Skin in the Game. Jim Gilreath
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specs. You will be ready if that happens if you follow my preparation advice before interviewing. If you do the work, you’ll see positive results.
Let’s say you are a senior executive seeking the right skin in the game job opportunity. You’re impatient, you want action. You want a steady flow of networking meetings, job interviews, and SITG C-Level executive type job offers. You are ready to write your equity check, start working, and lead your team, producing results towards your upcoming liquidity event. Okay, I hear you loud and clear. Let’s get started now!
HERE’S YOUR MASTER JOB SEARCH TO DO LIST:
If you lack a home office then rent an inexpensive, established, private temp office set up with a receptionist, desk, file drawers, computer, email, fax, and long distance phone with voicemail.
Write your Indiana J. (optional), especially if you haven’t looked for a job in many years. Your IJ Bio should help strengthen your interviewing skills and your resume whether you have it done professionally or do it yourself.
Write your powerful, influential resume reflective of your credentials, results, contributions to company growth, sales, profits, and functional title(s). Instead of listing just responsibilities, mention obtained results. Avoid adjectives. Provide data, key performance indicators (KPIs), performance measures you tracked, critical key metrics achieved such as EBITDA, and sales growth. Keep the PEG hiring authority target for your resume in mind (see chapter 5).
Write a focused, influential, persuasive cover letter (see chapter 5).
If you want expert help writing your resume, check out the three qualified and proven professionals I recommend in chapter 5 and select one to best assist you with your resume and cover letter (mention that I referred you).
Select references that you have worked with and for, and mail them your resume to obtain reference letters from them. Ask for at least a paragraph on their letterhead confirming any of your accomplishments stated in your resume that they can verify (see chapter 7). Most PEG clients I have represented view typical reference checks with a grain of salt. Exceptions would be other PEGs that employed my clients and people known to my clients. My approach to references has been successful through trial and error for over twenty-five years. It’s based on you producing a people profile who know you professionally and are authoritative within their company. Even list those individuals you might prefer the PEG not to contact for reasons discussed later. For many skin in the game job seekers, chapter 7 may be the most difficult chapter to emulate.
Set up your LinkedIn profile (see chapter 8).
Are you consulting part time while seeking skin in the game job opportunities? PEGs often engage specialist consultants on projects that can lead to full-time opportunities. Make up and order 100 inexpensive tasteful consulting brochures and business cards (see chapter 10).
Prepare your presentation portfolio for PEG meetings. Order a dozen Esselte Oxford Poly 8-Pocket Folder-Letter Size (see chapter 10).
Rehearse your three minute personal elevator pitch (see chapter 8).
Organize your networking plan (see chapter 6).
Order 500 business cards with your name, address, city, state, zip, your email, cell phone, and home phone (with 24/7 voicemail capability) on the front. On the reverse side print your skin in the game function and whatever industry or industries you are focusing on.
Do your research for targeted middle market PEGs to contact and targeted PEG portfolio companies in industries your background matches (see chapter 9).
Once you’re ready for a job offer, check out chapter 11.
Conclude your to skin in the game job search (see chapter 12).
Maybe you are one of the lucky ones who is a graduate of a branded school with high class rankings and have your MBA. You are employed with no job history gaps and you have the right connections, a dynamite resume, and you interview famously. If there is a PEG with a SITG C-Level job match for you, congratulations; you will be hired. For the rest of you, this book will help you get there if you are interested, qualified, and can actually do the SITG C-Level job well. The advice I offer in this book will definitely help you if you’re willing to do the work. Good luck!
CHAPTER 3
WHAT DO LOWER MIDDLE MARKET PEGS SEEK IN SITG C-LEVEL EXECUTIVE TALENT?
Working for a lower middle market private equity firm as a skin in the game portfolio company CEO is not for everyone. It involves surviving due diligence prior job screening by the PEGs. In these weak economic conditions that are dampening the current job market in many industries, there is keen competition for every skin in the game CEO opportunity. There is a significant increase in PEGs hiring through their M&A network and social media sites because of the glut of good talent available to them. Overall, in the lower middle market, CEOs are competing harder for fewer skin in the game job opportunities. On the other hand, when M&A industry headhunters are retained for a CEO search, they can almost cherry pick from their A player database generally available at the time.
Don’t be discouraged by what you’ve read so far. Later in this publication I offer strategies and options on how to make a powerful, effective, due diligence-oriented presentation of your CEO candidacy. If you are willing to put in the necessary effort, you greatly improve your odds of landing interviews for skin in the game job search opportunities.
Based on my twenty-eight years of skin in the game senior executive hiring for mostly lower middle market portfolio companies, the PEG clients generally seek to improve operations, overhaul strategy, thereby increasing their enterprise value for the sale of the company. Lower middle market PE firms I’ve worked with typically have their sights set on acquiring several fragmented competitors and want a CEO who can integrate the acquisitions into the main company. In manufacturing scenarios, PEG ownership seeks to eliminate duplicity of excess equipment and labor as well as reduce any inherited real estate.
PEGs want their CEOs to keep after sales, cash flow and EBITDA, guard against high Capex, and spend three quarters of their time with customers, operations, and strategy. In manufacturing or process companies there are KPIs using a dashboard accessible through the CEO’s smartphone to monitor daily or weekly. Can they insightfully understand a financial statement and balance sheet? Have they worked closely with their past CFOs to understand these critical financial documents?
A CEO candidate’s resume should include:
Metrics
EBITDA percentage growth
Sales increase percentages
Operating income growth
Inventory reduction percentages
Increased market share percentages
New product revenues
Increased top line revenue percentages
Getting hired in a skin in the game senior executive position with a PE-owned portfolio company doesn’t always ensure remaining there until the company exit, especially since there was an above average CEO turnover in the hiring process in 2013. Candidates have to conduct as much due diligence on the PE firm and the potential portfolio company employer as the PEG conducts on the candidate. You have to determine whether the culture of the portfolio company and the PE Managing Partner’s management style represents an ideal fit for your environment over the anticipated job duration.
Boston Consulting Group’s press release of November 13, 2013 stated their research into 198 companies currently under PEG ownership found that 57% have already changed CEOs since being acquired. Some of those changes were planned prior to the acquisitions, but many occurred because the PE owners came to