Track them down

Charlie Fridley, managing partner at The Beneva Group, a Sarasota-based executive search and recruitment firm, often says his work is like chess, not checkers.

That saying, and Fridley's ability to see the big picture through many small moves, came together for a client recently. The client, a global company in product design and manufacturing, sought a plant manager with specific advanced and technical engineering skills to oversee rapid growth at a facility in Louisville, Ky.

Fridley and his team of seven employees at The Beneva Group, an affiliate of MRINetwork, a global search and recruitment firm, pored through their internal database and LinkedIn with minimal success. The Beneva Group focuses on finding employees and executives for the security technology, consumer products and plastics and special chemicals industries.

Fridley, during the search, read a story about General Electric selling off a division in a similar industry. To Fridley, that was an opportunity to find some people. “During the process of a sale,” says Fridley, “there can be a lot of anxiety.”

But getting from there to viable candidates was tough. The staff went into investigation mode to find employees who worked at the unit being sold. Then they whittled it down to managers and supervisors. “We had to find people using public data,” says Fridley. “We had to track them down.”

The process got a little smoother once Fridley had a list of names to contact. Fridley says those phone calls were easy in the context of overall recruiting because he came with an offer to possibly join a growing company during a transitional phase.

- Mark Gordon