How can recruiting leaders innovate while maintaining quality service?
Jason Blonstein shares his journey from Army officer to Managing Director at ECA Partners, where he’s transforming executive search through process innovation and global team integration.
The conversation explores ECA’s unique approach to recruiting, emphasizing rapid response times and quality control. Jason details how his military background shaped his leadership style and how the firm leverages their Manila team to accelerate searches while maintaining high standards.
Jason candidly discusses his struggle with PTSD after combat service and the importance of seeking professional help. He shares how addressing mental health challenges made him a more effective leader and advocate for others facing similar struggles.
As an industry veteran, Jason offers insights on evolving recruitment practices, including the impact of AI and changing market dynamics. The discussion concludes with his perspective on industry consolidation and the future of executive search.
Key mentors that shaped Jason’s approach:
- Atta Tarki, ECA’s founder providing strategic guidance
- Julie Hextl, teaching business fundamentals after military service
- Phil O’Connor, introducing him to executive search
- His military leaders demonstrating effective leadership under pressure
Don’t miss this engaging discussion with a recruiting leader who’s combining military discipline with innovative search practices while advocating for mental health awareness.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE
Transcript
Intro
Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.
Anthony Codispoti (12:50.055)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspoti and today’s guest is Jason Blonstein.
Jason Blonstein (12:52.932)
Okay. Yeah, they’ll join the podcast. Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (13:00.008)
Special guest.
Anthony Codispoti (13:19.183)
Managing Director of ECA Partners, an executive recruiting firm where they support their clients in two main ways. First of all, they place people into permanent or long-term roles typically at C-suite, VP, and director levels. Number two, they place independent consultants who were previously at top tier consulting firms into a wide variety of freelance projects and interim roles. Jason himself works across multiple industries.
but has particular expertise in the automotive and industrial industries. His business and engineering backgrounds allow him to understand a wide range of functions at multiple levels. He works with large public companies, private equity, and family-owned businesses. He is a graduate of both West Point Military Academy and the University of Illinois. And he was a captain in the U.S. Army where he earned a Bronze Star. But before we get into all that good stuff,
Today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cashflow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com. Now, back to our guests today.
the Managing Director of ECA Partners, Jason Blonstein. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.
Jason Blonstein (14:48.03)
Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Anthony Codispoti (14:51.165)
Yeah. So Jason, you spent several years in the army. First of all, thank you for your service. But can you describe your time in the army? Where were you deployed? What did you do?
Jason Blonstein (15:03.068)
Yeah, so after I graduated from school, went into, I joined the Armored Corps. So I was on tanks. I was stationed in Germany in a small, well, a mid-sized city called Schweinfurt, pig town. And from there, I deployed to Kosovo. We were still in Kosovo at the time.
And then in 2004, I went to Iraq where we, my unit relieved the ground forces that were part of the ground war there.
Anthony Codispoti (15:32.113)
Okay.
Anthony Codispoti (15:45.855)
Okay, so what lessons did you learn from being in the Army that you carried with you today?
Jason Blonstein (15:53.442)
geez. Where do I, where would I start?
Jason Blonstein (16:01.98)
I think there’s a lot, mean, the ability to just handle multiple things at once and prioritize and even a very hectic and high stress situation like combat to be able to prioritize and knock out one thing at a time. I think realizing very early, especially as a young Lieutenant, you’re
assigned to a unit and you have a platoon sergeant that technically reports to you, but that guy probably has a minimum of 10 years experience, if not a lot more. So just realizing that I’m not the expert on everything and I can’t be in being able to rely on the people around me. I was always a very collaborative leader. I still am today and it served me well. mean, my company has a lot of very talented people
Usually that just need a little direction and guidance and then they’re going to surprise you with what they do.
Anthony Codispoti (17:06.399)
Can you talk about what led to the Bronze Star?
Jason Blonstein (17:10.846)
Yeah, mean, so the bronze star, so there’s different types of bronze stars. So there’s bronze stars for valor, which is usually a specific moment in time in combat. There’s bronze stars for service, which basically was just for the level of service that I provided for my unit the entire time I was in Iraq. It’s a little…
Honestly, it’s a little biased. Officers tend to get those awards where the enlisted don’t always. But I wasn’t going to turn it down. And it’s gotten me out of some tickets because I put it on my license plate. that’s the real value.
Anthony Codispoti (17:57.225)
I didn’t realize that was a thing. So Jason, you had a wide range of different corporate experiences before you found your way to the staffing industry. Can you talk about the path that led you to ECA?
Jason Blonstein (18:07.354)
Yeah, yes I did. so when I got out of the army, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. know, so it was, we were good at operations. So that’s what I did, right? I went into operations roles and I was very good at them. I just, I would get bored and I wasn’t very motivated and nothing really stuck, right? And so I,
So I bounced around a lot and as a recruiter, it’s probably the amount I bounced around would be a little bit of a yellow flag, if not a red flag. But I kind of fell into recruiting through a friend of mine that I used to work with at Constellation Energy. And he was pretty well connected in the Republican party within Illinois.
He’d been the head of the Commerce Commission. He’d been the head of the Department of Assurance. His name is Phil O’Connor, great man. he, so regardless of where your politics lie, Illinois elected a Republican governor for the first time in a long time, Bruce Rauner. And Governor Rauner actually wanted to qualified people to his cabinet.
which in Illinois, which was the reason why we have two governors that are in jail right now, this was kind of a novelty, right? was, you know, usually these positions were given out as a form of patronage or nepotism, but he really wanted to put quality people into his cabinet. And so he stood up, he asked Phil to help him recruit his staff.
Anthony Codispoti (19:50.527)
you
Jason Blonstein (20:03.698)
And Phil knew he needed a good project manager and reached out to me and I said, yeah, that sounds amazing. And I came and I met another one of his friends, a gentleman by the name of Brad Holden, who happened to be former corn fairy and Spencer Stewart and Russell Reynolds. And he had his own executive search firm. And he saw me operating and he said, hey, you’re pretty good at doing this. Do you want to come work for me?
you by the way, here’s how much some of my employees made last year. And I was like, that’s one, I enjoyed this and two, that’s very motivating. So I joined him and I haven’t looked back. I mean, it’s great. I love the project-based nature of it. I love the mixture of having to deal with people and talk to people. But also it can be very heads down.
Anthony Codispoti (20:41.423)
Okay, nice little pay raise, huh?
Jason Blonstein (21:00.624)
It can be very much like, you have to really focus on this task that you’re doing. So it just appealed to me and I’ve enjoyed it very much.
Anthony Codispoti (21:10.909)
And so how did ECA partners come about?
Jason Blonstein (21:14.968)
ECA partners. So they initially wanted to recruit me when I was still at Holden Richardson. They reached out to me to be a head of talent at a PE backed portfolio company. But by the time I was going to jump on to my second interview, which was with the CEO and founder Atataki,
He said, hey, they’ve got an offer out, but I really like your background and want to stay in touch. You know, we might be hiring at ECA. I’m like, OK, that’s great. Let’s stay in touch. Then in the interim, went, I was recruited to Korn Ferry, who’s the largest executive search firm. You know, part of the reason was that there were four partners at the boutique firm I was working in. All of them had been at what we what we call a Shrek.
which is Spencer Stewart, Hyderick Struggles, Russell Reynolds, Egon Zender, and Korn Ferry. Those are the big search firms, even though there’s a couple that are knocking on the door right now. But they said, hey, if you want to be serious in this industry, you got to get some experience there. Now that I know more, I wouldn’t say I agree with that assessment. But that’s what I did. So I had a chance to go to Korn Ferry, and I jumped ship.
and was not there long. It just was not a great cultural fit. Good company just wasn’t the fit for me. And fortunately, ECA had come calling again to ask if I wanted to join them. just everything, I just really liked their approach to search. I was pretty new to the industry, but there were some things that I didn’t necessarily agree with.
I thought their approach was very different and their process was different. And it’s been a great fit. It’s just been a wonderful company. And so I joined there initially in a search execution role and then was promoted twice. And now I’m basically a managing director partner.
Anthony Codispoti (23:29.919)
So want to hear more about what makes ECA partners different than some of the other ones out there. But before we do that, I gave an intro of kind of what the services are that you provide, but I’d like to hear it in simpler language from you. Tell us what it is that you guys do.
Jason Blonstein (23:46.98)
Yeah, yeah. We used to be ex consultants agency. That’s what my company’s name was when we were founded about 15 years ago by Atataki, who I had mentioned. And he kind of had really seen the need in the market for someone that was focused on management consultants that were transitioning into industry. Right. And he we always did that in both the permanent capacity as well as project based or internal roles. Right. We grew.
and started actually serving a lot of private equity clients and within their portfolio companies as well. And we weren’t exclusively focused on management consulting profiles anymore, so we rebranded it to ECA. So in general, if I had to say like what we do, what we specialize in in a few buckets, one is for private equity at the firm level,
We’ll place a lot of operating roles, operating partners, value creation type roles. Usually those are current or former management consultants. And then within the portfolio companies themselves, we do a lot of CEO, a lot of CFO roles, and those may or may not be consultants. And then on the project side, generally we are doing a lot of things that support transactions for private equity.
That could be either a market assessment or due diligence support upfront, or that could be post acquisition doing a post merger integration. Pricing projects are another thing that we do, fairly regular transformation, but those are the big ones that we do.
Anthony Codispoti (25:30.761)
So what is it that you guys do differently? Like why were you so attracted to what ECA was doing versus some of the other places that you had been?
Jason Blonstein (25:35.709)
Mm.
Jason Blonstein (25:40.412)
Yeah, so you’d have to take a little bit of a step back and take a look at, think, the executive search industry as a whole, right? And to be frank, there hasn’t been a ton of innovation since LinkedIn, right? So LinkedIn, huge tool, really changed the game, really changed the nature of the job, right? And I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to recruit. mean, my mentors are the people that taught me
They were the smile and dial. were just, all they were doing was calling people and trying to build out their networks and things like that. Whereas LinkedIn is the network, right? So they really operated on like a mentorship type model where like you had to kind of earn your stripes. The lower people were really underworked and you…
Anthony Codispoti (26:20.041)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (26:36.348)
got the right to be brought into deals and to start building out your own network. And it could take a long time, right? They also would have someone at my level that was a search execution person that would normally do, you be working on like 10 searches at a time, right? And doing, and that would be doing all the sourcing of the candidates, that’d be doing all the first level interviews. So it was very time consuming and very stressful.
be be frank. We took a look at that process and we really divided up the labor because sourcing candidates is a very, time consuming, but not necessarily like a high level activity. Whereas interviewing is very different, right? Interviewing you have to be you have to have a system you have to really be able to dig into what candidates are telling you, etc.
Right? So we, we divided those two tasks that are very different, right? And we’re not the first person to do that. Right? I mean, a lot of, a lot of companies have what they call researchers, but, know, corn, at corn ferry, we had researchers, but they they were, sat in India and it was very much a throw the ball over the fence and you weren’t sure what you’re going to get back. Right. Whereas our approach with having a large team in the Philippines and Manila,
has been that they’re very much integrated into our team. We meet with them all the time, we’re talking with them, they’re chatting with us on Teams. And what you get is they have this ability to really build you a good pipeline of candidates, whereas then the interviewer who happens to sit, sits in Santa Monica and California, can then focus their time on interviewing candidates as opposed to sourcing them. So it…
shrinks your close time, because I always say, executive search isn’t rocket science, right? But it’s time consuming, right? And that’s why you outsource it. It’s very time consuming. And we’ve been very effective at reducing the amount of time it takes to find someone. part of that is, yeah, we’ve got tools and processes. But it’s more just because we throw more people at it more often than not. And it gets results.
Anthony Codispoti (28:53.79)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (28:56.156)
Right. Our average search time last year was 83 days, I think. you know, and, and most of the trucks were, probably double that. yeah. Yeah. It, it is, but in fairness, we’re also not planning at the same level a lot of times, right? I’m not doing a search for the CEO of, you know, a fortune 50 company, right? That I’m not going to get that call. Right. And so that process can probably stretch out.
Anthony Codispoti (29:05.053)
Really? That’s a substantial difference.
Jason Blonstein (29:26.214)
a little bit, but even their lower level searches, I find that they take a long time. And part of it is going back to that process that we talked about, know, whereas they have built a system that really relies on their network and who they know, and not as much, they’re not as good at building a bespoke list and building up a candidate list that way, which is what we primarily do. That’s not to say we don’t use our network.
But everyone’s networks the same right now. LinkedIn is the network. Very few people, especially executives, are not on LinkedIn. And so everyone has access to the same network right now. But the older companies really have not changed a lot of how they do business and how they go to market, whereas our business model has been varied.
Anthony Codispoti (30:26.505)
So there are other firms that are sort of using some overseas labor to help with part of that research process. You guys are doing a little bit differently because this isn’t really outsourcing for you. These folks are part of your team. They’re integrated into your team. You’re going to visit them, I think you said next week. And so they’re more a part of your process. It’s not sort of lobbying over the fence and seeing what you get.
Jason Blonstein (30:43.293)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (30:52.39)
Exactly.
Anthony Codispoti (30:54.003)
This is our process and we’re working together to develop it and refine it. So we know we have a sense of the quality of the work that we’re going to get because you are us, you are part of our team.
Jason Blonstein (31:05.758)
It’s great that you use that word quality because that is probably, I think, one of the biggest factors of why we’ve had success. We have an internal quality team. They’re monitoring, they go through the emails, they go through how they set up the calendar invites or standards that they have to at hold to. If there’s too many errors, they get dinged. It can affect their pay, their bonuses, not their…
didn’t take money away from, but that’s how we incentivize that team. And it works, right? And it helps that ECA was founded by management consultants, right? And management consultants are very good at establishing process. And that’s been, I think, a key to our success. Because we’ve had people try to replicate what we’ve done there, and it’s just they’re missing that piece, right? That’s kind of the secret sauce. And you got to go there.
I mean, this isn’t my first time to Manila. My CEO goes there every year. So they’re very much like a part of the company. They are the company.
Anthony Codispoti (32:16.199)
And at the same time, being able to use that part of your team and be able to, you know, cost effectively throw more labor at the task of the research process is also a big part of what allows you to turn things around a lot faster than your competitors, right?
Jason Blonstein (32:26.696)
in this.
Jason Blonstein (32:33.63)
Correct, yeah, 100%. And literally, we dedicate a minimum of one recruiter to your search. they’re probably reaching out to 30 to 40 qualified candidates a day. And over the course of a search, probably over 1,000. I can tell you I never reached out to that many people at Corn Fairy. And it works.
Anthony Codispoti (32:59.124)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (33:03.57)
Right, it definitely, it works, it produces results.
Anthony Codispoti (33:07.039)
Cause you’re going out and you’re recruiting folks who aren’t necessarily actively looking for jobs. It’s not like you’re finding somebody just by posting on Indeed and seeing what comes back.
Jason Blonstein (33:12.894)
Correct.
Jason Blonstein (33:17.296)
Yeah, yeah, we call, I refer to that as passive recruiting when you post on job boards and then you’re just getting inbound resumes. I find generally that the quality of the candidates that you get from there isn’t as high. That’s not to say that we never get inbound candidates that are good, but you know, most people that are the people that you want to hire, especially for your key executive roles, are people that are currently employed and probably not looking.
Right. So you need to engage them and get them interested. Right. And, and I’ll tell you, I was initially a little skeptical, you know, cause when, when we reach out to someone on LinkedIn, they can see that, that this person is sitting in Manila. Right. And to me, I was like, when am I going to be like, is this a scam that, but you know, there are interest rates.
Anthony Codispoti (34:05.395)
Yeah.
Anthony Codispoti (34:09.225)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blonstein (34:14.258)
What probably wasn’t quite as high as mine was at Cornferry, but I mean, people aren’t going to usually turn down a call from Cornferry. it was higher than when I was at the boutique, right? And part of that was because we are very evidence-based. actually have, we constantly A-B test our messaging to see which one gets better results and take those learnings and incorporate them into future messaging. So we are…
Anthony Codispoti (34:36.404)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (34:43.794)
We’re pretty good at getting people on the phone. Plus they can just click and see like checkout ECA and say, yeah, this is a US based legit company.
Anthony Codispoti (34:55.325)
And so most of your outreach in these cases is done through the LinkedIn platform or through a third party tool that’ll sort of helps to expedite that outreach on LinkedIn.
Jason Blonstein (35:08.541)
We’ll start a lot of our sourcing through LinkedIn, but a lot of times we have their emails. And so it’s easier to email someone. But at the same time, a lot of times people were more responsive via LinkedIn. I mean, we all get bombarded with emails every day that are usually just like view, delete. we rely on a lot of different channels is always the best way to get interest. But yeah, LinkedIn.
Anthony Codispoti (35:15.505)
it
Jason Blonstein (35:38.447)
is just such a powerful tool. It’s such a powerful tool.
Anthony Codispoti (35:40.573)
Are you using their work emails or are finding personal emails to communicate with them?
Jason Blonstein (35:46.654)
Both, it just depends. It depends. mean, we can normally figure out a lot of time. Well, either they might already be in our system, especially if these are, but if we’re reaching out to someone at McKinsey, I can pretty much tell you what their email is gonna be, right? So at least they’re working. And then a lot of them went to like…
Anthony Codispoti (35:49.833)
Okay.
Jason Blonstein (36:12.932)
If they went to Harvard Business School or Wharton or something, they’d probably still have that email address. And that’s easy enough to guess. So we’ll try different ways to get in touch with people.
Anthony Codispoti (36:26.129)
Is AI factoring into your process at all?
Jason Blonstein (36:29.35)
Not yet. We have tried some AI tools in the past for, well, yes and no. We have tried AI tools for sourcing and those, we haven’t found one successfully that works. All I really found was it was kind of reskinning what I could just do in a search query from LinkedIn. And I still had to go through and check the validity.
validity of every profile and it wasn’t it was actually probably taking more time The the hit rate was was pretty low Now we are using AI to do a few things one is a will record meetings and interviews using AI tools We will write We’ll do a lot of our writing with AI too it’s great for coming up with the first draft of things whether that’s gonna be a white paper
Whether that is you need to write an email or a presentation and you’re worried about the tone or something like that. AI can be a pretty effective tool for that. A lot of my colleagues use it pretty effectively for those things.
Anthony Codispoti (37:43.849)
How do you find new clients?
Jason Blonstein (37:47.71)
How do we find new clients? Yeah, it is. is. so when I first got here, we had kind of had a philosophy of take calls, make money. And it was all a matter of like, what was your volume of calls that you could get? And a lot of it was.
Anthony Codispoti (37:51.355)
You talked about like white papers. I didn’t know if maybe content generation was part of your process.
Jason Blonstein (38:16.862)
directly through email campaigns. And they were effective, right? I mean, I think my first year in sales, I probably talked to a thousand people over the course of a year. So it worked. Now I think email marketing is much, much less effective because so many people are doing it. And so one of the things that I always tell my team is that, like, if you’re gonna email someone, you need to have a reason to be in their inbox.
Right. And you should be providing them something of value other than trying to convince them that our company is better and you should use us. So we have started to do more content compensation studies. I think it’s a very good one because one, we have that data. I think a lot of our clients are very interested in it.
it’s, it’s something worthwhile for us too, because as a recruiter, we’re, we’re always in, we’re always advising our clients on what they should be paying someone. so that’s one thing. but we make those compensation studies read more like a white paper. So yeah, it’s going to have that data. I think white paper is a little bit of a bad word as a marketing tool now. so we’ll, but we’ll, we’ll embed the, what into the comp studies.
and send that to our clients. Another tool that I will plug one of our vendors here is called REN, R-E-N. It is, if I had to describe it shortly, I would call it like Google Alerts on steroids, right? So what it does is you put in your network to it and you can either download your LinkedIn contacts from Salesforce, whatever, and it will curate
news articles about those people, those companies, those industries for you. And you can, and it is AI backed. So the more you use it and say, yep, this is the type of article I want or no, it starts to learn and it gets, it gets even more relevant. But it will console every morning. I get an email about like, Hey, here’s the rent alerts, you know, for all my, for all my contacts. And it could be telling me that, Hey, this private equity firm had a transaction. This person
Jason Blonstein (40:38.716)
you know, move to this company, whatever. But it lets me to really have timely and accurate messaging to potential clients. And that’s very effective, right? And more so it also lets me know what’s going on in the industry and with my clients too, right? I mean, if they had a major transaction, I should know that.
Anthony Codispoti (41:03.07)
Yeah.
So this, as you put it before, gives you a reason to be in that person’s inbox. There’s some news around them, hey, congratulations on this, hey, I saw something about you, this is great, and that helps them remember you. hey, Jason, yeah, actually I’ve got a need for you.
Jason Blonstein (41:10.95)
in inbox. Yep.
Jason Blonstein (41:18.344)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (41:21.99)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And a lot of times, especially for us dealing a lot with private equity, transactions beget needs, right? Because a lot of times either they’ll be understaffed or they need to top grade and that’s when we can get involved. Or if it’s an acquisition, they might need help on the integration, which is another thing that we do a lot of post-merger integration activities.
So either way, it helps me be top of mind in contacting them when there might be an actual need.
Anthony Codispoti (42:01.107)
That post-merger integration, that is more handled from your own bench, your own team, or are you helping to find some folks, some outside folks to temporarily help with that?
Jason Blonstein (42:10.396)
Mmm.
Jason Blonstein (42:15.868)
Yeah, we’ll find independent consultants to help with it. Now, we have a, that is one area that we do rely on our network. You know, we have a pretty developed network of consultants that, especially for kind of our high need activities. And so, we can usually go to them first and if there’s availability. But I mean, we’ve also…
found pretty niche stuff. My team’s pretty good at finding some pretty weird asks for our clients we’ve found in the past that we don’t have a network for. And so we’ve had to just go find those people.
Anthony Codispoti (43:01.671)
Now, when you say pretty good at finding a weird ask, that makes me want to see if there’s an interesting story there, or is it just weird because it’s so like hyper focused? Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (43:12.314)
it’s more because it’s hyper-focused or sometimes it’ll be like, I didn’t even know that was a job. Like what does this person do again? And then they’ll have to explain it and be like, okay, we’ll see if we can find it. And a lot of times we do, right? mean, that type of, yeah, yeah. There was one that, there’s one in particular that was dealing with like intellectual property.
Anthony Codispoti (43:28.265)
like an underwater basket weaver, like have you ever been asked to find those or like?
Jason Blonstein (43:41.102)
rights with patents, but it wasn’t a patent attorney they needed. yeah, it was, it was, it’s very, very specific, but we were able to find someone for them in, in, I think just two weeks. So.
Anthony Codispoti (43:58.419)
wow, that’s even faster than your super fast average time.
Jason Blonstein (44:02.748)
Well, we built the process to support private equity with their commercial due diligence, right? And usually after they send an LOI, they have like three, four weeks to review things. So like they can’t wait three weeks for you to find someone because the process is over by then. So normally with things like that, we try to get people to them in a couple of days, right? I mean, usually,
Anthony Codispoti (44:19.667)
Mm.
Anthony Codispoti (44:27.721)
Mmm, wow.
Jason Blonstein (44:31.4)
and want to get them in a few days and then have them interview on and like, and so we want someone by the time they kick off with us, we want that person starting like five days later. So.
Anthony Codispoti (44:41.791)
How would you describe your ideal client? I think of things in terms of like geography, size, industry. How do you think?
Jason Blonstein (44:46.599)
Hmm
Jason Blonstein (44:50.182)
Yeah, I, this is actually something we’re going to be talking with our team in Manila, our ideal client profile. I would probably put them into two main buckets. One would be on the corporate side. We tend to focus on chief strategy officers, chief data analytics officers, heads of corporate development.
those types of really, really those transformation. So those types of strategic transformation, corporate development type rules that that that’s where we tend to focus with corporations with private equity. And that doesn’t really matter the size. I mean, I’ve worked with some of the biggest social media companies I’ve worked with, you know, some huge healthcare payers, you know, we were, you know,
Strategy is strategy and we’re very good at finding those people for them. The other profile would be middle market private equity firms. We’ve definitely worked with some of the big players, KKR, TPG, Vista, but we’re more focused on private equity.
that’s in the middle market, which generally we define as investing in companies that are under a billion dollars in revenue. And even then we’ll even focus on the lower middle market, which would be like under a hundred million dollars in revenue. So that tends to be where we’ll focus. So we’ll look for operating partners or just partners at those firms. This tend to be who we target.
Jason Blonstein (46:44.594)
For both of these roles, we tend to be national, just focused in the US in terms of our geography. Sometimes we’ll do Canada, but we don’t do a lot in overseas or other places.
Anthony Codispoti (46:56.063)
And when you say those are the, like the folks at the PE firms that you target, you’re targeting them, as a customer, as a client, not as somebody you would place. Got it.
Jason Blonstein (47:05.886)
Correct, yeah, they’re who we’re targeting as a client. They tend to be the decision makers. They tend to be the ones that you want to develop the relationship with. Now, a lot of times they will pass us off to some of the more junior members like a VP or a principal. But it’s really, every PE firm does it a little differently in how they tackle talent. And so you just have to kind of find who the person is at that firm that you need to talk to.
and then build that relationship.
Anthony Codispoti (47:38.001)
And corporations mentioned one of the roles that you target as a chief strategy officer. I know what the word strategy means. I understand sort of the C-suite level, but that’s sort of a newer role for my brain. Kind of helped me wrap my head around what that is.
Jason Blonstein (47:43.144)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blonstein (47:53.118)
Mm hmm. Yeah, and you know, it can mean a lot of different things. But generally, when I when I the simplest way, especially in consulting to to segregate strategy versus operations, I look at strategy more as top line growth, you things that are going to grow revenues. And that’s why a lot of times corporate development can fall under there because
acquiring a business is a great way to inorganically grow your revenue. Whereas operations, I tend to look at more cost cutting or operational efficiencies and things that are more impacting your bottom line. Now, they’re not mutually exclusive. That’s a pretty simplified explanation. But what I find in general is that chief strategy officers are responsible for growth.
business development, market entry, product, all things that are looking to grow the top line to grow revenues within a business.
Anthony Codispoti (48:53.161)
business development.
Anthony Codispoti (49:08.457)
Gotcha. You mentioned earlier on in the interview that when you first started, you were really of the mind that you needed to work for one of these big boys in order to establish yourself, get some street cred, and you no longer think that’s the case. Why is that?
Jason Blonstein (49:17.362)
Mm.
Jason Blonstein (49:26.76)
You know, I guess when I having been inside there and been outside, I don’t really know if they do great search work anymore, right? I think a lot of their, they rely on their brand. Now, like, look, if you need to place a board member or you need to place a CEO at a Fortune 10 company, yeah, you’re probably going to want to go to one of the big boys, right? Cause they have that kind
but most roles aren’t like that. I don’t think they’ve adapted effectively to the times. think they’re a little bit beholden to their partner structure who they don’t want to change because they’re making a lot of money. If you look at how they’ve changed the way they do business since LinkedIn was to hit the market,
it’s probably not very different. Their business model has not changed. So it’s kind of hard to continue to retain market share. And they have been losing market share. There’s been a few private equity-backed players that have grown pretty significantly. True Search, ZRG,
that are literally knocking on the door of Egon Zender in terms of revenues. And these companies were, 10 years ago, they were my company size, right? I mean, these weren’t big companies and now they’re 500, $600 million companies.
Anthony Codispoti (51:10.067)
Does ECA have intent or vision or hope to have a similar growth trajectory? Do you guys kind of feel comfortable where you are?
Jason Blonstein (51:18.13)
Yeah, we definitely are. We want to grow, right? Whether we’re going to try to sell the business eventually or whatnot. mean, that’s long term. I don’t think we’re necessarily very attractive at the size we are yet. But we’ve grown pretty significantly just this year, which honestly has been a bit of a down market. And we’ve hired and grown revenues.
Anthony Codispoti (51:43.903)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (51:47.998)
Right. So we’re doing something right. You know, and, and, know, there, I’m going to be talking with my CEO next week about, you know, what our, our growth plan is in terms, in terms of hiring and how we’re going to support that. mean, it’s, I think we’ve cracked the code to a degree on, what can make someone successful in this industry. And I’ll tell you, it’s not necessarily hiring someone that has a background in search. Right. it’s, it’s, that’s, that’s not to say that we don’t.
Anthony Codispoti (52:13.011)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (52:17.814)
certainly some of our recent new hires that are, have been very successful to have a background in search. but it, it’s almost unrelated, which sounds weird, but, but there, there’s, there’s a lot of other factors. think, you need some, you know, probably one of the biggest thing you were, we’re not a big company that supports.
Anthony Codispoti (52:33.149)
What do you look for?
Jason Blonstein (52:42.908)
like personality tests or things like that. But one of the things that we really like to do is look for people that feel more in charge of their destiny versus fatalistic. And those people also tend to be a little more entrepreneurial as well. We tend to have more success with someone that is scrappy, that has…
failed, even like failed entrepreneurs, you those can be really, really great people that we target. And then like it’s, it takes time, right? So I don’t care how good of a salesperson you are, no one’s gonna come and just like say, yeah, here’s 10 CEO searches, right? You have to build relationships. have, it takes time, years.
Right? I tell people a minimum two, three years before you’re going to be making the, you know, you’re going to be making the money that you really want to. Right. But you got to put your head down and you got to do it and you got to take the calls and you got to, you got to learn our processes. I mean, there are certainly different ways that that’s probably another thing that I would mention is, is people that are open to feedback. know, we, that’s one of our values.
is we are a culture of feedback and we have a way of doing things. We know that there are other ways to do it, but this is the way we do it and it’s been successful for us and we expect people to kind of embrace that and learn those methods.
Anthony Codispoti (54:24.095)
Let me shift gears on you, Jason. I would be curious to hear about a particular challenge that you have overcome, either personal or professional, kind of what it was, how you worked through it, and some of the lessons coming out the other side.
Jason Blonstein (54:25.831)
Mm.
Jason Blonstein (54:31.58)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, probably the biggest thing, personal thing that I’ve dealt with, well, personally and professional thing that I’ve dealt with is coming out of the military. I had had fairly bad PTSD, right? I’d been to combat, I’d lost friends, I had seen death and it wasn’t…
Anthony Codispoti (54:56.287)
Mm.
Jason Blonstein (55:05.97)
And even though I think even back then there was a lot of talk about it, it was still a little bit taboo to ask for help. It was a little bit like, hey, I should be tough enough to deal with this. And it ate at me for a while. I still think there’s a bit of a taboo against mental health. I mean, you see a lot of the
the kickback that happened when Simone Biles dropped out for mental health reasons, right?
So learning to accept that, learning to get help, to get counseling, to get on medication, to do those things has made me just like such a better person and happy and content. it wasn’t, know, cause now when I have that combined with my experiences, you know, I’m a very patient leader.
Not a lot rattles me. It takes a lot to get me upset. that’s qualities that I think you want in executive. mean, yeah, a lot of times the hothead, you know, makes the Jack Welch type makes the headlines or whatever. But, know, if you’ve read Good to Great, you know, know that.
most successful executives are not that person, right? So, so yeah, that’s that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve struggled with with PTSD. And, you know, I’ve had a lot of soldiers that struggle with it, too. And, and you don’t have to see combat to deal with it, you know, to have PTSD. But I think what you you need to acknowledge it, and you need to seek out help, because it’s not something that you’re going to be able to
Jason Blonstein (57:10.802)
to do on your own most likely.
Anthony Codispoti (57:14.143)
Do you feel like you were this calm, level-headed person before the military experience and then you went through the trauma and you had to get back to where you were? Or do you think where you are now would not have been attainable if you hadn’t gone through the hardships and had to work your way through them?
Jason Blonstein (57:35.632)
I don’t think the hardships really had to do with my ability to deal with stress. I think I kind of had that. I certainly think the military helped me to develop that muscle more to an extent, but I do think that the trauma and the depression that came with it made me a very angry person and very combative.
and, I lost, I lost friends. I lost, you know, I, pushed people away. and it wasn’t, I was just in a bad place. Yeah. So sitting answer your question, I don’t necessarily think the two are connected. but certainly if you didn’t.
have those skills of being able to deal with pressure, being able to deal with like, you’re probably leave the military with them. Because the military is very good at forcing you into those situations, for sure.
Anthony Codispoti (58:45.041)
Did you find yourself in sort of this dark, depressed state as soon as you left the military or was there some gap before things started to kind of turn for you?
Jason Blonstein (58:58.864)
It was when I came back from Iraq. So I was still in the military. And I was still in the military when I started to have these issues. You know, there was, you know, I was prone to getting into fights. was prone to, you know, probably, you know, I was young at the time. So a lot of times we would go out drinking, but I was probably drinking too much, you know, and not, I mean, you know, but.
was also I was living in Germany and the beer was really good. So hard to, but, but, but yeah, that, happened before I got out of the military. But then when I got out of the military, you know, probably a lot of the warning signs and stuff weren’t, people weren’t as familiar with them, you know, cause I wasn’t with my brothers and sisters in arms anymore. And we probably would have recognized some of the signs earlier.
people probably were just like, is, why is Jason so irritable? You know, why is he, why is he so grumpy? you know, I remember we were doing a,
Anthony Codispoti (01:00:02.484)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (01:00:12.222)
a recreational league, like through work, I had signed us up, I think it was football or something flag football and like a bunch, but I got a bunch of colleagues from work to do it. And I remember like lunch of them showed up late or something or whatever. And I just, I like just blew up on them. Right. And these are just, these are my coworkers. These are the people that are out there having fun and I’m sitting there like lecturing them and like, like looking back, you know, I think, you know,
I kind of wish one of them had pulled me aside and said, hey, what’s going on? But they probably didn’t. They weren’t familiar with it either. They weren’t sure what was going on. So yeah, was.
Jason Blonstein (01:00:58.8)
It is something that I think is still underappreciated is obviously something that the people in the military are still very much struggling with. know, suicides are still a huge issue with both in the military and with veterans. So, you know, if I’m given a platform, I’m happy to kind of talk about it and urge people to get professional help and it works.
Anthony Codispoti (01:01:26.121)
For somebody who’s listening and thinking, that’s me, and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know the first step to take, what would you tell them?
Jason Blonstein (01:01:35.186)
Well, if you’re in the military or a veteran, there are a lot of resources through the VA. I think the VA gets a bad rap a lot of times, and deservingly so. But I think they’ve done a lot to improve it. And I also think that there’s a lot of nonprofits and hotlines and whatnot that can help you talk or get you into the right steps.
The first thing I would say is go to a therapist. Whether you have health insurance or not, now there’s apps like BetterHelp that make it very accessible. You don’t even have to leave your home. You can do it on your computer. But that would be the first thing. Go seek professional help through a therapist.
start talking through some of your problems. They’re gonna help to one, help you with frameworks to deal with things, but they’re also gonna be able to say, hey, I think you need to go talk to a psychiatrist because you might need some medication, right? And I think there’s a bit of a taboo against that too. I mean, admittedly, I kind of have that too, like still.
right, that I wish I wasn’t on medication and I wish, you and my son, we were talking that he might have ADHD and we’re very hesitant to medicate him as well. So there’s, there’s even stigmas that, that me with someone that has been diagnosed with depression that, that still has against that. So I know it’s not easy, but we only got this one life, right? So you want to make the most of it. Yeah.
Anthony Codispoti (01:03:13.235)
Let’s make the most of it. Was there a particular moment in time that something happened, there was a trigger that said, okay, I finally need to get help with this?
Jason Blonstein (01:03:25.598)
I think it was more of a gradual awareness and just realized that like I was not dealing with things well and, and, and, that I was unhappy. and then I actually reached out to a friend of mine, who was a, who is a therapist. And she was the one that recommended that I, that I talked to someone and get help. And I did, and I found a great therapist who helped me immensely.
Anthony Codispoti (01:03:26.473)
or was it more of a gradual awareness for you?
Jason Blonstein (01:03:55.742)
And we couldn’t have been more different people, but he was amazing. He was amazing. And then, he sent me to a psychiatrist and so on. So it was beneficial.
Anthony Codispoti (01:04:12.767)
Yeah, I’m really glad that we spent a few minutes to give voice to this because I think your story is, even if you cut out the military part of it is a lot more common than some people realize. you know, you, you struggled with some really serious things. And as you pointed out, you certainly don’t have to have a military background to have, you know, some trauma or some things to work through. And here you are, you’re a person that, you work through those things. you’ve got some medication, you’ve got some professional help.
Jason Blonstein (01:04:24.413)
Yeah.
Anthony Codispoti (01:04:42.899)
wow, what a difference it’s made. And even still in your mind, there’s still that stigma cloud that sort of sits there. And for somebody who maybe hasn’t made that decision yet to seek some professional help, imagine how much bigger and heavier that stigma cloud is for them.
Jason Blonstein (01:04:48.924)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blonstein (01:05:00.124)
Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of times, and not to generalize, in our culture, I think a lot of times it can be worse for men, right? Because you’re seeing, our culture is one where you’re supposed to be strong, you’re supposed to be, and this is you admitting that you have weaknesses, that you have things that need to be worked on, that you need help.
Right. part of that, think is cultural, which I think at least in my lifetime, I’ve seen a shift. I mean, I don’t think we’re there yet, but you’ve certainly seen a shift where it’s been more accepted. It’s where men are allowed to be vulnerable, you know, more so than they were. I still remember when my grandmother passed away and my dad had us leave the room because he didn’t want us to see him cry. Right. You know, and, you know, so it’s just.
You know.
Anthony Codispoti (01:05:58.687)
When now, I would hope a father of today would be like, that’s actually a really helpful thing for my son to see. He needs to see that that’s okay, that it’s healthy. How about, would you give any call outs to maybe some mentors or books or other professional experiences that have been helpful in your career or your personal growth?
Jason Blonstein (01:06:06.642)
That’s yeah, I think I’d be very healthy. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree.
Jason Blonstein (01:06:25.726)
Yeah, mean, first and foremost, Atta Tarki, who’s the founder of my AVCA, very, very smart guy. Sometimes you just meet people and you’re just like, man, that guy’s really smart. He’s one of those people, right? But he has always pushed me, has always given me the…
the rope to hang myself with, so to speak, you know, and, and been supportive when I, when I have made mistakes and, and helped to kind of coach and mentor me. I’ve, I’ve always really appreciated, appreciated his, support. Earlier on in my career, I had, I worked at a company called Constellation Energy, which I think I mentioned earlier with, with Phil O’Connor, but my boss there was, was woman by the name of Julie Hextl. She was
such a great mentor for someone to teach people business, right? Because like you come out of the army and you’re probably way ahead of your peers in terms of leadership and project management and dealing with competing priorities and the things that we’ve touched on. But you’re way behind in things like sales, customer service, finance.
Anthony Codispoti (01:07:52.775)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (01:07:54.364)
Right. Just stuff that like you’re not familiar with. And I had not gotten my MBA yet at the time. And she was very, very helpful in mentoring me and teaching me that. And just, and she was a very good leader. Right. I mean, I was fortunate that I served with some great leaders in the military, but, you know, she put a lot of them. She was, she was up there, you know, she was, she was very compassionate. She was very good at reading people. She was very good. I mean, she was, she was a trained attorney, so that probably helped.
But yeah, she was great. And if I had to plug a book, one of my favorites is still, it’s an oldie but goodie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, which I still think is one of the best books on leadership out there. And I take a lot of those lessons with me to heart.
Anthony Codispoti (01:08:41.055)
you
Jason Blonstein (01:08:50.154)
And I actually actively teach it to my children too. I remember telling my son the other day, is one of his parables from the book with like, the fastest way to get someone to be against you is to tell them that they’re wrong, right? That is one of the fastest, because he was doing that with one of his friends. And I’m like, that’s not how you’re going to convince them to come to your side. I’m telling you right now,
Anthony Codispoti (01:09:06.643)
Mmm.
Anthony Codispoti (01:09:17.459)
Write that one down, it’s a good one. One more question for you, but before I ask it, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you, Jason?
Jason Blonstein (01:09:19.41)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (01:09:26.098)
I mean, I’m obviously very active on LinkedIn. So you can just, there’s only one other Jason Blonstein that I know of. He’s a professor at NYU. He’s a lot smarter than me. So he’s, I’m not that guy. But yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Jason Blonstein, or my email at ECApartners is jblonstein at ECA-partners.com.
That’s another great way to get in touch with me. I’m fairly responsive.
Anthony Codispoti (01:09:58.623)
Terrific. Last question for you, Jason. What do you see the changes that are coming to your industry in the next couple of years? How do you see things unfolding?
Jason Blonstein (01:10:01.17)
Yeah.
Jason Blonstein (01:10:10.43)
That’s a great question. And I don’t know if I have a great answer for that right now. I think if you would have asked me a year ago, I would have had a different answer. mean, I would have, I definitely have seen the consolidation that’s happening. I’m definitely seeing the trend of these smaller companies becoming bigger and bigger. I think AI is going to have to become a part of it. I just, just haven’t seen a tool yet that’s done it effectively. But to me that
that could be a huge, I mean, if you can use AI to source candidate lists, like in something that like even with us, like with someone from the Philippines doing it, they spent all day doing that. Like if you could have train AI to do that, that’s gonna be a huge leg up. And I have not seen a tool, like I said, that has done it effectively. If anyone knows one, happy.
Anthony Codispoti (01:11:03.913)
So you’ve looked at some and they just aren’t doing what they propose to do.
Jason Blonstein (01:11:07.275)
Yeah, yeah, they’re just they’re just not there yet. And but I think it’s coming. I think it’s coming. I also think that the industry is going to be, I think, similar to what you’re going to see with private equity. You know, we had we had a boom period, right? You know, during the pandemic, the first few months of pandemic, was everyone thought the world was ending, right?
But after that, it rebounded very fast. And especially 2021 was a gangbuster year for a lot of executive search firms. And if you weren’t making money then, I’m sorry, you’re in the wrong industry. But I think the bar to become an executive recruiter is pretty low. You need really a phone and internet access. But I think a lot of those companies that
We’re growing just because the economy was, I think, we’re going to go by the wayside. And I think there might be a little less competition. But I also think we’re going to still probably be heading into a period of consolidation. So we’ll see. We’ll see.
Anthony Codispoti (01:12:19.859)
Any chance that ECA Partners looks to do acquisitions on their side?
Jason Blonstein (01:12:25.796)
We’ve talked about it. I don’t think we’re at the size that it would make sense yet. I mean, we’ve talked about possibly getting maybe two to three times bigger than we are now and looking to do that. you know…
I still remember my CFO put up a slide and we were talking about our hiring and how, here’s a list of all the initials of people that we hired from within the industry. And only one of them has worked out and it was JB. And I’m like, yeah, everyone knows who that is, Brett. So we just don’t have as much success.
Because our process is different, and people have kind of done it the same way, and so we don’t necessarily have the same success. And I don’t know if that would change if we acquire a business that does things very differently.
Anthony Codispoti (01:13:08.777)
Mm.
Anthony Codispoti (01:13:20.244)
Hmm.
Jason Blonstein (01:13:25.69)
It’s TBD, TBD.
Anthony Codispoti (01:13:27.313)
Internal growth might be the best way for you guys to go
Jason Blonstein (01:13:31.248)
Yes, yeah, that’s been, that’s been the, that’s our plan for now. For sure. For sure. That, that, that’ll be 2025 for sure.
Anthony Codispoti (01:13:41.897)
Okay. Well, Jason, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.
Jason Blonstein (01:13:48.188)
No, thank you. I enjoyed the conversation, enjoyed being on, and thank you for your time and looking forward to continuing the relationship here.
Anthony Codispoti (01:13:57.693)
Likewise. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.
REFERENCES
Website: https://eca-partners.com/