Uncover, Discover, Remember
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Thank you.
Welcome to the Talent Trade. I am your host, Stephanie Moss, partner with Thinking Ahead Executive Search. Today, I am super excited to have one of the absolute best and brightest that Thinking Ahead has certainly ever had and probably the industry as a whole. Please give a very warm welcome to Kay Linder. It's my pleasure, Stephanie. So tell us a little bit of your background with Thinking Ahead and then love to launch into talking about what's on your mind. Fantastic.
So I've actually been with the organization 26 plus years, which is shocking to some, but not to me because Thinking Ahead is such a special place to work. The collegiality, the collaboration, the ability to have a lot of autonomy in your own business, and just to work with the best and brightest people that are part of our industry is just a very compelling reason for me staying. I'm a partner in our nonprofit practice, and so I work nationally and sometimes internationally as well. with nonprofit organizations. And most of the work I do is with environmental climate and also with zoos, aquariums, and science museums. So a lot of ground to cover, but lots of fun.
Okay. So Kate, obviously you have had a long and dedicated career as an executive recruiter. Tell me a little bit more about why the recruitment profession?
Great question. So I am self-admittedly a very ADD personality. I'm one of those people that in college could have had like 15 majors. I was lucky to have one just to settle in and figure out what I wanted to do because I was always curious and everything seemed interesting to me. And that's been a lifelong part of my personality. So working with thinking ahead, I've been given the opportunity to transition the work that I do and my emphasis throughout my career. As market trends emerge, as my interests move in new directions, I've been able to follow that dream with confidence. you know, the guidance of our wonderful president, Greg Boucher. And as I mentioned earlier, we have such a high level of wonderful people at our organization, from smarts to senses of humor to high, high, high ethics. Again, also lots of passion for the work we do. And one of the things that I think sets us apart is none of us are transactional people. In our approaches, we seek long-term relationships internally and externally.
And I think our, I think, 35 years now of Thinking Ahead's history is a true testimony to that. So in the recruitment profession, as I mentioned, you know, I'm curious about everything. And I also love to play different roles. And that can be from being the heavy listener, really figuring out what makes people tick, doing strategic planning on how to approach a search, really listening carefully to our clients as they're trying to figure out exactly how they need our help or what help they need. All of that blends well with my interest in not having the same humdrum role. If I were somebody that was selling widgets, or quite frankly, if I was just placing identical people all the time in the same country or city, it would be difficult for me to still be in this profession. But I get to work with people from all over the country. I work with a lot of different levels of positions from kind of mid-level profession to the C-suite.
And each and every one of them are critical to the success of the organizations they work with.
So out of my curiosity, when you are either working with a client for the first time or candidates for the first time, how do you evaluate what you need to focus on to be helpful, helping them figure out what they really need? So from where you sit, I think that's a very different approach than a lot of recruiters take. A lot of recruiters are order takers. Hey, go find me this. And then we jump to work. Sounds like your approach is very different.
So I like to build relationships with individuals oftentimes before we work together. That starts out at meeting each other at the cross section of our professions. We both are dedicated to the nonprofit space. A lot of people I work with are interested in fundraising, and that's the work that I do. So we have a lot in common.
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