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Peter Malamas
Sr. Vice Present, Sheila Greco Associates (SGA);
Online Subscription Content & Software-as-a-Service
Board Member & Committee Chair (Current) at Habitat for Humanity

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Direct Office: (201) 735-7082
Email: peter@sheilagreco.com

TESTIMONIAL: "SGA ExecutiveTracker provides me the opportunity to search a wide range of industries and executives within one system. The functionality is simple, but the results are robust. Tracker supports my recruiting efforts greatly, providing potential candidates, referrals, company profiles, corporate structures of leadership, and Bio's that give me an overview of the persons career. I researched similar tools and chose SGA ExecutiveTracker, because it's best at providing the in-depth information that I need to successfully recruit at all levels and functions within the organization."
– Annette F. Green, Director of Executive Recruiting, Brinker International

Working with SGA since 2004, Peter has focused on the creation and launch of the SGA ExecutiveTracker product as well as the continuing growth of the SGA ExecutiveTracker division. His experience includes driving significant revenue growth as President of idEXEC, an online business intelligence service, under both Thomson Financial and infoUSA, and the founding of Tactical Business Concepts LLC to assist Subscription-based Content & Software-as-a-Service providers with new product development and business growth. He was a key team member in the sale of idEXEC to Thomson Financial, as well as the subsequent sale of idEXEC to infoUSA.

Peter launched, and continues to manage, the ExecutiveTracker product & division, including marketing, sales management, strategic alliances. SGA provides clients with proprietary business intelligence, executive profiles, & company research through its ExecutiveTracker online subscription-based tool, custom research projects, as well as through content partnerships Peter developed with Lexis/Nexis, Sendouts, & Salesforce.com.

Peter is a Board of Directors Member and Fundraising Committee Chair at Habitat for Humanity of Bergen County NJ, and is the NJ Executive Networking Group Moderator for NETSHARE.

SGA http://www.sheilagreco.com specializes in custom research and subscription based online content and tools for HR, Executive Search and Sales professionals.

Q & A With Peter Malamas
Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world.

Peter: Dave thanks for inviting me to be interviewed on SixDegrees. I think you are providing us a great opportunity to connect on a more personal level with all the people we work with or hope to work with out there in the industry.

I live on what’s now known after a NY Times article 2 years ago as the “New Jersey Gold Coast”. It’s made up of several towns like Fort Lee, Edgewater, Hoboken, and Jersey City that are right across the Hudson River overlooking Manhattan. Hard to believe 30 years ago it was all industrial buildings, shipyards, and factories over here, now mainly high rise apartments and condos!

I have a wonderful 6 year old daughter who just lights up a room when she walks in. I have to say, as you know from personal experience too Dave, fatherhood has been one of the greatest developments in my life. Kids can really show you how to approach every situation as an adventure and positive experience, because it’s all new to them, I certainly learn as much from Alexis as she learns from me.

Six Degrees: What do you outside of your day to day professional activities?


Peter: I’m on the Board of Directors as well as Chair of the Fundraising Committee at Habitat for Humanity of Bergen County here in NJ. It’s a terrific organization that provides affordable housing for families in need. Two things I really like about Habitat are that we help families help themselves, they are required to put 400 hours of “sweat equity” work into their own Habitat home and also have to pay for the home. It’s not given to them, they make payments into an interest free mortgage. Also most of the work we do is all here in our own communities, so we get to see the result of our good works of Habitat and improving our own neighborhoods all around Bergen County. It’s pretty satisfying.

For fun, I have had motorcycles and trail bikes since I was a kid growing up riding the trails in Massachusetts. Then I rode sport bikes for a long time, and when I got my first Harley a few years ago I found myself riding it more than the sport bikes and going on longer rides. So now for pure fun I like to ride my motorcycle in the country. You really can reach a kind of Zen-like experience riding up there. Riding in the city is a great way to get around Manhattan and it’s very easy to find a parking space, but dodging yellow cabs on 6th Avenue on a Harley isn’t exactly as relaxing as a ride by the lakes in Harriman State Park!

I plan to mix my hobby and my charity work, we’re planning the first Habitat Bergen Bike Run Fundraiser for September 2009.

Six Degrees: How did you get started in the staffing industry?

Peter: Actually Dave I never have been a recruiter, although I have been a hiring manager for most of my career. On the candidate generation side I have been very focused on the related field of “business intelligence” since I moved to NYC in ’94. I started that part of my career in sales at a small product division of Knight Ridder’s Business Info Services called Finex, which at the time was a part of KR along with Lexis Nexis. We were a business information company specializing in Executive Profiles and Company information. Recruiting firms and Sales organizations used us, they both were very interested in contacting the right executives at U.S and Global firms. The product was generating less than a $1mil when I started. I then worked my way up to leading the sales team and then President of the company, brought the product online, and along the way we grew the company to about $6mil and renamed it idEXEC. We sold it twice, so I was President under three different parent companies including Thomson Financial and then infoUSA/infoGroup. After 9 total years at idEXEC including three years of growth under infoUSA/infoGroup I left to do my own thing.

I then setup a consulting LLC to work alongside clients in long-term engagements called Tactical Business Concepts. http://www.tacticalbc.net That’s how I connected with Sheila Greco and SGA (Sheila Greco Associates) four years ago.

Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after?


Peter: Well when it comes to answering both of the above questions I really look to Sheila as the main influence on me. Her taking me in to help bring SGA into the online data world and start the ExecutiveTracker business was the reason I got more deeply involved with the Recruiting marketplace, and she is also the one responsible for teaching me about the internals of the Recruiting industry. It’s been a great relationship because as we work together we draw on similar experiences, we both are entrepreneurial and have been in the driver’s seat for multi-million dollar companies, but from different industries, the recruiting world and online information. That provides a great... and sometimes crazy... environment where we are constantly bouncing ideas off each other and moving quickly to launch new ideas.

I not only admire Sheila’s creativity and energy in growing a great business and building a great team at SGA, but I have also learned a lot from Sheila on work-life balance. I have a lot of respect for her focus on her family. She is always there for her son Joey while meeting the demands of running the SGA business. Needless to say Sheila has a LOT of energy to accomplish all that. Anyone that has ever met her can confirm that opinion! Sheila’s has built a great team that she can trust to help run the business including Joe Morse, Mary Maines and Tere Masters, just to name a few. People tend to stay with Sheila. At four years with SGA I’m actually the “new guy” among the group I mentioned!

Six Degrees: Tell us more about your position, responsibilities, and size of your organization:

Peter: ExecutiveTrackerPro is a product line that’s integrated into the full range of services provided by SGA http://www.sheilagreco.com that support the recruiting process. SGA’s specialty is finding “passive candidates”. It’s that full range of services that is our greatest strength because we not only have an online passive candidate database, which is unique because it is telephone verified, but we also specialize in the custom research, name generation, and Traditional Research that fills in the gaps not addressed by all the online products out there.

It’s funny Sheila and I joke often about my job description. While officially I help lead the Tracker division, including product management, marketing, sales, and strategic alliances such as Lexis/Nexis, Sendouts, or salesforce.com, I really get involved in more than that. Whenever anyone asks my job description I usually say my job description is “Sheila let’s me know whatever we need to accomplish and then I go figure out a way to get it done”. I’m only half joking since one day I may be evaluating the terms of a client contract, while the next day I may be giving a product demo, creating a marketing email, or dealing with a user interface design issue. In an entrepreneurial environment you become even more goal oriented and a little less focused on an official job description. What’s great about that environment is the diversity, you’re working on technology, sales, customer service, marketing. That keeps things very interesting. It’s always great to be interested and still learning something new every day. I especially enjoy the constant contact with our clients, and telling new people about our service.

Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples?

READ MORE AT SixDegreesfromDave.com, HERE