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Table of Contents
Getting Started
What Types of Positions Do You Recruit For?
We work exclusively with building product or building material manufacturers or distributors to find sales, management, leadership, and executive talent. Our favorite searches involve driving top line sales revenues or profit and loss accountability.
Our placements include:
- General Management
- General Managers
- Division Managers
- Site Leaders
- Regional Managers (VP level positions)
- Branch Managers
- Sales, Marketing, and Business Development
- Vice President of Sales
- Vice President of Marketing
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- Director of Business Development
- Director of Sales
- Regional Sales Manager / Director
- National Accounts Sales Manager
- Sales Managers
- Marketing Managers
- Channel Sales Manager
- Sales Reps / Account Managers
- Technical Sales Representatives
- Product Specialist / Manager
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What's your track record?
Rikka Brandon has been recruiting in the building products industry since 2001. She enjoyed the boom and survived the bust. She’s placed over 600 building products professionals with a less than 1% replacement rate and her last replacement was over a decade ago.
How long does a search take?
As with most things, many factors come into play that can make or break a search’s timeframe: compensation, location, requirements, re-location factors, hiring manager’s availability, etc.
We strongly encourage you NOT to start a search with us until you are ready to GO!
Our 21-day sourcing cycle is built for speed. You should have your first candidates to interview by the end of the second week and have 5 qualified and interested candidates to consider by the end of the third week. Our clients are frequently able to extend offers around 30 days from the start of the sourcing cycle. We strongly encourage you to select interview dates and times for week 3 and 4 at the time we start the search to ensure everyone has blocked off time on their calendar and the process can move quickly once you start seeing candidates who can hit the ground running.
Here is how you can set your search up for a faster time to hire:
- Sense of urgency from the client
- Competitive compensation structure
- Realistic expectations
- Prompt and helpful communication from the decision makers
- A swift interviewing and selection process without unnecessary delays
- Overall desire to locate and hire the best possible candidate
- Working as a team with the recruiter
Searches that meet this criteria can be interviewing candidates 2-3 weeks from the start of the search and onboarding their new hire in 4-6 weeks.
There are also many factors that can prolong searches:
- Poor communication or lack of feedback from busy decision makers
- Compensation structure isn't competitive in the current market
- Reputation issues that the company or manager may have in the market
- Job description that gets changed mid-stream
- Lack of urgency to schedule interviews or fill the position
Since we are heavily pay-for-performance, we make every effort to ensure a good fit and that we have a solid shot at closing the search before collecting an engagement fee and starting the sourcing process.
What types of searches don't you work on?
We only take on searches we feel confident we can close. We will discuss your search requirements, the compensation range, and your budget to make a joint decision if we are the best resource for your hiring needs. Don’t worry, we’re okay saying we aren’t the right “guy” for the job. Because of the time and effort we’ve put into building relationships with executive, general management, and sales talent we rarely take on any searches with a total compensation of under $100,000. We also don’t work on straight commission or 1099 roles.
I had a bad experience with a different recruiter. How do I know you’ll be any different?
You don’t. But we take pains to ensure everyone knows what they’re getting into before we start a search and we rarely lose customer. Ultimately, you need to do your due diligence and decide. The last thing you want is for me to “talk you into” trusting me and getting burned again. I’d encourage you to check out our testimonials, case studies, and my LinkedIn Recommendations. You can also check out our blog and other resources to get a taste of my style. If it seems like a good fit, schedule a discovery session to ask any other questions you have about working with us.
Are there any reasons why you wouldn't take my search?
- If we get the sense the fee makes your heart pound and it’s more of an investment than you can/should make right now (hint: we get this vibe when you ask for a discounted engagement fee or an extended guarantee period).
- If your role is not for $100K+ total compensation
- The role isn’t for a sales, management, leadership, or executive role.
- We don’t think we’ll be able to close it
- Your compensation/expectations aren’t in alignment for the market
- Disagreement among decision makers about what the ideal hire looks like for the role + key aspects of the role
- You’ve been burned in the past and you’re exceptionally gun-shy about hiring or working with a recruiter again.
- It’s outside of our area of expertise.
- We don’t feel like what you want in a recruiting partner is a good fit for what we look for in our clients. We want to be your trusted partner, not someone who sends resumes over to see what sticks
Why the $100K+ building products sales, management, leadership, and executive focus?
Our Founder Rikka started recruiting in building products in 2001. After over 20 years recruiting in the industry, she’s emerged as an expert and so have many of her long time industry connections. It was natural that our focus would evolve from sales reps to sales leaders and executives.
Our focus is helping companies find the people that can move the needle for their business by either Increasing Top Line Revenue or Improving the Bottom Line – we find the fastest ways for company to do this are by hiring top performing sales and leadership talent.
Why don’t we work on searches under $100K?
Rikka believes that we can solve any recruiting, hiring, or retention challenge through education (check out her blog and book), empowerment (check out her on-demand course), and expertise (search services + consulting). We believe in educating and empowering you and your team to develop the in-house resources and team members you need to consistently find and hire the under $100K talent you need – without a fee for each hire. But when you're looking to fill a position that will drive top line revenue and/or improve bottom line profitability, and pay more than $100K, we believe it’s important enough to ensure you’re seeing the best in the market, not just the ones that apply to a job posting or reply to an InMail. Search fees can feel expensive the first time you learn about them, but we're proud to say that most of the time our clients see a 5-10X ROI in the first year alone.
Where are you located?
The Building Gurus team is located around the US, Rikka is based out of Minnesota, in the heart of the Midwest. Just like our team, our clients and searches are located throughout the United States. Rikka has been working nationwide as a building products recruiter since 2001.
Fees & Terms
What is your fee structure?
We are an engaged search firm. That means we are comfortable on a pay for performance schedule, but also respect and value our time and expertise. You pay an upfront engagement fee to secure our time, focus, energy, and resources. When we deliver the right person, the remainder of the placement fee is due.
For our Engaged Search Services the entire placement fee is 25% of the expected first year’s cash compensation. The engagement fee required to start the search is $5000. Check out our full fee agreement here.
For example:
- $175,000 position ($140,000 base with $35,000 in incentive compensation likely to be earned)
- Anticipated total fee of $43,750
- Engagement fee would be $5000
- $175,000 position ($140,000 base with $35,000 in incentive compensation likely to be earned)
It would likely break down to:
- Engagement Fee: $5000 (Flat engagement fee (non-refundable deposit)
- Placement Fee: $38,750 ($43,750 – $5000 = $38,750)
- Total Cost: $43,750.00 (25% of the expected compensation)
- Engagement Fee: $5000 (Flat engagement fee (non-refundable deposit)
So a $100,000 package would have a $25,000 total cost, and a $200,000 package would have a $50,000 total cost.
When are your fees due?
With Engaged Search,the engagement fee is due before we begin to work on the search. The remainder of the placement fee is due within 5 days of the start date. If you don’t hire, hire an internal candidate, or another candidate that we didn’t refer to you, the remainder of the placement fee isn’t due.
Why should I pay an engagement fee? Aren’t there a lot of recruiters who will do it on a contingency basis?
Yes, although the ones with solid industry experience willing to work on a contingency basis are few and far between now. If you can find a contingency recruiter you know, like, and trust who can deliver the people you need, by all means – use them. Rikka was quite successful as a contingency recruiter for years. However after working thousands of searches, we realized that we prefer to work with companies that are fully committed to hiring and want someone to make their hire a priority. The best way to determine if a client is “serious” about hiring is to require them to make a micro-commitment upfront.
We invest in tools, training, and have spent years building our brand so we can quickly connect you with the best talent in the industry. We prefer to partner with companies that appreciate our expertise and investments and are willing to put some skin in the game.
Can I get a discounted engagement fee?
No. To be honest, if $5000 seems like a lot of money to you, you shouldn’t probably work with a recruiter. The full placement fee is at least 5x greater than the engagement fee. This is ok, there are still ways to find and hire great people. My on demand course Hire Power is designed to walk you step by step through the hiring process and show you how to get more qualified job applicants AND find people with the experience you need so you can reach out to them about your opportunity. (It even includes templates for what to say (or type).
Will you take my search for under $100K? I’ll pay the 25%.
Sorry, but probably not. We spend a lot of time, energy, and effort finding, engaging, and nurturing our target candidates. Working on searches outside our area of focus means we can’t deliver the level of speed and quality we pride ourselves on. That being said, it doesn’t hurt to ask and we may be able to refer you to someone who can help you.
What if we hire a candidate from Building Gurus and the candidate is terminated?
First off, we want you to be sure – all-in when hiring a candidate. So if you’re not sure, don’t hire. This mindset is another reason our replacement rate is so low. In fact, our last replacement was over a decade ago. But in case you need to terminate the candidate for poor performance, you’re covered by our replacement guarantee for 90 days. Our replacement guarantee means we will run a full sourcing cycle again to ensure you see the best in the market to select the replacement.