Play the game

Sarasota-based search firm executive Charlie Fridley spent a considerable amount of time on a recent assignment, to track down someone with a specific set of mergers and acquisitions skills.

Fridley and his team found the candidate in Dallas and told him about the opportunity, which would include a move to Sarasota, where the client was based. But the find was only the beginning of an arduous process littered with obstacles. A onetime manufacturing and consumer products executive who founded his firm, The Beneva Group, in 1999, Fridley says this case signifies a significant point in the hiring process: There's nothing to celebrate until the candidate actually becomes an employee and starts working.

The first obstacle was to prove to the candidate, with a large firm in Texas, that the work in Sarasota would both be intellectually challenging and financially rewarding. “My role isn't to talk someone into a job,” says Fridley, “but to figure out if you are a good match, and then talk about your objections.”