Host Stephanie Maas is joined by ThinkingAhead Partner and Recruiter Cathy Moll, who shares tips for building relationships and being a better listener and hiring & training recruiters, explains why the search field both IS and IS NOT a sales role, and talks about walking uphill through the snow, discovering Google for the first time, and a few hilarious faxing mishaps.

Discover what sets ThinkingAhead apart, hear stories from recruiters, and browse opportunities by clicking here.

Hi, welcome to The Talent Trade. This is

Stephanie Maas, Partner with ThinkingAhead Executive Search.

Today I am super excited to have one of our greatest with us

today. Cathy Moll leads our life sciences practice and has for

many years. Cathy, we are super excited to have you here. Before

we dive in, tell us a little bit more about your practice your

background, etc.

Hey, Stephanie. Hi, thanks. So glad to be talking

with you today. And let me just take a minute introduce myself.

I am with the life sciences practice, which I started with

thinking ahead 26 years ago, almost 27 years, and we cover

everything in the pharmaceutical medical device and biotech

industries in terms of research and development and everything

on their commercial side.

Wow. Sounds like you work with a bunch of

underachievers. So one of the reasons why I am excited to have

Cathy is, again, when you've been in this business, whether

it's you know, 15 minutes, 15 years, or 25 plus years, the way

thinking ahead does our search business is it is just as

important to us to maintain relationships, as it is to go

out and find and build new relationships. And Cathy has

proven through the years that she is a master of all

relationships. So Cathy, I would love for you just to share with

us just how you do some of what you do in terms of building,

maintaining, developing, etc, anything relationship oriented,

whether it's clients, candidates, everything in

between? How do you do what you do?

So we'll start with how I joined thinking ahead and

why I joined thinking ahead, I was actually a client for

thinking ahead. And I worked with one or two people and

developed a very strong relationship with them. Part of

the reason that I joined was because I felt like they knew

who I was, they understood what I was looking for. And actually

we became friends, I had been in the search field previously

didn't love it, frankly, because I felt like the way that I was

treated was very transactional. And in dealing with the folks

from thinking ahead, I didn't get that feeling at all. So what

ended up happening is my husband was offered a job, which was

going to require relocation and at that time, there was no such

thing as work from home, I actually approached this

individual and asked him if he could help me find something.

And he said, Have I got a deal for you, what I would like for

you to do is think about starting a practice with our

organization. And because of the way he treated me and the

relationship that we develop, I got into conversations with him.

And so fast forward 26 years I'm here. And here's what I think it

comes down to is a sincere interest in the person that

you're talking to a client candidate, or just someone

you're helping because they've called and said, Do you have a

few minutes to take a look at my resume. And rather than thinking

about everybody as an end to a means I really am genuinely

interested in what they have to say, I don't think there's a

magic to it. I think I just look at a person as someone who is

interesting. I mean, I've learned so much from people over

the years because of what they have shared with me about their

background and their life experiences. And I'm truly

interested in all of those things. I was thinking about

this this morning, long before we had different tools to remind

us of when somebody's birthday was coming up or an anniversary,

I listened to what people said, I talked to them about their

kids, I talked about them about travels that they were going to

do. And when birthdays came up or anniversaries came up, I

always send a card because it's important to be remembered

that's a special anymore because everybody has reminders that

come up. But I can probably tell you some of my top five clients

and candidates who I've worked with, I can tell you their

birthdays before you know looking it up. It's just really

about having a genuine interest and staying in touch with people

reaching out to them if something has happened in their

lives and acknowledging that I'm a little bit nosy about people

as well. And so I think it's just managing those

relationships how I would like to be dealt with treat others

like you want to be treated.

Super helpful and I appreciate that you say

that hey, there's no real magic here. But for a lot of us this

does not come natural. You know how do you handle it when you

get on the phone with somebody? I'm not gonna say this not

interesting because you know beauty is in the eye of the

beholder but How do you manage when people are difficult? Or

you're having to pull teeth to get them to open up and share?

What could or possibly be interesting?

Another great question, I think there are

moments of silence in my communication with people, I

don't feel like I have to be the person who is always talking.

It's more about listening. Not that everybody is easy, for

sure. But it's really just kind of digging and finding out what

it is that motivates that person. And then asking them

questions about that mean, we deal with a lot of people in our

industry who are very numbers oriented. And so they're not as

apt to share a lot personally, but they're super excited about

what they do. And for me, if I let someone know that one of the

reasons I'm calling them is to learn to learn a little bit more

about what it is that they do, and how it can affect, I mean,

I'm dealing in the pharmaceutical industry. So how

it can affect people, people love to talk about that they may

not love to talk about themselves, but they do like to

talk about what it is that they do, and how it can have an

impact on I guess, the greater good, especially in

pharmaceutical, anybody who knew me in high school, if they knew

that I was doing anything at all that had to do with science,

they would be shocked. I am not a science person and not a math

person. So truly, I learned from every single person that I

talked to, and I let them know that they are helping me to get

better at what I do, as well.

Very cool. I heard two things there, I just

want to make sure we reiterate that I think are super valuable

is you commented several times on being a high quality

listener, and then also to the opportunity to learn. And I do

think to your point in a very sincere and authentic way, when

we ask people to help us learn it that does generate an

openness in them. It's so funny, I think when people are in

sales, you know, I You often hear you used to hear like, Oh,

you've got the gift of the gab, you'd be great for sales. But

what we hear thinking ahead really talk about is, you know,

that's actually not what makes us good, we really talk a lot

about is listening idea. So for somebody that maybe isn't as

good of a listener or thinks that they could improve their

listening skills, which let's face it, that's probably most

people. What are some of your tricks of the trade tips, if you

will, that help you be a better listener?

Again, I don't know that it's a trick of the trade.

I think when I first got started, I had a note in front

of myself that said, listen, and let the person answer the

question. And so in building habits over the years, he just

sort of do that. I tend to be that person who talks over

people, because I'm excited about what they're saying. So I

will tell someone in the beginning, if I'm talking over

you, you need to tell me. And it's only because I'm super

excited about what it is that you have to say, or I'm curious,

I think when I ask someone a question, or I engage in a

conversation with them, the way to demonstrate that I do really

care about what they're saying is to just kind of dip it and

let them answer the question. And when they answer the

question, I can then build upon that and ask more questions. So

it's a real curiosity about what this person has to say, and

whether I'm going to end up working with them directly or

not, the more I know about them, the better, I am able to help

them out. And I just keep that in mind.

Through your years, not only have you been

consistently one of our absolute best recruiters, you've also

hired and trained some of our top producers as well. When

you're working with a newer person, what challenges do you

see them face in building and maintaining relationships that

you find that again, we're all human, we all have strengths or

weaknesses. But for the newer folks, what do you find having

to train or teach them as it relates to building and

maintaining relationships?

I think that a lot of people that we hire come from

a sales background. And I think the hardest thing or one of the

biggest obstacles that they have to overcome is that this is not

a transactional sale. And they can get frustrated because what

they're accustomed to is they call on somebody and they're

looking for a sale. And what we have to help them to understand

is that the sale could be that you just want to set up a time

to talk with them, or that you want to spend time learning a

little bit more about them. And so I think the the biggest

obstacle has been just really understanding that this is a

long term sales cycle. A lack of a better term, and that they're

planting the seeds to begin with, and the tree will grow.

But it won't grow. If what you're looking for is what can

you do for me today, again, you just have to have a sincere

interest in that person and understand that long term that's

going to pay off for you. And I have a story, you know,

everybody's gonna freak out when they hear this. But I had

someone that I had been calling on for seven years, several

times a year, I would reach out to her and talk to her and she

continued to move up, and she moved into new roles. Seven

years later, she called me and said, We're having difficulty

with two senior level positions, I want you to talk to the folks

in HR, and we're gonna put together an agreement, and I

want you to work on them. Because you have been so

consistent. I don't want anybody to think it takes seven years it

doesn't. But really, and truly, it's just, if you're willing to

just kind of take a step back and understand the process,

those relationships that you've built will come back to you. And

people will try to help people that they've known and built

that relationship with over the years.

It sounds like obviously, they like you. But

there was also such a respect for how you did business. And

much like how you came to thinking ahead, hey, there was a

way that we just did business, authenticity, and even curiosity

about the person. Again, it's a business, we're all here to, you

know, do what we need to do. But bringing that human element

sounds like really has an opportunity to pay off down the

road.

I think that's true. And the thing I learned a long

time ago is that people can like me, but if I don't produce for

them, that doesn't really matter. It is a business

relationship. But everybody likes doing business or talking

to people that they like, but you have to do the job.

Yep, you got to produce. That's the way it

works. So share with us as hopefully it will be kind of

fun. When you started in the business. What was your you

know, "I went to school, walked 10 feet of snow uphill both

ways". What were some of your "well back when I started in

search" shares, some things that you use that don't exist today

or anything funny from 26 years ago?

So you know, I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, so I

really did walk three miles uphill, to get to the globe.

This really dates me in 1997. When I started, I actually had a

candidate who I was talking to on the phone who said the

following to me, have you ever heard of Google? And I said, No.

He said to me, oh, my gosh, you have got to gotta find it. I

mean, we barely use computers. At that time, I'm not gonna lie.

We faxed resumes to people, we fax resumes to clients

candidates and to sneak into their office and when nobody was

around and back their resume to us, which was better than prior

to that when you had to mail everything. So the internet was

really just getting started, you still had to do research on

companies, people didn't have website. I mean, right now, it

is so easy for a candidate to find out who they're going to be

talking to, or find out more about the company, you know, and

we provide a lot of that information. But we always

suggest that they do research as well, well, 26 years ago, that

research meant that they literally had to go to the

library and then had to look up what they could about the

client, and you really couldn't necessarily find out information

about who was going to be interviewing them. So honestly,

I'm just thinking about this. Now, the fact that I would spend

time with the hiring manager and talking to them and getting to

know them, at that point was incredibly useful to the

candidate, because I could share that information that they

weren't going to be able to find anywhere. And so funny stories,

I had to fax an interview schedule to a candidate at the

fax number she gave me and she immediately called me like 10

minutes later and said, Oh my God, you back this to our human

resources department. Oops. And I said, Here's the phone number

that I backed it to. And it turns out that when a fax in a

department was busy, that it automatically rerouted it to

human resources. She happened to you know, somebody, I think

picked it up and gave it to her without looking at it. But those

are some of the challenges that we ran into.

That is crazy. Fast forward to today. Now we

have all this information at our fingertips. How do you still

provide value when there is so much information so readily available?

I still think that what we can provide to

candidates and to client is what we've learned about the company

or the people they're going to be talking to or the candidate

by spending time with either the candidate or the hiring manager,

sort of like looking at a resume, you get an idea of what

somebody has done, but you really don't know what makes

that person who they are. And I think that the amount of time

that we spend with everybody is priceless. You know, a candidate

can say to me, Kathy, I need to make sure that I have a good

work life balance, because I have kids, and they play soccer.

And I say, and you know, one of the things that they're not

going to find, by looking up the hiring managers that the hiring

manager has kids who play soccer as well, so that she or he will

understand that you need to take some time, and you have to spend

time with family. And here's why. So you can look up a

company, and you can look up a person, but what you can't look

up is their personality, or what's important to them. And I

think those are the things that we can share on both sides of

the equation.

Absolutely. How long is the longest relationship

candidate or client that you've had?

So I won't name a name, but there are probably

three people that I can think of that I started working with, I

think I placed one person in maybe 2000 2000 is somewhere

around 2000. And she and I talk regularly, and I placed her

again about four or five years ago. But we stay in touch with

each other about everything, and to other people who actually

placed in one organization who have since moved on to different

places, but both have become clients along the way, helped me

to get into new companies that they had joined. So probably the

longest is I started in 97. So probably 9099. And the funny

thing is, when you talk to them, you of course know if they have

children, you know, their children were either not around

at that time and are now graduating from college, or they

have since gotten married. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. And

it's a lot of fun.

I love that. And I think too, when you can really

learn to enjoy people and meet them where they're at. It's a

weird kind of byproduct of how fun this job can be. Without a doubt.

Yes, you have to have fun with this, I have

always said that our product is people. And so often we can see

how capable they are or what a great opportunity they're going

to have if if we introduce them to something but what we don't

know is necessarily what's going on for them 100% of the time

personally, and they may make a different decision, they may

come to a whole different set of reasons why they are or are not

going to move ahead. And so you need to have fun with this.

Because there's you can get really disappointed really fast.

And you just need to understand that people are going to make

decisions or what is important to them. So I try to have fun

every day.

Awesome. Well, we hear it thinking ahead are

super thankful for your 26th and counting years, they know our

listeners are super thankful for your time as well. Anything else

that you want to share for the good of our search community?

Before I let you go?

No, I guess the only thing I would say is this. It is

an incredibly fulfilling job. When I take a look back at the

numbers of people that I've worked with and talk to and see

some of the opportunities that we've helped introduce them to

that they may not have taken a look at before and all of the

things that that has opened up for them and for their families.

It's just an incredibly rewarding thing that we do. So

have fun with it and just accept all the good that comes along

with it.

Absolutely. All right, Cathy Moll.

Thanks Stephanie.