Stephanie is joined by Elise Gay, Executive Search Partner specializing in the Legal and Life Sciences division of ThinkingAhead, explaining her "Roomba" process for search, sharing a unique way to exercise, and talking about avoiding the "post and pray" approach to recruiting, why (and how) to always recycle in your work, and the importance of self care and a positive mentality outside of the office.

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Hello, welcome to The Talent Trade. I am super

excited to be here. I'm Stephanie Maas, partner with

ThinkingAhead Executive Search, and today, my excitement level

is through the roof because of the guest that we have today.

She has been an all star with our firm since the minute she

joined, although what I love about her story is it took her

quite a few minutes to find her way with us. However, she showed

tons of promise and potential and was just so dogged and

professional and did so many things right, we knew that once

she learned her niche, that it was going to be a okay. She has

consistently been a top producer for us. I am super excited to

have with us Elise Gay, part of our legal practice. Elise Gay.

Welcome.

Thank you so much. Stephanie, very glad to be here

and like they say, if we have to live up to what our dog thinks

we are, I'll have to live up to what you think I am every day.

So good challenge.

And I feel like somehow I just got called a dog.

But anyway, moving right along. Okay, so one of the things I'm

super excited about with you, Elise, is you have kind of

coined a process with our firm, which is part of your immense

impact since you've joined us, and I really want you to share

that in detail, where it came from, how you execute it. You

really implemented something kind of new to us, and I think

this has really catapulted some of your success over the last

couple of years. So share with us the how, what, where and when

and why behind your process of the Roomba?

Yes, so I'll explain kind of where the Roomba term

came from. But I would also like to point out my background. I

came to executive search. I did have a sales background, but I

also had an internal HR background, and and so I

remember learning and training on this side of the house and so

many recruiters will say, you know, I don't post jobs, or I

don't post on LinkedIn, I don't share what I'm working on,

because I'm supposed to only be calling or I'm supposed to only

be going after passive candidates. And I really think

of the Roomba number one as working smarter, but number two

is like, almost like a business just turning on their open sign,

right? You pull the string on that neon sign. That doesn't

guarantee that you're going to be successful, or that you're

going to get customers in the door, or that you're going to

keep your business afloat, but it's a signal to the world that

you're open for business. And I think a lot of the Roomba idea

is really just in support of that. And so the idea of really

talking about the Roomba, at thinking ahead and in business,

literally came from when I first started here, a little over six

years ago. My kids were much younger, and I don't know about

you, but on Saturday morning, I'm like, I want to get my

chores done because I want to be outside. I want to exercise. I

want to go do fun things with my kid. I want to kick my feet back

and enjoy time with family and friends. So it's like, how can I

multitask in doing my household chores, right? To get done

quicker and get to my fun stuff, right? And I think again, we're

going to take this back to business. But I really started

this because I used to have these little one pound hand and

ankle weights that you would like Velcro on, and I would put

those on, and I would fold my laundry so that I felt like I

was getting exercise while I was folding laundry. And I would

crank up some 80s music, or I would turn on a podcast for work

that I'd been meaning to listen to, and I would listen to that

while I'm folding my laundry with my weights on, and at the

same time I was running my dishwasher, I'd be running my

clothes washer and my dryer, and I would literally have my Roomba

going on around my house. So I was like, All right, I'm getting

these chores done. We're going to have some fun this weekend.

And that's kind of the idea behind it. And work is deploy

all of your resources so that you can have confidence in the

hard work that you have to do to get stuff done for your clients

and your candidates. So that's the background. The same

mentality absolutely applies in executive search. You always

have to work hard at this job, but you can still work hard and

work smart. And again, when you serve other people's needs in

this job, you always serve your own. So how can you serve people

faster but also better and more thoroughly, and how can you

serve more people? That's really the name of the game and being

successful in executive search. So I think a big part of my

mindset in this job is that you have to be confident and humble,

you have to be patient and urgent. You just have to be

organized. Period. There's really no and I think you. Have

to be tunnel focused and adaptable, and I think you have

to be both proud and polite and humble at the same time. So

there's a lot of ands in this job. One thing that I've always

thought about in this role is that you have to be a bit

selfish with your time. Well, selfish on that surface level,

sounds negative and sounds self serving. It's actually not,

because I think when you come to this job, when you come to your

desk every day, you really have to think about that efficiency

and spending your time on tasks that are going to move the ball

forward for your clients and candidates. And how can you take

the same hours in the day that everybody else have and kind of

get that job done. So we've talked about deploying

resources. I think that we can think about those resources in a

couple different buckets. When you're in executive search, we

all have job postings. We can all post on LinkedIn. I call

those things kind of the extras, or the icing on the cake, if you

will. Again, that's that Roomba kind of working in the

background. And what I want to challenge people to think about

is that that's not a post and pray, if you will, kind of a

situation. It's not always the and it's rarely, by the way, a

one to one relationship. I'm going to post a job, the perfect

candidates going to apply, and they're going to be the one that

gets the job. But I would like to challenge people to think

about posting or talking about what they're working on on

LinkedIn or just kind of on some platform, whether it's a mass

email, a newsletter, any tool that you're using to get your

work out there really just does a lot for you. In the

background, again, it's that Roomba running while you're

making the calls, while you're prepping the candidates. You're

really building presence and familiarity with candidates and

clients. You're establishing yourself as that market master.

I also try to think about, if I'm posting a job or I'm posting

on LinkedIn. What's my goal for the week? And let me make my

post about that. Let me make it intentional. What I'm posting

and putting out there should almost be like a hey, this is my

goal this week. I'm working on this particular search, and

that's going to be very closely tied to goals and metrics that

I'm measuring myself by. I also think publishing and posting and

talking about on some kind of a platform what you're working on,

it can get you referrals. It can get people talking in the

marketplace. It can also get you candidates and connections that

maybe aren't even on LinkedIn or social media, but they have a

friend who is and the friend shares things along. So I think

that there's just huge power in posting and sharing, whether it

be videos, whether it be a blog that you do, but just having

that presence can really be huge for your personal career, and

again, for serving your clients and candidates. Well, I also

think another bucket to think about when we think about that

Roomba. Again, kind of vacuuming while you're folding your

laundry is, you know, leveraging support of what some people call

a project team. You know, if you have a team that sources for

you, if you have a marketing team that helps you build job

announcements, deploy those resources. Don't be afraid to

delegate and to use that Roomba, but again, make sure that what

you're delegating is directly helping you to meet your

immediate and urgent goals. These, you know, research team

sourcing teams, they're also great for just helping you to

find candidates, but not only that, to find new clients, to

find dream clients that you want to work with to help you connect

more deeply with hiring managers in your space, or certainly with

candidates in your space. Video is a huge platform. I have done

a little bit of video. I have other colleagues I think that

have really embraced video and gotten huge results again, just

positioning themselves as a market master and positioning

themselves as an expert in their space, and just building that

network for today and for down the road.

Walk us through newsletter and email campaigns.

Mmm hmm, making sure that you are either delegating,

running newsletters in the backgrounds or running email

campaigns in the backgrounds of your phone call, of that muscle

on the phone, can get you some big results. I'm also a huge fan

of marketing in the same space that I'm recruiting in. Some

people call that show my work. But again, I think that gets you

confidence. It gives you credibility. It can often get

referrals. It can help you gain that market Intel. You're really

also potentially finding new clients to take that same body

of work that you're working on, if it's not exclusive, and kind

of recycle it immediately and place more candidates and make

more impact.

That's another thing you touch on there. I want

to expand on this recyclability. Any top producer I've ever heard

has been a top producer, consistently over time, is

highly specialized in their niche to allow for this idea of

recyclability. So can you expand on that a little bit for us?

Absolutely. So I think such a key to being

successful in this business is pattern recognition. Is being

able to look at the market and go, Okay, this is a consistent

need in my market. Now, how can I be someone to help fill that

need over and over again, whether it be for one client

multiple clients, building a candidate base that is

recyclable is so important. And again, I think on the surface,

that might sound a little negative or maybe a little

callous, but it really helps you to serve more people when you

can build relationships in a space very like a very tunnel

focused approach, almost you're building relationships in a very

specific geography with a very specific job duty. And you can

go and get more searches, more candidates, and it's almost like

you're able to take people from one search, maybe that were the

runner up and place them quickly with a different client that has

a need in that space.

So I just want to clarify. Recyclability is not

placing the same candidate over and over again every two years.

It is taking the work that you do for any one search and taking

those candidates who didn't get the job and continuing to serve

them and other clients by working the same position with

other clients. So we serve many at the same time.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Super exciting. So the other thing I want to

talk about you specifically is you operate at such a high level

of production, I know you have tremendously high standards for

yourself, and yet, I also think one of the things you do really,

really well, is combine this Roomba for work so you can be

more efficient, serve more better, faster, etc, but then

you also take it off the field, or you use the word, you have to

be kind of selfish. But if it's the right kind of selfish, it's

self care, especially someone that is so high producing,

oftentimes and high functioning, there's this misconception that

they've abandoned all else, and this is all that they do. And I

think you're truly one of the most well rounded folks that

perform at your level that we've ever seen. So can you talk me

through that a little bit?

Absolutely, I do think the idea of Roomba is

absolutely self care, and it is not selfish, and it's something

I'm a huge believer in. I am a mom of two. I have a husband who

travels pretty extensively for work, so we have two careers,

and we are a dual income household, but as much as he is

amazing and jumps in and helps when he's home, a lot of times,

I am a little bit of a single parent, and I have a

Labradoodle. But yes, I think you have to take care of

yourself in this job. Is anyone's life perfectly

balanced? Of course not, but I am just a staunch believer that

if you don't take care of yourself outside of work, this

job must become infinitely harder, and it's just harder to

lift yourself off the ground, because the positive mentality

is so huge in what we do, being able to sit down and talk to

people and smile even through the hard days, is super

important and what we do so I do believe that your personal

habits truly fuel your professional success. And what I

mean by that, you know, we all have different things that fill

us up, but for me, I think exercise has just become so

important, and it really has nothing to do with physical

appearance, but it is purely mental stress relief, anxiety

relief for me. I mean, exercise is just paramount for me. Sleep,

although sometimes I don't get enough, I find I have to be

pretty disciplined about my sleep habits, eating and just

calendar management in general. How am I? You know, I try to

look at my calendar as Okay, in this week, this is what I must

accomplish professionally, and this is what I must accomplish

personally. Are there things that I need to say no to in

order to be laser focused on what I've got to get done for

the week? Are there things I can turn down. I'm also the older or

the more seasoned I've gotten, I'm just a big believer in

having space for a little bit of silence and a little bit of

stillness, and that really breeding creativity, I think, on

and off the field in work and in life. Life. And sometimes that

can be sitting with a cup of coffee and thinking about

something like this on a Saturday morning, or sometimes

it can be, let me just block off 30 minutes at the end of my day,

and instead of making 10 more phone calls, there's something

with work that I need to just let those creative juices flow a

little bit. Let me turn myself on Do Not Disturb and let me

just kind of think in a little bit of white space about what I

need to get done. I feel that most of us in executive

recruitment, we are urgent, we are fast, we are furious, but

you can't always live in that fight or flight mode. I think

you have to change over to arrest and recovery time. I've

just realized, the longer I've done this, the importance of

that for me, I am a big mind, body, connect person, and I

think that having work habits that are working smarter, not

harder, and giving myself this space is so important, and I

couldn't do this job without it.

So cool. Okay, just for a minute or two, just

touch on again somebody at your level, dogged in their work

efforts. Take care of yourself on and off the field. Talk about

how you maintain your motivation and mindset of being Uber

productive. Talk me through what works for you.

I think that a big part of this job is just picking

up the phone and making like the first 10 or 15 calls. We can all

get that call reluctance, or literally sit at our desk and

go, I do not feel like it today. Maybe something you know has

gone on at work that's discouraged us, or we've brought

something in from our personal life that's making us feel down

and giving us maybe some of that call reluctance that we can all

get. I think that if you can just force yourself to get on

the phone and start talking and have that mindset of being open

to the possibility of what you're going to come up with

that day that that gets me through a lot.

Yeah it's kind of like that eat the frog

mentality.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Danny Cahill, what he talks about is, and you

know you talk about this too, is, if you rely on willpower and

discipline, that's only going to get you so far. But instead, I

loved his analogy about brushing your teeth. You know, brushing

your teeth is not an emotional act. You don't have to get

yourself hyped up for it. You don't have to convince yourself,

he said, but somewhere in your conscious or subconscious, you

make a decision that you want healthy teeth, so therefore you

brush your teeth, hopefully twice a day, but most days, at

least once a day. Do you even think about any kind of an

emotional response to brushing your teeth. No, it's just part

of what you do. You know, if you weigh a certain length of time

before you get on the phone, it's going to become emotional,

because you're letting all these other parts of your psyche come

in. So what I've observed with you is you just have a standard

for performance. And for you, it's just, hey, I produce at

this level. I do this kind of work. This is just what I do.

And as a part of doing that, you don't go in every morning and

go, gosh, do I want to get on the phone? Do I not? You're

like, Nope, okay, I want to make my 10, 15 calls. We'll see what

happens after that kind of thing. And I get for people who

are highly emotional, that's a hard perspective. And I think

with somebody like yourself, where you've got this incredible

emotional intuition, and yet you've really figured out how to

take the emotional out of just doing the job. Kudos to you.

Thanks. Yeah. And I think if you, if you're trying

to build abs, the more crunches you if you, you know, set a

small goal, you do 10 a day, then you find yourself wanting

more. You know, you're like, 10 was easy. I bet I could do 20.

And then you look a year down the road and you're doing 100 or

whatever it is, but you have to build that muscle, and you do

have to push yourself. But I do think taking the emotional piece

out of it is huge. And it's just, this is what we're going

to do today. It's you have to talk to yourself like you talk

to your kids sometimes, like, Hey, this is the plan.

Yeah, I'm the grown up here. I set the agenda.

It's just happening

Exactly.

I think I had that conversation this morning.

Super delightful having you here. You're such an

inspiration, both because of what you have accomplished, but

also who you are.

Thank you so much, Stephanie.