Ropella has become the world's leading executive search and consulting firm specializing in the chemical, consumer products, and technology industries. We attribute our success to our proprietary, 12-step recruitment process, The SMART Search System®.
The SMART Search System® has revolutionized hiring in the same way Six Sigma revolutionized manufacturing. We've invested 35 years into researching best practices, developing our own tools, and continuously improving our SMART Search System® to provide our clients precise and predictable hiring results—unparalleled in the search industry.
The SMART Search System® drives quality and then speed. It helps us find highly specialized executives you can’t effectively recruit on your own in about 10 business days. It impacts an organization’s long-term success, enhances their employer brand, and yields a greater quality of hire.
Patrick, Thank you for all that you and Ropella do for Dow. The processes and systems you have applied (from The Right Hire) while working with Dow have proved very valuable over many years of service.
Chairman and CEO
The Dow Chemical Company
Patrick, It was nice seeing you at this year's Soap & Detergent Association annual meeting. I look forward to sharing the Right Hire with my leadership team. Thanks again to a valued partner and Leader.
CEO
Procter & Gamble
Hi Pat, Thanks for your email to introduce the Nautic PE Operating Advisors search opportunity. I am very impressed by the form and content of the Opportunity Marketing Piece created by Ropella - best example I have ever seen. Hope you and yours are well. Best regards.
Operating Partner
Arsenal Capitol Partners
Ropella is probably one of the best vendor partners that I have ever worked with - just in terms of the quality of search that was done. It was fun, thorough and overall a great experience.
Talent Scout - Materials Development Innovation
Nike
Our new Vice President of Sales and Marketing has just finished his first week...It appears that we could have not have made a better choice. Your assistance in guiding us through the thought processes that led into our final selection was invaluable. Congratulations on a job well done!
Chairman
Norman Fox & CoSMART Strategy & Launch
SMART Recruiting & Interviewing
SMART Hiring & Onboarding
Ropella begins each search by aligning expectations with everyone on the hiring team to ensure we’re partnering efficiently and effectively. We’ve created a 3-step launch approach. Through a comprehensive Search Strategy Conference and Search Discovery Questionnaire, we:
The overall goal of the comprehensive Search Strategy Conference is to ensure Ropella fully understands the most effective way to present your opportunity. Using the Search Discovery Questionnaire, we will cover questions about culture dynamics, management style, and the must-haves for your search. We'll also evaluate your position description, look for potential improvements, or help you create a position description if you don't already have one. We then identify the preferred companies and best titles to share with our strategic research partner, Xcavate, to be sure we are focusing on the most effective recruiting paths.
Once we understand your search, our team designs an Opportunity Marketing Piece, custom created for your specific opportunity and used to attract the best passive candidates. This piece is a comprehensive 6 to 12-page pitch book filled with what’s exciting about your organization, your products and their markets, as well as a description of your culture and even your management style. It also includes your position description and a thorough overview of the location where the position is based.
We also create a custom skills and experiences application based on the must-haves for your opportunity. This helps us identify and select for submission the most qualified "A" and "B" candidates that meet all your parameters. The "C" candidates are set aside.
We thoughtfully score all candidates as we move through the screening and interview processes. In order to help you make the right hire, we assess based on skills and experience, cultural dynamics, management style, compensation, and relocation fit.
We can dive deep and assess past performance as well as corporate and team cultural fit with a variety of personality, communications, and leadership style profiling tools. We also offer pre-hire, function-specific assessment tools, and on-the-job testing exercises.
We run comprehensive recruiting campaigns to source, target, and recruit highly qualified passive candidates. We then submit the best candidates and schedule interviews as we help cultivate relationships between our clients and candidates.
While you’re interviewing and evaluating your first slate of candidates, Ropella continues recruiting and building an additional slate of optional candidates so we don’t lose momentum and experience unnecessary time delays. We also use SparkHire video interviews to improve assessments.
After each interview, we debrief with the hiring team to discuss each candidate as we continue to move through the interview and final selection stages. We also debrief with each candidate to ensure the opportunity continues to be the right fit for their career.
We offer a variety of reference-checking options. Harver is a unique and highly-productive, web-based tool we prefer to use on most searches.
ur proprietary Compensation Comparison Calculator merges the variety of complex compensation factors into one document. This allows for easy comparison of current and competing offers to ensure you don't lose the perfect candidate to any competitor.
Just as important as selecting the right candidate, the onboarding process sets the tone for the new hire's employment. Ropella will continue to work with you through this process to ensure your new hire feels welcomed to the team and is given all the tools needed to succeed in the position.
THE RIGHT HIRE™ GUARANTEE We guarantee your hire is The Right Hire or we'll rerun your search at no charge.
To Qualified
Candidates
An average job opening attracts about 250 resumes – a great majority are not even close matches. We deliver extremely well qualified executives who meet your search parameters in about 10 days.
First Offer
Acceptance Rate
Based on research and 35 years of experience, we know offers extended by Hiring Managers and/or HR Leaders result in approx. a 40% rejection rate and typically require two weeks to wrap up. Our executive search competitors average closer to 30% and a week. Because of our SMART Compensation, Benefits and Relocation Assessment System and our proprietary Comp. Comparison Calculator we get 90% of our offers acceptance in the first round and within three days.
Speed
to Placement
We understand the real cost of a vacant position and know how critical it is to find the right hire, right away. We know from our clients the average time it takes our competitors and HR recruiting teams is well over 90 days to a completed search.
Search
Completion Rate
We can find highly specialized, passive candidates that you and other recruiters can’t find on your own. And we work very fast – resulting in extremely high completion rates. 76% of hiring decision makers report a concern or challenge in attracting and hiring passive candidates and find well over 30% of their openings remain open for six months or more.
Long Term
Stick Rate
Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from 16% to 213% of the individual’s salary. Our process ensures the company and executive are both carefully assessed for fit and expectations clearly aligned for both parties - resulting in long-term matches.
One Year
Promotion Rate
Our SMART Search System helps us find the executives who meet all your search parameters, but more importantly take the company to their desired goals, ensuring a long-term fit with hires that grow and promote with your company.
Annual Rate Of
Repeat Business
Precise and predictable hiring results mean our clients return to us again and again with their executive hiring challenges. A win for everyone involved.
With 35+ years of recognized search experience, Patrick Ropella knows how to find and recruit the right talent.
The SMART Search System as presented in The Right Hire, is one of the most advanced Executive Search Placement processes, I have ever seen. The supporting ROI Calculators prove how extremely valuable “quality hiring“ that is delivered fast - can really be. Especially when hiring A-Players and Transformational Leaders. If I were seriously committed to coming out of retirement to grow another search firm, Ropella would be a firm I would be proud to add my name to.
Founder & Chairman of the Executive Search Firm Christian & Timbers & the Venture Fund CT Access Ventures
The Right Hire offers a great perspective on a critical topic! Using the principles and practices set forth in The Right Hire will mean the difference between success and failure.
Million-selling author of the New York Times bestsellers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There
“Physician heal thyself.” This biblical mandate was never more true than today. The biggest healthcare initiative in our country’s history is underway, but it is woefully mismanaged on many levels. Patrick Ropella’s current book, The Right Hire gives us proven principles and focused strategies to identify, attract, motivate and measure talent in any field, but especially where it is needed most - the muscle-bound world of managing the deliverance and effectiveness of healthcare and wellness. If you need relief fast, read and put into practice what’s in this book.
SR. Chairman, Heidrick & Struggles
Patrick, It was nice seeing you at this year’s Soap & Detergent Association annual meeting. I look forward to sharing the Right Hire with my leadership team. Thanks again to a valued partner and Leader.
CEO, Proctor & Gamble
Proctor & Gamble
People interviewing have choices, and The Right Hire presents the right things to do not only to attract the top talent, but also to assess for culture fit, personal characteristics, and experiences and credentials that will fit with your opportunity. It gives the reader the needed tools to attract, screen, assess, offer, and successfully integrate and retain top talent. With the growing need for companies to hire the very best talent available, The Right Hire is a must-read.
International Chairman – Stanton Chase
Patrick, Thank you for all that you and Ropella do for Dow. The processes and systems you have applied (from The Right Hire) while working with Dow have proved very valuable over many years of service.
Chairman and CEO, The Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company
With over 30 years of experience in C-suite executive recruiting across industries, I would recommend this book to any organization serious about finding and hiring the best talent in the market. The Right Hire presents penetrating insights into the recruiting process along with practical tools to drive recruiting to the next level to build the best team in the business, whatever your business may be.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO of DHR International, a Top 5 retained executive search firm
Pat has crafted a magnificent and powerful approach to the #1 challenge of any progressive, growth-oriented business: attracting, selecting, and on-boarding top talent. His strategy, tactics, and tools brilliantly guide us on the journey to finding and retaining today’s best people. I only wish he’d written this 25 years ago when I began my career - it would have saved me hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in my recruiting efforts and mistakes.
Co-Author, Finding and Keeping Great Employees, a Fortune magazine Best Business Book. To a Higher Level
Pretty well every successful business leader speaks to the value of the human capital in their organizations. It is startling then that there has never been a truly comprehensive business book on how to go about the process of hiring. Pat Ropella is filling a big void with The Right Hire – a must have handbook for effective hiring.
President - IRC Global Executive Search Partners
Patrick Ropella’s The Right Hire provides, for an extremely sensitive subject and potentially costly area of corporate life, a light, easy-to-understand, and hugely helpful system for how to do it right the first time. This book should be the standard curriculum for all managers and executive committees.
Founder of CareerGuy.com, author of Headhunters Revealed! Career Secrets for Choosing and Using Professional Recruiters and Never Apply for a Job Again! Break the Rules, Cut the Line, Beat the Rest
Provocative. Practical. Pragmatic. Ropella spells out in a compelling way the dynamics of one of the most critical decisions any organization makes: making the right hire. This book should be required reading for all HR professionals, search consultants, and anyone involved in hiring for that matter.
Founder, Planned Television Arts
Publisher, Morgan James Publishing
www.rickfrishman.com
Too often making the right hire is seen as a matter of luck. It should not be. Follow the steps in this book and it will improve your success rate dramatically.
CEO, Checkster
People are the source of every organization’s competitive advantage and Patrick has given us a proven path to finding and keeping the right people that will ensure our success. This engaging book will convince you that the most important strategic decisions you will ever make are the people you hire. Read it - absorb it - do it!
coauthor, Ordinary Greatness, Patrick Lencioni Consultant
www.pambilbrey.com
Patrick possess an extraordinary ability to bring structure and systems to concepts. This is exactly what he has done in this book by providing a blueprint for any talent acquisition team. People are the most precious resource of any organization. The Right Hire provides a system that will maximize any team’s ability to not only identify and screen the ideal talent but also to attract and retain them. There are immediately implementable best practices as well as a clear and easy to follow system to win in the ongoing marketplace battle for the best and brightest!
After a career spanning more than 38 years in executive search and consulting, I can say without reservation, that Patrick Popella’s, The Right Hire is without a doubt the best publication I have read on the important subject of developing and executing an effective and successful staffing process. From the easy to follow layout of the book to the support graphics; from his down to earth writing style to the realistic and practical techniques and strategies Patrick presents in every chapter, this book is a must read for every company executive, HR manager or recruiter who is serious about getting it right the first time, every time. Perhaps the most significant feature of this book is how the author places the reader right in the middle of ‘Smart Talent Management’ through his artful use of questions. You don’t just read this book, you experience it and it is an experience I highly recommend. This author and publication have my highest endorsement for applicable information and implementable process content.
CPC,CTS,CIPC President and CEO, Professional Services Consultants
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