Global Leadership Society: A "Midas Touch" in Executive Search

Great leaders are forged by adversity and willpower, and it takes one to know one. This is why Jay Nguyen understands what separates quality executive leadership from the rest.

Born in Vietnam, Nguyen came to the U.S. at the age of three. He grew up knowing firsthand the pain and struggle of immigrants, and later, what it takes for them to succeed in corporate America. Starting his career as an executive recruiter at Intuit, Nguyen excelled in hiring officer-level talent and rose through the corporate ranks, eventually uncovering what he calls the crucial “X factor” that makes great leaders. He learned to spot a largely unseen part of leadership acumen—the drive to succeed.

Establishing Global Leadership Society in 2016, Nguyen’s leadership in the executive search space reflects what he learned during his talent search career that spanned more than a decade.

Global Leadership Society is at the forefront of helping businesses meet their executive talent requirements. The company partners with several VC, PE-backed, and public organizations to place leaders at all levels. Global Leadership Society leverages its in-depth expertise in a wide range of functional areas to help clients hire technology leaders such as CTOs, CPOs, CIOs, CISOs, and CDOs, go to market leaders like CROs, CMOs, and CGOs, and other C-level executives.

Disrupting the U.S. Job Market

According to Nguyen, today’s job market and talent acquisition efforts are in a state of indecisiveness. The trend is analogous to the Great Resignation, the Big Quit, or the talent shortage. The hunt for quality talent faces fierce competition across all industries. It has become challenging for companies to hire more employees and grow, resulting in crucial positions remaining vacant for detrimentally long periods.

Leaders are also concerned about their inability to meet their commitments to employees, customers, shareholders, and investors. Existing teams are forced to take on additional responsibilities, which often results in burn-out and attrition, making the situation even more challenging.
Global Leadership Society strategically performs executive searches to help businesses overcome these challenges and fill their vacant positions quickly, without sacrificing quality. The company’s effectiveness in the space is attributed primarily to its advisory board that supports its various search projects. The board consists of industry leaders and experts holding different executive leadership positions in leading organizations across the globe. One of its advisors, for instance, is the CFO of a prominent startup and assists with searching for finance executives.

These advisors have extensive experience in VC and PE-backed environments. Their understanding of industry-specific and client-specific challenges helps companies find, attract, hire, and retain the right leaders.

“We like to think of it as peers helping peers attract and hire great talent,” states Nguyen, Managing Director, Global Leadership Society.

This powerful, core approach enables Global Leadership Society to alleviate one of the main hurdles in talent acquisition—getting the search team and the hiring leader on the same page of “what good looks like.” While the process typically takes two to four weeks for others, the time to reach a standard is virtually nil at Global Leadership Society. Advisory board members are experienced in solving similar problems and understand the clients’ needs at an intimate level. They know what good looks like and can recognize it better than any other recruiter.

Delivering Excellence

Global Leadership Society adopts a collaborative approach while partnering with organizations. A typical client engagement begins with its team and a relevantly experienced advisor conducting a kick-off call with the client’s hiring leader. The goal is to discover a holistic view of the client, their success metrics, sample archetypes, ideal backgrounds, domain expertise, and desired leadership skills.

This information is leveraged to perform research and outreach and have candidates ready to be reviewed in a week. With a dedicated team of talent research specialists well-versed in finding the right candidates, the company needs fewer searches than its competitors to accomplish this goal. This is followed by an assessment session, where the team evaluates each candidate against the scorecard defined during the kick-off call, filtering out the best. The client then receives the information, a comprehensive perspective, and recommendations to help them quickly position the right talent.

Global Leadership Society recently collaborated with a leading PE backed B2B SaaS provider looking to hire a VP and global controller. After understanding the client’s requirements, the company’s team worked with their hiring leader to understand the business imperatives. Team Global Leadership Society quickly pulled in an advisor to help with the search, and within seven days of collaborative effort, was able to find the right executive for its client.

Leveraging the Small-Size Advantage

By helping clients fill their open job roles faster, Global Leadership Society enables them to efficiently meet the needs of three key stakeholders— employees, customers, and shareholders. It proves that performing more searches is not the way to success, especially in the executive search space.

Having worked with several premier and large global executive search firms, Nguyen and his team have formulated innovative ways to structure its search teams, conduct research, build relationships with leaders, and assess and predict leadership success.

Being small and nimble, Global Leadership Society prefers to work with a smaller group of companies, build deeper relationships, and provide them with access to a comprehensive global talent network. As a result, the company operates at 25 to 50 percent less search load, allowing it to increase the amount of time spent on each search. Technology also plays a vital role in enhancing the efficiency of search while providing the best possible experience to its clients. Global Leadership Society’s proprietary technology automates the talent search operations, allowing it to dedicate more time to attract and assess talent.

Rewriting the Executive Search Future with DEI

Being a minority-owned business, Global Leadership Society is passionate about embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in its executive search operations. Clients can leverage its extensive research and network of underrepresented minorities and female leaders to foster a DEI-backed culture in their organizations.

“We believe DEI helps create an engaged and inspired workforce that will facilitate businesses’ drive to spearhead innovation and stay competitive in their respective markets,” says Nguyen.

Global Leadership Society plans to focus more on its DEI-powered executive search process, given the increasing requirements from organizations. It intends to partner with more advisors for each industry and leverage their expertise to provide the clients with the best possible experience. The company will also build its research capability using technology to optimize its ability to reach the right candidates faster.

The right combination of technology, process, and people, combined with its commitment to customers, will power Global Leadership Society’s journey forward, helping clients address their talent needs and attain business success.