Generally speaking, that answer depends on the size and the stage of the company you’re recruiting for and that’s the case across all industries and believe it or not, in CleanTech, for instance, there is already some big players but since most of my clients are entrepreneurial growth companies backed by venture capital or private equity firms, I typically start my search looking for talented executives among my client’s competitors and next, I’ll investigate adjacent and related sectors and the rule here really is that you have to be creative as a recruiter and really what I’ve learned also is not to ever underestimate the added value of that domain expertise and also relevant industry contacts can have that the new hire can deliver to their new employer usually are very valuable and shouldn’t be overlooked.

I’d say most importantly wherever I find a successful candidate, I’m seeking executives that really have demonstrated entrepreneurial success. It’s that entrepreneurial component that I find is key. I’m, frankly, not interested in repotting a terrifically smart and talented and successful investment banker who has never run a company or a division into a senior role of a growth company. It’s just too big of a risk.

Similarly, I wouldn’t want a successful CEO who’s never worked at a smaller entrepreneurial setting because there you’ll find that the transplant shock and the cultural mismatch lead to problems down the road.

In summary, really, if a candidate can’t show me demonstrated success at a company that’s both culturally similar and I’d say comparably entrepreneurial and high growth, I tend to keep looking elsewhere.

Peter: I’d like to revisit the Onboarding book for just a minute because you wrote about something I find very interesting which has to do with back to this whole idea of closing the sale. Once you’ve made an offer to a candidate, how long should you expect before getting an answer back?

Bill: Very interesting question and there’s much debate about this. As I suggested in my section of George and Mary’s Onboarding book, I believe strongly that one week should suffice, and now my one week deadline is assuming that the employer has already, before that deadline started and before the offer is actually made, spend supporting the candidate’s reasonable due diligence efforts, I think less time than a week and an employer risks appearing desperate and, frankly, can be unreasonable.

I think that more time than a week – and everything a little bit plus or minus; it’s not exactly a week - but more time than that starts to get me worried and I start thinking the following – why should a leading executive and as such an important decision maker in his or her firm needs so much time to commit. An effective executive can’t be indecisive, taking too long on closing this stage of the process generally doesn’t bode well for future job performance and especially, if you’re in a dynamic and growing environment.

While hiring new talent is a delicate matchmaking process, you are running a business and you can’t wait indefinitely. As I’ve said several times and I may repeat in our discussion today, how the closing of a candidate unfolds tends to be unique to each deal and to each offer but it tells you a lot about the likely fit of that candidate in your organization.

Peter: I think that’s a unique perspective and I’m glad you brought up this whole idea of due diligence because in my interview with George Bradt, he recommends giving a candidate time to due diligence, allowing for time to meet with peers and direct reports and talk with those who have held the position and former employees, what do you think of this tactic Bill, because what George told me was that a lot of executive recruiters think he’s nuts.

Bill: {laughs} Well, to start, I have the highest regard for George and despite that, I respectfully disagree with him and I’ll tell you why. It’s difficult to criticize George’s proposal from an idealistic perspective. From my experience, I feel the approach is a bit too kumbaya if you want to call it that and overly accommodating and I’ll tell you why. I have several reasons.

First is I feel strongly that a talented, aggressive, and an interested candidate should muster the resourcefulness to do some corporate espionage and research on their own, and all of that investigation and all that research can be done in parallel with the earlier stages of the recruiting process.

Remember, every interview prior to an offer – and they are generally several of them – affords any candidate the opportunity to ask some tough and probing questions exactly along the lines you’ve been talking about here and George mentions. In cases where a candidate wants greater breadth or depth of that kind of input, I would recommend that they work their own networks, possibly with the help of LinkedIn or other tools. So that’s issue #1.

Issue #2 two is this whole issue begs a very important question in my mind and that is how much time should an organization sacrifice to the recruiting process? Whatever the answer, there is a reasonable limit there and you have to ask yourself whether you’re approaching that.

Lastly, I would say that one rarely has all the information they’d ideally like before making a decision. Unless the recruiting interview process in a particular cases and really gravely shortened the rush for other reasons, I’d say a candidate should have been given adequate opportunity to get the necessary information that they need and also to make a decision. So in a way, it’s a test but, you know, life isn’t ideal when we don’t want to push things to an absurd limit here.

Peter: I have a perception and you can tell whether I’m right or I’m wrong and since you have worked with large fortune 500 companies down to start ups with venture cap, I would guess that the smaller organizations are much quicker to pull the trigger, much faster to make the offers than the large fortune 500 companies?

Bill: They absolutely are and that’s a good sign for them, if they weren’t, you’d have big trouble. What you find in the larger organizations is there’s a drift as an organization grows. There’s a drift toward consensus decision making of variety of types but certainly in the recruiting process, that is very common.

So if you go to certain firms, in recruiting certain firms like I have, such as Goldman Sachs is a great example, getting a job at Goldman involves many, many interviews. You need a buy in from a lot of people. Now, the smaller firm doesn’t have to worry about that because there are not as many people in the first place to worry about but you do find that a part of the smaller earlier stage companies is a responsiveness by need by definition and that expresses itself in the recruiting process as well.

Peter: When you are ready to make an offer to an individual, and I want to again kind of circle back to make sure the audience understands what we’re talking about here and what you do is you recruit for a very senior level executive positions within organizations, we’re talking about rock stars. People who are really, really at the top of their game and are highly sought after. We’re not talking midlevel positions going in and filling AVP roles, we’re talking about mission critical roles within organizations, people going in and taking a leadership position immediately within an organization and being expected to start producing. So when you make that offer to that rock star, do you prefer doing it in person, over the phone, or through a FedEx envelope – how do you go about this?

Bill: Good question. In my experience, offering someone a position regardless of the seniority of that position, in person has become a rare and somewhat an anachronistic ritual. You know, it sounds like a wonderful thing to do but it just isn’t happening as much these days given everyone’s schedules and the phone works just fine. So my answer would be this, I’d make a couple of suggestions.

One is an employer really can phone a candidate very compellingly and sincerely offer them a position, however they should have a formal offer letter written, signed, and quite frankly in a FedEx envelope ready to go before making the call and the reason is simple, you must formalize the offer simultaneously and that’s important to maintain your closing momentum.

Any delay between the offer call and the candidate’s receipt of a formal offer letter doesn’t look good (1); (2) it’s a mistake because generally speaking, it serves to make the candidate nervous. The following statement comes to my mind as this is one of the rules I’ve kind of stumbled across in my dealings, I feel strongly that in the absence, and this is just a general statement, I believe that in the absence of information or during any lapse of communication, people generally tend to dream things up and their dreams are almost always negative. So, people can debate that statement all they want but the fact is whether or not you agree with it, I feel strongly you never want to give your new hire any reason to worry and so that’s why I stress that an offer over the phone is great but it should immediately – they should have the offer letter in hand the next morning.

Peter: I agree with that communication statement because I feel that specially in this kind of market, you need to over communicate, and it’s not just to people you’re making job offers to, is to your employees to let them know what’s going on because you’re absolutely right, an absence of communication, everybody is going to – the wheels start turning and it’s usually negatives thoughts that come up. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going on… we haven’t heard anything… and something really it must be bad…” you know.

Bill: It’s true, and it’s surprising how many companies forget that and they’ll make an offer and then some delay will occur between getting the letter out because someone has to read it and someone has to write and someone has to check it and it’s really not good.

Peter: One piece of advice you share in Onboarding – blame the market if you need to make a quick decision. Bill, isn’t there some urgency to every new hire today? I mean isn’t every new hire, especially in an executive level a mission critical placement?

Bill: Generally it is and again, the human nature aspect of this is interesting to me and that is, in my experience, once a company decides upon seeking any new talent, they wanted it yesterday, it’s classic. They take a long time thinking but then once they decide, yes we need someone here, they want it instantly. They want that talent to appear. So yes, in most cases the urgency is there, either actual or perceived in all these new hiring situations.

So that said, I’d strongly recommend that an employer really refrain from pursuing a candidate for an answer. Again, generally speaking, signaling desperation like that isn’t good and it may appear to be unreasonable so that’s where I go back to saying give the candidate a week and if you don’t get an answer by then, I would say you probably have other issues to worry about. Perhaps your offer was too weak or didn’t accommodate all the issues your successful candidate needed addressed. It could be the candidate’s indecision, like we talked about earlier, and I think lastly, who knows, it could be other complicating factors. Whether it’s a relocation issue, there could be personal challenges that have cropped up, who knows, these days there could be competing offers that you’re dealing with. So, it’s good to push things along.

Peter: If you were going to write your segment in Onboarding today, would you add anything or change anything that you wrote?

Bill: There is one thing I would change. I’d expand upon a lead comment I made in a section and I would entitle it the Kool-Aid Gap, actually and I’ll explain why.

Once an employer makes an offer and arguably even before they formally make that offer, they’re role flips from being a buyer to a seller and frankly, some employers forget this and that’s why I call it the Kool-Aid Gap because they’ve consumed a lot of their own Kool-Aid, but they’re assuming others had as well. Employers have often mistakenly assumed their companies are so wonderful that no additional selling is necessary. I’ve heard “Like it should be obvious how special this opportunity is and how great the financial upside will be.” I mean I’ve had presidents of companies come to me and say that they’re going to make tens and millions on this. And it’s not they might make them tens and millions, they will make them.

Obviously what you find is opportunities don’t magically sell themselves and as an employer, you’ve got to really… I’d urge any employer and anyone seeking a talent to put and keep your sales head on at the appropriate time in the closing process and never assume that your candidate sees your company through your eyes and just to suggest that people stay on their toes that way.

Peter: I think that’s really great advice because if you look at what’s happened over the last year and the number of what were assumed to be sterling organizations that have imploded and filed bankruptcy, everyone is questioning no matter how large an organization is, the saying is, is it too big to fail.

Bill: Exactly.

Peter: I really appreciate your time today Bill, and this has really been a fascinating conversation. In closing, is there anything you would like to summarize or restate or suggest to our audience?

Bill: Finding top talent is a challenging and, frankly, exciting process that companies continually go through. So I would encourage employers to keep several things in mind, several rules that I would distill from some of my thoughts about closing the sale here and that is (1) I’d encourage them not to assume that the candidate sees the company the same way as they do.

Next, to be sure to give successful candidates reasonable opportunity to get the information they need and to make a good decision and it’s that good decision that’s very important. I mean you don’t want someone rushing to your firm for the wrong reasons and only to find after they’ve left their last job and started with your firm, that it was a mistake for reasons you just couldn’t understand or they didn’t understand. Time is important, despite everything I said about the one week time from offer to an expected answer.

The third point I would say is make your offer verbally followed simultaneously with a written offer and do not give your new hire any reason to worry.

Fourth, I’d say give your candidate the one week to decide upon your offer and to make sure you communicate that that’s your expectation when you deliver the offer, not just to have that in the background in starting a clock that your new hire doesn’t know anything about.

Then lastly, I would say really how your candidate responds to your offer, it really tells you a great deal about their appropriateness for your organization. So, hopefully their response strengthens and reaffirms your feelings about this hire. There had been cases, however, where the offer has met with reactions that really have turned the employer off and things have fallen apart.

It’s an interesting process and it’s one has gotten increased scrutiny and a lot of discussion recently. It’s a fun area to be in.

Peter: One last question for you Bill, do you think 2010 is going to be kinder to the executive search industry than 2009 has been?

Bill: Everything being relative, it’s hard to get worse. {laughing} So I would say yes, it’s certainly been a tough time. We’re seeing in the executive search field certainly an improvement over what happened last year 2008. I think we’ve seen a steady improvement moving forward here, so I’m very optimistic that things will look better next year, and I hope I’m right.

Peter: I do as well. Again, thank you so much for taking time to speak with us here on Total Picture Radio.

Bill: You’re welcome.

Bill Epifanio is managing partner with Stratis, a human capital consulting and search firm. Be sure to visit his feature page in the Inside Recruiting Channel of Total Picture Radio. That’s totalpictureradio.com for resource links and much more information.

Bill Epifanio Biography:

Bill is Managing Partner with Stratis, a premier Human Capital Consulting and Search firm specializing in Clean Technology, Renewable Energy, and Financial Technology sectors. Bill serves technology and financial services clients seeking to fully capitalize on the strategic capabilities of technology, recruiting leadership to implement innovative processes and services while negotiating integration issues. Drawing on career experience in growing a global business, he closely collaborates with clients to structure global teams.

Previously Bill was a Partner with executive search firm CTPartners where he lead the firm’s Financial Technology specialization and was active in the Private Equity, CleanTech and Renewable Energy Practices. A Wall Street veteran, Bill was consistently recognized for excellence. During his tenure as a Senior Equity Analyst and Vice President with Goldman, Sachs & Co., Bill was named to Institutional Investor’s 2001 First Team for Global Software Research. As Senior Equity Analyst and Vice President of JP Morgan Securities, he was ranked #11 in Server and Enterprise Software, #9 in PC Software, and as an Up-and-Comer in both categories. The Reuters Fund Managers Survey rated his team the #5 Team covering the sector.  Bill founded DynaMedix Corporation, a leading developer and licenser of computer software for clinical labs, blood banks and donor centers, and other health care applications. During his 14 years as CEO, he expanded the US-based company to Latin America and Asia Pacific. Earlier Bill was a Senior Analyst with McKinsey & Company, Inc. Other career experience includes serving as Director of Technology for The Greenwich Country Day School.

A graduate of Harvard College majoring in Engineering and Applied Mathematics, Bill also completed Harvard Graduate Business School’s Owner/President Management Program. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, Bill was an Assistant Consultant in Arthur D. Little’s Medical Products Division and a Research Scientist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. His research led to the creation of the first electronic method capable of measuring microliter-per-minute fluid flow rates, a process for which Bill holds the U.S. patent. He serves as a board member of the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich and is involved with Autism Speaks.

Resources
TPR interview: Bill Berman, Cultural Fit - 1st in the Onboarding Guest Expert Series
TPR interview: Total Onboarding Program with George Bradt
TPR Interview: George Bradt, Executive Onboarding - Part 2
TPR interview: George Bradt, The New Leader's 100 Day Action Plan
PrimeGenesis
TPR Interview: Sheila Greco, 2nd Guest Expert
TPR Interview: David Lord, 3rd Guest Expert

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