About two years ago, after a career spent building software around recruitment, executive talent, and product development, it became clear to me that the search industry was ripe for disruption. Buyers of search services were starting to demand transparency and access to candidate intelligence, but the typical client update process still involved weekly conversations around static, manual reports that covered old ground. What was missing was a completely automated, collaborative client reporting process that brought recruiters, and frankly anyone who has a need to manage groups of people, together for better intelligence. So we launched our collaborative, real-time Talent Relationship Management Software, Thrive TRM, in an effort to bring transparency and collaboration to recruiting through an innovative dashboard that allows search and hiring team members to visualize candidates all in one place. Since that time, I’ve served as President and Head of Product with Thrive, and in that role, I get the pleasure of speaking with talented search professionals, working in-house, in VC Firms, and in Executive Search Agencies around the world. And when you do that, you really come to understand how unique the recruiting and search industry is, and the challenges recruiters face daily. And the more I spoke with clients of Thrive TRM, the more I wanted to share their insights with others. My first thought was to start asking clients to write articles for our blog, but after talking with clients and friends, it became clear that a podcast would be a better platform for sharing these insights. So today, I’m happy to introduce a new podcast series here at Thrive, Executive Recruiter 2.0. During this podcast series, we’ll explore the different aspects of executive recruiting with Robert Crowder, the Founder and Managing Partner of Chapman Farrell Group. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/users/269851351″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] Robert recently launched his own executive search firm in August, after a very successful career in sales and recruiting for UPS, The Hartford Group, Aetna, and Vanguard, where he served as the Head of Executive Recruiting from 2012 until this latest move. Robert is someone who is a big proponent of transparency and communication in the executive search field, and as we talked about Thrive TRM and what it could offer him with his new endeavor, it became obvious to me that he was chock full of recruiting insights that others in the field needed to hear. So over the next few weeks, we’ll be releasing four podcast episodes with Robert, where we’ll discuss what it takes to start your own executive search firm, what it takes to be successful in executive search, and more. I hope you’ll join us for episode one, available now.