David Perry, Chutzpadik Recruiter

You can run but you can't hide when Perry's on the prowl.

David Perry - The Recruiting Animal Show

According to Sarah Needleman of The Wall Street Journal, David Perry is a rogue recruiter.
I can't see why. Just last week, I spoke to Jennifer McClure, a Cincinatti recruiter who insists that she only approaches potential candidates via members of their trusted networks. But if your network isn't all powerful and you want to find someone special, you have to do some detective work and make a direct approach.

The thing about David Perry is that he's so ballsy -- and wily, too.

The first time I met him he told me that he had once rented a coffee truck and sold donuts at an industrial park until he got the name of a target who worked inside.

Sarah says that he's also posed as a waiter at a private party and pursued potential candidates onto a bike trail and a ski run in order to catch up with them. He told me that he called someone eighty times until he took his call -- on his cell phone on the autobahn.

Peter Felix, the president of the Association of Executive Search Consultants complains that David's antics cheapen the hard work that goes into executive search. But what can that mean? Dave works harder than anyone. What's more, the respectable members of this association are doing the exact same thing: finding people working in one company and trying to recruit them for a job in another. And I'd wager that 99% of them would hire Dave to get info for them if he only would.

Apparently, Dave once bribed a janitor to help him get some secret company information and that does sound shady but, even so, what was in that precious cargo? The number to a phone in a private washroom and that sounds so ludicrous that it's hard to believe it's a serious offence.

The real question is why these candidates are so easy to lure away from their current jobs that they have to be protected from mere contact with the likes of David Perry.

Dave is a very warm and energetic person. You feel good when you're around him. But that isn't enough to make you leave a good job.

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Title: Chutzpadik (pronounced Hutspadik)

Comment by Susan Burns on September 23, 2008 at 1:42pm: Nice post Michale! I enjoyed meeting David at Recruitfest and salute his creativity in recruitment. While I agree that bribing a janitor is beyond what I would endorse everything else is brilliant. Creativity can go too far - stories of sitting in parking lots to capture license plate numbers or walking through casinos with t-shirts designed to attract employees to another employer are just a couple of examples. What David did with the vendor cart is brilliant and hope he continues to creatively push the boundaries!

Comment by Recruiting Animal on September 24, 2008 at 9:33am: Sarah published a longer and better version of the same article in Toronto's Globe and Mail

Comment by Slouch on September 24, 2008 at 9:49am: I bet he made real good Frenchfries. he should tell us next time he does this so we can all have some lunch

Comment by Susan Kang Nam on September 24, 2008 at 9:51am: that's what I call "empowering" go David. It was nice meeting you at Recruitfest - feel bad that I didn't get a chance to talk to you further...as I was rushing out to get to the airport. Best wishes, Susan (ps - I will make sure to continue tweeting about you :)

Comment by Joshua Letourneau on September 25, 2008 at 10:05pm: The funny thing about the WSJ article is:

Hiring Managers ADORE this kind of recruiter . . .
While many HR reps DISDAIN this type of recruiter.

And selling a 33% fee is easy to a HM that understands the impact of the hire . . . while selling anything over a 20% fee to HR is extremely difficult . . . regardless if you have seriously superb A-level talent.

Sigmund Freud would have fun psycho-analyzing someone willing to go to such lengths when they may not be necessary to achieve the same result over the phone or through that wonderful medium called "the Internet" (unless you're Irish, like me . . . a group Freud termed "impervious to psycho-analysis").

What I will say is that if I was a heavily pursued top-level exec . . . and someone went as far as David is willing to, I'd do one of 2 things:

a. Talk to him because I respect his tenacity and creativity . . . OR
b. Run for the hills thinking he was stalking me :)

For the record, I lean more toward the 'A' above. I respect someone who's willing to push the envelope than someone who thinks the only way to recruit is the way their Grandfather taught them (or someone who has a tendency to migrate with the rest of the sheep . . . thereby having given up on their ability to think individually and critically).

Comment by Tektree Gopi on September 25, 2008 at 10:36pm: Thanks Animal for posting this, I checked your posting in Talentbar as well.

Dave, It was a great moment to meet a person like you. I read your article on Wall Street Journal as well. I am just wondering is there any reason you have asked me what i do? when we all three(Recruiting Animal) were there in the wash room between the sessions., I am just kidding., I am not such a high profile Guy.

I would like to meet you soon and learn more things from you. I am still fighting with my time schedule to read your book on successful Head Hunting.