Corp America January 2017

, Chris Schoettelkotte, CEO at Manhattan Resources, talks training, best practices and operational success with Corp AmericaMagazine. Investing in Professional Recruitment Services Manhattan Resources is a 17 year old professional services firm that provides retained executive search services, business consulting, staff augmentation services all with the mission to build high performance teams that enable our clients to achieve their corporate objectives. Chris serves as the company’s CEO, a role he has held since the company was founded in October 1999. He tells us more about the company and his role. “We operate primarily in the Oil & Gas, Energy, Petrochemicals, Manufacturing, Distribution and Legal Industries. Our clients range from privately held multigenerational family run businesses to the world’s largest public companies. “From February of 2001 until August 2016 I also served as the company’s President. As CEO I focus on the strategic direction of the company. In addition I focus on the commercial aspects of the company as well as developing additional service lines across the business.” Manhattan Resources invests a lot in its staff and, in recent years, the company has developed a recruitment profile for the type of person who is successful within the industry to ensure continued success, as Chris elaborates: “They are well- educated professionals who have been successful themselves in Corporate America. They are typically extroverts who are detail oriented, goal driven, problem solvers that take pride in building things and they tend to have a high degree of emotional maturity and a high degree of self- awareness. They understand their strengths and they work well within a team environment to augment their skills with others in order to take care of our clients.” Despite this, recruitment can still be a challenge. “Building out the bandwidth of our staff to fully serve our client base was a challenge early on,” comments Chris. “Our industry has created some challenges for itself by not having enough barriers to entry. I believe many in the industry lack the professionalism and functional expertise to truly add value for their clients. Over the years we have built a very competent team of professionals with both functional and industry knowledge that allows us to succeed at a very high level. In addition to our truly unique approach to executive search, our commitment to learn and understand our client’s business goals, objectives and cultures has allowed our clients to have confidence that we are truly in this industry to ensure their success.” “We have a targeted search process that is completely transparent to our client,” states Chris. “The client is completely involved in and aware of the search strategy from the beginning. We work very closely with them to make sure that the shortlist of candidates has the technical skills and usually, more importantly, fit the culture of the company. Our exclusive focus is on making sure that the candidate is the best possible fit for the position and on the team. We use a series of functional, behavioural and stress interviews to vet the candidates, as well as assessment tools and job evaluation tools. “I feel very strongly that our industry’s clients deserve a far better value proposition and by that I mean a thorough and transparent process. Consultants should take a sincere and deep interest in the success of their customers and because we are in the business of delivering outstanding intellectual capital, as an industry we should measure our success on the retention of the people we place, the amount of runway or career growth they experience with our clients and the company’s ability to achieve its goals based on the value added by the people we bring to the company. “Our professionals are all involved in the industries we serve and many are former executives from those industries. We attend conferences, sponsor events and learning opportunities, speak at industry events and develop training material for the industry. We believe in giving back and not just staying current in our industry but we work very hard to lead our industry in the direction we believe it needs to grow.” With regards to future aspirations, everything looks bright for Manhattan Resources as it plans to fully embrace the technological age. “Incorporating artificial intelligence into the business, expanding into healthcare, and continuing to expand our knowledge in the industries we currently serve are all areas in which we will further develop the business,” says Chris. “In five years I believe Manhattan Resources will be serving our clients in an entirely new way, nothing can stay the same and our industry has lagged dramatically in the area of innovation. We feel like we are capable of leading the industry in a new and exciting direction. As a boutique professional services firm we are nimble and believe we have the experience, knowledge and creativity to reinvent how our industry serves its customers.” 1701CA02 K Company: Manhattan Resources Name: Chris Schoettelkotte Email: [email protected] Address: Houston, Texas, USA