Is The Barrett Group Truly Incomparable?

Imagine someone asks you to compare incomparable objects—an orange and a submarine, for example.  Not so easy, right?  Yet prospective clients ask us to do this every day using one variation or another of “How are you better than the competition?” 

Poets handle such comparisons by waxing metaphorical.  “A snowy dove trooping with crows, as yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.”  That’s how Shakespeare has Romeo describe Juliet, for example [Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5]. 

If we were inclined to answer with a metaphor, it might be something like, “How does a savory five-course meal in a fine restaurant with candle light and soft music compare to a sandwich in a plastic clamshell consumed in an airport departure lounge?”

But the executives we serve typically want facts, not a metaphor. 

So here are the facts.

Forbes ranks us among the best in the executive search business. That’s the case even though we are the only career management firm in their top echelons.  (We serve candidates, not employers.)  That makes us unique on this list. We are the only career management firm in the US to be so honored (five years in a row).  Why do they recognize us?  Because of our results.

We are also the only firm of our kind that regularly reports the results our clients achieve as they land positions, receive offers, and excel in interviews.  Why?  Because we know our process is incomparably successful.  [See our Frontline Reports.]

Our process is unique as well because instead of just polishing your resume and giving you a few interview tips, we back up and take the time to help clients really understand themselves before they even start their career change journey.  Our initial, targeting step (the Clarity Program©) examines personality, current life circumstances, and wholistic career and life targets for the next five years at the outset.  This leads many executives to rethink their careers so as to be more fulfilled, better remunerated, and/or just plain happier.

After confirming their career targets, we help clients completely rebrand their public personas accordingly.  Next we guide them to access not only the obvious published and recruiter markets, but also the seething unpublished market. (That is where fully 75% of our clients land— something of a specialty for The Barrett Group (TBG).  The unpublished market has several advantages.  First, discovering the opportunity before it is published means the candidate has far more latitude to co-define the position parameters and compensation.  Also, there is little or no competition.  These represent two clearly attractive advantages our specialization in the unpublished market offers.

Having discovered the opportunity, inevitably an interview or interviews will ensue, and here, too, TBG excels in providing strong preparation to address gaps in a resume, transferability of experience, and answering those difficult questions.  It is not just the superior access to research that TBG demonstrates by being the only firm of its kind regularly publishing Industry Updates on all major executive verticals.  What about the technological leadership that enables TBG to be first to market with ground-breaking tools such as MyInterview Companion incorporating artificial intelligence to help clients stand out? 

Our willingness to employ technology to aid our clients led us to go completely virtual in 2017 (long before the pandemic) and that enabled us to expand from the US and Canada to the UK, Europe and the Middle East so that today our associates cover 12 time zones and offer clients intercontinental opportunity—another reason we are unique.

Then there is longevity. 

We have been helping executives for more than 33 years—continuously under the same name.  No one else who pretends to be our peer can say the same.  This has allowed us to amass tremendous experience in all kinds of macroeconomic conditions that benefits clients in many ways.  For example, when our clients receive offers, TBG can virtually always add $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or more in total compensation.  How?  We simply know what is possible.  Why?  Because we’ve done it before—thousands of times, in fact.  [See our 30th Anniversary eBook for more background.]

None of this would happen, of course, without our people.  Would-be competitors typically have one or two overworked staff supporting a client, but TBG buttresses each client’s career change program with fully six certified specialists who bring in their career targeting, consulting, writing, research, interview, negotiation, and on-boarding skills as needed during the course of each client’s campaign.

Now, about that orange and the submarine.  At the end of the day, they are simply not very comparable—rather like The Barrett Group versus various industry wannabes.

If we have competition, our competitors are ignorance or exhaustion—executives who do not know we exist or who are too tired to take yet another run at the executive market without our support.  Sure, you can try to find that executive position on your own.  [Read Dangers of the Do-It-Yourself-Market].  But you may well find the market bewildering and you will almost invariably earn less as a result.  [Read Results Don’t Lie: It’s the ROI!]

If you are really ready to make a career change, why settle for cheap and cheerful when you deserve the best?  You deserve The Barrett Group.  Join thousands of satisfied executives—give us a call to find out what we can do for you.

Peter Irish, Chairman
The Barrett Group