Disrupting the Search

YUMI  Shall we start by explaining our different approaches to working with talent? 

KEREM  Sure. Neol is a platform that leaders in their fields, as well as talent at large, can join. It’s a curated, vetted, selective platform, and we really try to capture as much information as we can. The AI tool that we built makes sense of a large set of data on an individual, from their experiences to their passions, areas of growth, how they work, and what really drives them — all the things that are really difficult to put into your LinkedIn or your resume. 

So when we go and do the matchmaking for a fractional role, or a project team member, or have an advisory conversation, what really differentiates us is the ability to make sense of that whole context, which we call a “meta profile,” and to be able to feed that to the person doing the search. For us, the joining process is really important because this is where we are able to truly capture the essence of individuals, and use that information to create the best meta profiles possible. 

YUMI  I’m fascinated by the AI offerings that are out there. The ability to capture and ingest the big data, or the meta profile is incredibly valuable. It’s beautiful that you’ve put this together; I’ve yet to see a platform that takes publicly available information and makes sense of it quickly in a meaningful way, such that you can then pick that up and have a more substantive and contextualized conversation with candidates. 

Our mission has always been to diversify the C-suite and the board so that the companies they help lead can really drive transformative outcomes. We try to find new ways to bring different kinds of talent, different perspectives, different backgrounds, different types of life experiences to the table. Because if you think about the companies that have really driven transformative outcomes, or the companies that have thrived in crises, it is precisely because they had a diverse group of leaders at the table looking at challenges together. 

KEREM  This got me thinking, how do we give you the technology to help you thrive? Because you have your own data, your own tools and connections, and obviously, you also have access to publicly available data … how do we help you make better sense of all that when you are approaching a new search? That would be a really interesting use case for our product, our technology. 

YUMI  I’d welcome that exploration for sure. It’s going to become a pretty competitive market for executive search firms. 

It was almost like a record scratch in 2022; the market cooled significantly. The tech sector was undergoing a correction, the financial sector had a little bit of a wobble. There were fears in this country about a recession. So we saw a pullback, and it happened industry-wide. But I believe that business can’t be on pause forever — we’re already starting to see some movement. If we take technology as an example, the models from before, “growth at all costs,” have switched to sustainable growth and profitability, that’s an entirely different paradigm. 

Then you have things like AI, that are driving different kinds of models, that’s a different kind of talent pool. We’re seeing more CFO and CEO searches than we have ever seen in the past. And typically, that signals a significant change in the way companies need to get work done. We’ve come out of a pandemic, we’re working hybrid, remote, virtually. It’s a massively different landscape that we’re in now. 

We all need to pay attention to things like AI, design and creativity. I’m surprised that we don’t get more questions around why AI, design, creativity, and diversity don’t always enter the organic conversation when it comes to leadership. 

KEREM  Are you seeing certain roles becoming more important than they used to be? Or the other way around: roles that have always been critical starting to taper off, or less valued or searched? What work trends are you seeing? 

YUMI  I think we’re still living in the “hire slow and fire fast” era, but I’d say hiring is cautiously back. Processes are taking a lot longer, at least, from a U.S. perspective. Companies are all over the board in terms of in-office, fully-remote, hybrid, it depends on the organization. 

In terms of roles and specific functions, we’re seeing more CEO searches than we have in the past, which is extraordinary. In 2023, we saw a spike in CEO searches; if you consider the last 4 years we’ve had — a lot of CEOs were getting burned out. Those who led through the pandemic and the recent market turndown are just taking a step back. And in other cases, growth-oriented CEOs may be opting out because they now need a different kind of leader to switch gears into managing cost containment. There are also boards making the decision to switch out CEOs. Some of those decisions were stalled due to the pandemic, and for the stability that they needed to get out of those situations. 

CFO-finance talent is incredibly in demand right now, both for boards, as well as for operating roles. And that’s because of the shift, I think, from growth to profitability. And we’re seeing more demand for a strategic kind of CFO, not necessarily just a CFO, who comes out of accounting, but one that can almost play a COO-type role. What about you? You look at creative leaders. 

KEREM  Yes, creative leaders, and we are expanding further. Soon we are going to drop “creative” from the equation because many of the people who are now joining the platform don’t necessarily define what they do in creative fields. There are behavioral scientists joining — we’re actually collaborating with BEworks — and strategists, data scientists, academics, and people who have been in managerial roles. 

One of the big trends/shifts that we are seeing is, especially with people who have been in professional careers for 10, 15, 20-plus years, they’re really starting to think of portfolio careers. So they’re trying to diversify how they engage. That same individual with a role in an organization is also consulting, advising startups, serving on the board of companies, and mentoring younger talent. They are starting to think with a more diversified portfolio approach. I think that’s one of the main drivers of why people join Neol. 

Another trend we are seeing — and again this is looking at it from Neol’s perspective — is that a lot of organizations are starting to talk about their networks: how to better manage their networks, not just their internal teams. They’re starting to ask, “How do we make the most of our network? Our organization is beyond who we have in-house; how do we make the most of those who are around us?” So “networked organizations” is a rapidly growing term as well as a mindset for companies or organizations.

YUMI  Are you seeing this networked organization model from a particular industry or geography? 

KEREM  Again, it’s a limited sample size of organizations that we happen to be in touch with, but McKinsey recently published a research paper about the power of AI in business. One of the things they said is that every company will become a neural business. Meaning, in order to scale innovation, a company needs to function like a neural network connecting small teams at the edges. I think every organization has its own way of thinking about this. It’s very different for a foundation versus a technology business, versus a company that holds a bunch of brands in-house and runs them. But it’s all about thinking: What are the networks around me, from my alumni to my collaborators to students who are interning at my company? How do I make the most of these networks around me?

YUMI  That to me is fascinating, because what it demonstrates is that innovation remains a priority for organizations. Yet, at the same time, innovation can be seen as a cost center, which companies are a little bit gun-shy about funding at the moment. Are you seeing more momentum in that space around innovation?

KEREM  From what I’ve seen, 2022 and 2023 have been the darkest years in recent corporate history in terms of innovation because a lot of teams that have been so diligently built over the last years have been cut, dissolved, or dismantled. I think companies really tried to go back to their roots: What are we great at and how do we increase efficiency, effectiveness, execution? Let’s make sure we have that in place and then will come the next phase, which is about innovation and exploration. 

So I do agree with you; those teams will come back, those efforts will come back. I think they will come back in new ways. I don’t think we will see the kind of going back to building huge innovation teams, hiring executives to run innovation teams around the globe. I think they will approach things differently. I think it remains to be seen what kind of new approaches will emerge but I think it will look different from what it has been in the last decade or so. 

Organizations are also looking at each other. They all kind of took very similar steps, like, “I opened a hub in San Francisco because that’s the heart of it; make sure you have a presence in Singapore; make sure you have something in Dubai, Europe, London…” And you have all these hubs, they’re interconnected, but they haven’t yielded the kind of outputs they were looking for. I think it remains to be seen how they will approach it going forward but innovation will be absolutely critical for companies across the globe.

YUMI  I think that’s tracking with my prediction that there is going to be a premium based on talent that has a different skill set. And you’re describing a more macro sort of change, where, because of how brutal ’22 and ’23 were, companies were focused on getting back to basics, back to core competencies, “what we’re really good at.” The market is probably still in that phase before the window then opens to move into a more agile, more “test and learn” approach to innovation rather than a blanket approach to innovation. 

It’s also why I think different types of talent, different competencies are going to be required for that next era. Because if we bring in the same kind of talent and skill sets that we had in the last decade and expect for anything to be different, or for them to thrive, I think it’s going to be painful. The smart companies know that. 

On that subject — what qualities do you look for in a client? What makes a good client?

KEREM  For us, “clients” is a tricky word because we are a platform right now. We are so focused on building these talent hubs as new operating systems for organizations to manage their in house and external talent. The number one thing we look for is a change-maker who is empowered enough to drive this new way of working. So we are working with change-makers in various organizations who are seeing that a new way to engage with talent is possible. What limits us is the operating system that we have all used for so many years.

The other is maybe somewhat obvious, but because of our community and the core capabilities within our community, good clients accept the need for new ideas, for diverse thinking, for more specialized and very experienced people, but at the same time, people with a lot of breadth around what they do. Good clients are looking for those kinds of individuals to build new teams and projects teams, and really are ready to take risks by challenging their own operating system.

YUMI  That’s a pretty big risk in the context in which we’re living. So who is that typically? A CEO?  

KEREM  For us, that person plays a very critical role, and sometimes it’s the CEO, or someone high level who realizes a new role is emerging, that a lot of people don’t want to be full-time, or that they can’t hire everyone. But we need access to those people to collaborate so the visionary thinking is there.

But then the CEO comes in and says, “Well, now I’m going to tell you all the reasons why this doesn’t make sense: How do you think about confidentiality? How do you think about IP, build loyalty, get people to commit to this relationship, and work with us over long periods of time?” 

So having that chief/talent officer, or in other cases, innovation leader, be open to exploration and taking risks is quite essential. Those people are out there, they’re not just coming from a place of “let’s imagine the future.” It also comes from a place of “we are stuck, we need this.” Some organizations fail more than others.  

YUMI  From our side, certainly, there are parts of that. The roles that we hire for in those very senior positions often indicate that the company is at some critical inflection point. What I would look for in a client, especially now, is an openness to potential and not just checking the boxes: “They need to meet all 10 criteria.”

Particularly when we’re talking about diverse talent, and where so much has changed, I look for a willingness to look at potential instead of only experience in the past. I think performance and outcomes are massively critical. But I also think the propensity to perform or drive different kinds of outcomes are incredibly undervalued right now. And the client who understands that and can see and have that willingness to have the conversation is the one who’s probably going to end up hiring the more transformative candidate. 

I love this phrase, “speaks truth with love.” I came out of the world of advertising where a lot of the work we had to do was excavating truths about the company or the competition, or the culture, the consumer. 

In recruiting, it gets real intimate real quick. Candidates will tell us what’s going on in their lives. What went beautifully, or what went horribly in their last roles. Boards will tell us why they need a different kind of CEO, and CEOs will tell us maybe why they need a new CFO. When they can tell us the truth, even when it’s painful to admit that they’re at a certain juncture, it’s incredibly helpful because people who fail to acknowledge and respond to reality ultimately do a disservice to their companies and to their people; they become ineffective, and they can lose out to the competition. So I think clients can speak truth with love, and really acknowledge the situation. 

In the past year, do you have a win you’re super excited about?

KEREM  For us, in the last 12 months the biggest win has been to launch this quite complex product.  The other is growing our community in a diverse and equitable way, while maintaining quality and expanding into new fields, new areas, new geographies. It definitely hasn’t been an easy undertaking. But it feels like a big win for us.

YUMI What we’re very proud of is that 100 percent of the people we recruited into boards brought diversity in some form, meaning they were women, BIPOC, LGBTQ, identifying with at least one of those communities, if not a combination of some or all of them. And then 95 percent of the people that we brought into on to operating roles added diversity too. That’s a win, especially in a tough recruiting climate. even in the tough climate that we had. We will always recruit the right leader into the right role. But the fact that we were able to continue to live our mission and help bring diverse talent into those rooms is something we’re really proud of. That’s a win for me.

Yumi Prentice is a partner at the executive recruiting firm Rich Talent Group and Kerem Alper is the co-founder and CEO of Neol, which offers a new way to access world-class creative services.