How to Grow a Wildly Successful Executive Search Practice, with Somer Hackley

To build a thriving executive search practice, you need to be good at winning new business. However, my special guest Somer Hackley realized early in her recruiting career that traditional approaches to business development didn’t work for her.

Instead, Somer developed her own way of landing retained searches. Her approach has proven to be highly effective, enabling her to become a top producer at two of the world’s biggest retained executive search firms.

Her strategy involves, as Somer puts it, “doing BD by not doing BD.” I was intrigued by the apparent contradiction. Somer explains that while she doesn’t perform pure business development activities, “everything I do is BD.” In this interview, Somer reveals her top three ways of winning work.

Somer has been in recruiting for 20 years, the last 14 in executive search. In 2020 she launched her own firm called Distinguished Search. Having worked for some of the biggest executive search firms in the world, she wanted to work with fewer clients and offer more personalized service.Somer is the author of the new book, Search in Plain Sight – Demystifying Executive Search which was published in June.

Episode Outline and Highlights
[1:22] Becoming a published author and a mother in the same month!
[4:03] How Somer got started in recruiting 20 years ago – we discuss the constant pressure to achieve targets.
[8:26] The challenge of launching her own firm in 2020 during a pandemic
[14:00] Business development by not doing business development.
[19:19] Somer’s approach to recruiting / how she pitches roles.
[24:34] Somer’s video series: Two Distinguished Minutes.
[33:30] How to establish trust with people quickly.
[41:30] How Somer approaches the scenario of candidates getting multiple offers.
[45:45] How to prep your clients prior to the interview.
[51:10] Discussion on Somer’s new book, Search in Plain Sight: Demystifying Executive Search