Chad Biagini boasts of 10+ years’ experience in Executive Search, representing a wide range of sports clients across French Ligue One, English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, and all the majors in the US and Canada – Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and the NFL. Throughout his career, Chad has recruited more than 350 senior executives across the industries of media and entertainment, sports management, consumer products, technology, private equity, non-profit and higher education. We spoke with him recently to find out more about him and the art of recruiting. Excerpts:
Tell us about what it is that Nolan Partners does.
We help owners, CEOs, GMs, and department leaders identify, attract, and assess talent for their most critical senior hiring needs.
What is your role like Chad?
It’s a privilege to advise sports industry leaders. When owners and CEOs come to us, they are looking to find competitive advantage and market outperformance through the selection of best-in-class talent. For the level of roles we recruit, all of the candidates are highly successful and accomplished. The higher someone goes, the more competitive the interviews get.
Any of these executives could do the job, but it’s our role to determine which ones would do the job the best based on their capabilities, experience, style, values, personality, and motivations. I spend most of my time on the phone, on Zoom, or in person assessing leadership executives throughout the world of sports and entertainment.
When recruiting, what skill sets are constant across the field?
The soft skills are critical. Communication, writing, listening, presenting, relationship-building, and follow through. It doesn’t matter how good you are technically; your career caps out if you can’t do the soft skills well.
I’ll focus on one of the most important: Self-awareness is vital to success. Athletes know their strengths and weaknesses compared to their competition. Business executives should, too. Far too many don’t take enough time to self-reflect and be honest with themselves as to why they’ve made it to where they are and also what they will need to do to go farther. If you’re very honest and humble with yourself, you’ll admit where you under index compared to others in your field. Self-reflection should apply to your review of your own technical skills and also your own emotional intelligence and personality.
Watch yourself and listen to yourself through the lens of an outsider…would you hire yourself based on your interview answers? Would you hire yourself based on how you just presented your budget to the board? Would you buy from yourself based on that sales pitch? Would you want to be friends with yourself based on how well you were listening (or not)?
Are we seeing more women being given senior leadership roles within the sports and entertainment industry?
Thankfully, yes! More than 60% of our placements these past 2 years have been women or ethnic minorities. More women in leadership has been a need for a very long time. The industry is making great gains and most recognize the importance of valuing diversity, building inclusive cultures, and offering opportunities to high-performers who might not have the experience yet. Not only is it the right thing to do, it also brings a tremendous impact to the business and its goals.
What is the most complex thing about HR?
People! People are complex; we’re dynamic. We’re moody. We’re inspiring. We’re opinionated. A strong HR leader builds a culture based on the vision of the CEO. You need the right people in the right roles with the right alignment, incentives, and structure. The best businesses are those that attract, develop, and retain the brightest of talent in spite of the fact that the brightest talent is being approached by everyone else out there.
