Rick Vogel, FounderIn an interview with Manage HR, Rick Vogel, founder of The Vogel Group, shares his insights into the imminent challenges in the recruitment industry and their unique hiring process.
How has The Vogel Group established itself in the executive search space?
There are two categories of executive search firms in the recruitment realm today, order takers and order makers. Order takers blindly follow the instructions of their clients to execute hiring, while order makers understand the specific requirements of a vacant position and follow their set of strategies to hire the right candidates.
We are order makers; we spend a significant amount of time with our clients to understand the organizational structure, the team, culture, challenges, goals, and history of the position. We even speak to some external stakeholders for them. This is crucial to avoid the unintentional conflict between what clients verbalize to us and what they need. It sets the stage for a very different recruitment experience for our clients and enables them to onboard competent employees with the potential to become great leaders.
Could you shed some light on your client’s pain points?
Businesses hire on competency and fire on fit. Competency is fairly easy to understand seeing a candidate’s resume, but whether an employee will align with an organization’s culture is difficult to decipher. As a result, businesses end up losing talents.
The concept of employment has undergone a drastic change in the past few years as average employee tenure has seen a significant decline. Given this scenario, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that employee retention has become more complicated than ever. Organizations, regardless of their area of operation and size, need to provide every employee with the opportunity for professional growth to keep them engaged for a longer period.
How does your client-specific approach help businesses?
We don’t just work with clients; we become their partners. Both our clients and the candidates admire the transparent and genuine approach that we undertake. For us, it’s never a volume game. We have been striving to achieve excellence since the very first day by caring for clients, which allows us to find the best-fit candidate.
I have been recognized by Top Recruiter Canada as the #1 Agency Recruiter in Edmonton consecutively from 2018 to 2021 as well as #1 Agency Recruiter in Canada in 2019.I believe this achievement is a testament to our sincerity, dedication, and hard work.
Would you like to give a sneak peek into one or two instances where you helped clients address their challenges?
We hired a Planning and Development Director and a General Manager for the City of Leduc. They both have been working in their respective roles for over a decade now, crafting success in all their endeavors.
We have also rendered the hiring of a new artistic director for Citadel Theatre, one of the most prominent live theatres in Canada. The person, who had been in this role for the past 16 years, was retiring. His creative flair and the ability to influence and draw people from around the world for his productions drove the Citadel theatre to heights of success. He was, in fact, like an institution in the city. It was never easy to find a talented, specialized, and competent candidate to fit this big profile, requiring strenuous back-end effort.
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For us, it’s never a volume game. We have been striving to achieve excellence since the very first day by caring for clients, which allows us to find the best-fit candidate
Our vivid and extensive search led us to an appropriate candidate for the role from the US, who used to live in Edmonton. She stayed in that position for five years before moving to another organization.
How has your experience and expertise propelled your company’s success?
The Vogel Group was established five years back, and I have been recruiting leaders in Edmonton for over 16 years. The longstanding years of experience in this field have equipped me with the innate ability to find people with a similar commitment to excellence. With like-minded people on board, we are dedicated to alleviating our clients’ problems concerning recruitment.
Our team members, Tracey Hussey, Joey Furman and Lori Poulin (Office Manager) bring extensive experience and skill sets crucial to serving our clients better and eliminating any possible error. We always undergo a self-evaluation process to unlearn and learn new feats. It is more like looking into the mirror and analyzing and validating for our betterment.
