100 Reasons to Rejoice

Why are we happy? We have 100 reasons to rejoice! More than 100 of our clients have landed stimulating executive positions so far in 2022. This is thanks to their hard work, our great team, and our tried-and-true methodology.

One reason for this success begins at the start of each client program. We take the time to assess what clients really want to achieve in terms of their next career step with our unique Targeting Step (the Clarity Program©). Having a realistic, personalized, and motivating career target makes all the difference. Our clients work through our process and are supported by their client teams. Let’s face it. Expanding your social capital, having preliminary conversations, interviewing… All of these steps are necessary, take effort, and can be stressful. But they are much less so when you do not have to face all that pressure alone.

Here’s how one recently landed client said it:

“Ideal jobs don’t just drop into your lap. You have to work towards them, and you fail a lot in a job search. Sometimes job seekers aren’t ready for multiple rejections, but to get a success story, you need to handle rejection. Isabelita [his career consultant] was great because she continued to push me. She kept me going.” [Chief Commercial Officer, Maciej Kossowski, Read More]

We also rejoice because our clients’ overall interview activity is developing very well in 2022.

Despite a tendency for this data to be underreported, more than 259 first and 224 second interviews have been logged by clients through the middle of April—an impressive 4 to 5 interviews per day! (See our Front Line Reports for the data per week.)

This level of activity is not really surprising. Consider that there were about 350,000 executive job changes in the past year in the US, EU, UK, and Middle East according to LinkedIn. (See our Industry Update data.) The lion’s share of this activity is never advertised. Even executive recruiters do not know about most of these opportunities because approximately 75% stem from the so-called unpublished market.

Imagine if you will an executive pondering a challenge, an opportunity, a gap or some other conundrum facing his or her organization. Largely by reverse engineering their social capital, we help our clients appear at the right time on that executive’s radar—with a carefully curated personal brand including a relevant skill set and track record. As a result, there is often little competition and no pre-set compensation package. In fact, many of our clients are able to write or at least heavily influence their own responsibilities and role parameters.

However, the pace of hiring at the Barrett Group has definitely increased in 2022 and the hiring industries have also shifted somewhat. (See the Executive Client Landings by Industry chart.)

Some of this variation may be pandemic related, or indeed, due to various stages in the business cycle, or even variations in our in-coming clients’ industrial background and their aspirations to stay in or change industries. In any case, while Financial Services remained fairly steady, Manufacturing moved into the top spot and Hospitals, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals moved down the ranking in favor of Education / Non-Profit / Government and Information Technology & Services. We suggest readers treat this data with caution as there are certainly possible distortions due to reporting limitations and imperfect comparability of data, but it certainly makes sense that manufacturing is growing faster again as the pandemic recedes. We also see recovery in demand for Construction / Real Estate and even Airlines & Aerospace, for example, among other industries.

Sometimes candidates wonder, too, about the seniority of the positions our clients obtain. This also varies from year to year and with the industrial mix. However, in 2022 we have been more assiduous about collecting this data and feel that the following chart gives a reasonable picture by major title group for the year so far, whereby, some titles evade categorization and have ended up in “Other.”

We are always pleased with how our process steps in at the offer stage, in particular on the compensation package and sweetens the deal. We can virtually always add $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or more to the package. This is thanks to our 30+ years of experience and the skills of our negotiation coaches. 

If you are not experiencing the same degree of success in your career search or have not even started, save yourself a lot of aggravation. Hire THE EXPERT in career management. Hire the Barrett Group so you, too, will have reasons to rejoice.

Peter Irish, CEO
The Barrett Group