#53 Bill Rowe | There Are More PE Jobs Than Proven Operators

About the episode

“If we owned this company, we wrote the $50 million check to control this business, is that who you would hire to put in that job?” Bill Rowe asks his own team that about 20 times a week, usually when a search is down to two or three qualified finalists. After 35 years in retained executive search, nearly 25 of them recruiting for private equity, he says he thinks more like a PE investor than a recruiter: where the fund sits in its investment cycle, what the debt looks like, and what kind of leader a leveraged portfolio company can afford.

The market has shifted against the buyer of talent. Twenty-five years ago a CFO’s goal was to run finance at a public company. Private equity has grown so broad that “there’s more leadership needs than there is proven operators,” and the best candidates are weighing two other deals or waiting out a payday 18 to 24 months away at their current portfolio company. The industry average runs 122 days from go to yes.

Family offices break a different set of hires. Executives arriving from Wall Street or a Fortune 50 company fail when they come in without the mentality of “I’m here to serve.” The goals belong to the family, and they change by generation.

Rowe founded Rowe Global in 2013 so the principals make the calls and meet the candidates themselves. His client is the company, never the job seeker, and he still remembers every placement that failed: “I still can remember like a death of a child, every placement that wasn’t good. And it eats at me.”