I sometimes receive email from people who appear to have mental illness, asking the question: “Why would I use a spammer like you as a recruiter?”  Although this is clearly a loaded question, based on the false presumption of email contact by recruiters being ‘spam’, it does deserve an answer and provokes thought.

Firstly, you can call anything you want whatever you want to, up to a point.  Shakespeare wrote “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  You may call the Hope Diamond a ‘piece of carbon’, and you may certainly call Stephen Hawking a ‘primate’, and you would still be partly correct, since diamonds ARE made of carbon, and people ARE primates.

In the same way, email from a recruiter might seem like ‘spam’ to some, although the actual value of an email from a recruiter (compared to spam) is about 4x as high as the ratio between the value of a diamond and a sample of carbon of equal weight.  The entire spam industry, worldwide, is worth about $100 million per year in revenues.  In contrast, the recruiting industry, which does extensively use email to contact candidates, is a $400 billion per year industry. 

True 'Spam' is actually sent at the rate of about 100 billion emails per day, with single servers or senders often blasting out as many as 10 million per day.  In contrast, an extremely active recruiter might send a few thousand email per day (on average), at most.  So, the numbers are nowhere near comparable, and anyone who calls email recruiting solicitations ‘spam’ is stretching a point.  Also,  most spam actually is completely outside the law, breaking all the provisions of the CAN-SPAM act quite wantonly, whereas any email I send is 100% in compliance with the law, and easily ‘unsubscribable.’ 

I really don’t want any email of mine going to anyone who doesn’t actually want to receive it… Real spammers don’t care.  Totally different situations, unless you think that diamond= “a piece of carbon” and “Stephen Hawking”=primate, of course.

So, apart from that, what can I do for you? 

The point I am making is that nowadays there are many searches which cannot be solved except by extreme measures.  I have had the rare or unique opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of email recruiting techniques because I have worked on multiple searches that were open and unfilled for over a year (in one case five years), and I was still able to rapidly find excellent candidates within 24  to 72 hours.  This can only be done by very thorough and highly accurate, well-targeted email campaigns.  Clearly, the ‘spray and pray’ mentality doesn’t work, nor is it remotely true that a well-designed email recruiting campaign is anything but highly Utilitarian, ethical and justified in many cases... in other words, pretty much the antithesis of spam.  Also, merely being able to source and identify the appropriate emails to send to is a skill which is actually quite hard to acquire, since these kinds of 'lists' cannot be bought.

While other people are saying ‘it can’t be done’, I and my firm are actively and accurately doing it – the searches no one else can do.  That’s why I get paid more than 90% of the recruiters at other “top search firms” like Korn-Ferry, Spencer Stuart, Heidrick and Struggles, Russell Reynolds, etc.  I get paid more, even though I offer fees that are highly discounted (50% less than many of the above) because I consistently produce results, more rapidly, with less turnover, higher customer satisfaction and in greater volume.

I’m also a firm believer in a ‘multi-pronged’ approach.  So, I will place ads sometimes, make many phone calls to contact candidates in addition to emails, and I will also network through GooglePlus, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Industrial Societies (IEEE, AIChE, SPIE, etc.).  There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach in Executive Search.  I am constantly surprised by what great candidates I continually keep finding, in the most unexpected sorts of ways.

If you want to bet on something with very good odds, that costs less and is more likely to be successful, that’s why you should contact me. I have a great track record, and being related to a Nobel winner and Isaac Newton, I have a love for Science and Engineering that most other recruiters don’t.  My passion for the field synergistically augments my work.

Some Examples:

10 retained placements at Rasna (3^rd fastest-growing startup in the Nation, later sold to PTC for $500 million)

17 placements at Nantero (featured on the cover of Scientific American as revolutionary nanotechnology, half of company acquired by Lockheed Martin)

5 placements at NanoH2O (sold to LG Chem for $200 million)

10 retained placements at MicroDisplay, Inc. (miniature high-res LCD chips)

11 placements at TE Connectivity (world’s leading connectivity company)

Placed prolific Inventor with 391 granted patents and 356 patent applications still in process (extracted from Micron) with a $1million sign-on bonus.  He led company to $billion+ revenues by solving key production issues.

Placed prolific Inventor with 170 patents at TE Connectivity (extracted from Xerox)

My first retained search (1989) identified a candidate in under two weeks, who accepted the job and spent 12 years with the company, rising to VP status.  All the other search firms in the World had been unable to produce any candidates at all for several months.

…that’s my track record, in a few brief highlights, and that is what I can do for you!