You can run but you can't hide when Perry's on the prowl.
I can't see why. Just last week, I spoke to Jennifer McClure, a Cincinatti recruiter who insists that she only approaches potential candidates via members of their trusted networks. But if your network isn't all powerful and you want to find someone special, you have to do some detective work and make a direct approach.
The thing about David Perry is that he's so ballsy -- and wily, too.
The first time I met him he told me that he had once rented a coffee truck and sold donuts at an industrial park until he got the name of a target who worked inside.
Sarah says that he's also posed as a waiter at a private party and pursued potential candidates onto a bike trail and a ski run in order to catch up with them. He told me that he called someone eighty times until he took his call -- on his cell phone on the autobahn.
Peter Felix, the president of the Association of Executive Search Consultants complains that David's antics cheapen the hard work that goes into executive search. But what can that mean? Dave works harder than anyone. What's more, the respectable members of this association are doing the exact same thing: finding people working in one company and trying to recruit them for a job in another. And I'd wager that 99% of them would hire Dave to get info for them if he only would.
Apparently, Dave once bribed a janitor to help him get some secret company information and that does sound shady but, even so, what was in that precious cargo? The number to a phone in a private washroom and that sounds so ludicrous that it's hard to believe it's a serious offence.
The real question is why these candidates are so easy to lure away from their current jobs that they have to be protected from mere contact with the likes of David Perry.
Dave is a very warm and energetic person. You feel good when you're around him. But that isn't enough to make you leave a good job.
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