CLIENT: Premiere Talent Consultancy

EXECUTIVES: Firm Leadership Team



BUSINESS UNIT: Talent Strategy Practice

Recruiting Challenge: Top Executive Education firm didn’t have access to the right talent

The Situation

Rice Cohen was retained to fill a Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for the top public university in the world. This role would be responsible for leading the delivery of customized corporate programs. This was a difficult role for the client to fill because in the past they had always hired from academia but that wasn’t the right profile for this position. Our client tried for over a year to fill the position on their own but they simply did not have access to the right talent and thus decided to partner with Rice Cohen exclusively.

Solution Implemented

Our first approach to the search was to identify every executive education program that potentially competed with our client. We put together a targeted list of universities and from there we identified every person doing a similar role at those targeted schools. The difficult piece was finding the right person within a commutable distance to our client’s office. Through extensive research and networking we found a few candidates doing very similar roles that were living in a commutable distance to our client and currently working remotely. Although they were not actively looking they kept an open mind and agreed to go through the interviewing process.

The Search Results

Of the candidates we presented one was from their biggest competitor and that individual ended up being the candidate of choice. The candidate was not looking to make a move at that time but the way Rice Cohen presented the opportunity they felt it was at the very least important to learn more. In less than 90 days the candidate resigned and started this new role with our client. Within 6 months of starting the position the candidate was promoted to lead a sales team and came back to Rice Cohen for help building out that team. Since then we have placed two senior sales representatives with the same organization.