Alex Margarite: Crossing the Bridge from Executive Search Firm to Internal Recruiter

In this episode, Marcus Edwardes speaks with Alex Margarite, a leadership recruiter who began his career in research for the executive research firm Isaacson, Miller and went on to become Head of Talent Research and Engagement at Asana before ultimately becoming the TA Lead for leadership roles there.

Alex is a lifelong singer and a musician trained on multiple instruments in jazz and classical. And he’s a fellow spinning instructor.

Listen in as Alex shares the most refreshing part about moving from being an external to an internal recruiter and the differences he has observed between the two.

He also gives his thoughts on behavioral interviewing and its advantages over situational interviewing.

Finally, Alex explains why rejecting a candidate on the basis of “culture fit” is almost always a smokescreen, and why his goal at every interview is to elicit “explicit and radical honesty” from his interviewees.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

●      [04:12] Moving from being an external to an internal recruiter

●      [06:18] Why it was a relief to now be responsible for only one client

●      [10:06] Frustrations that Alex experienced in internal recruitment

●      [13:24] Addressing the claim that internal recruiters don’t headhunt

●      [15:18] Differences in approaches between external and internal recruiters

●      [20:09] How the stakes differ for internal recruiters

●      [26:24] Is it any harder to reject a candidate when you’re internal?

●      [29:00] Are active candidates treated differently from passive candidates?

●      [30:00] How status updates differ in importance for internal recruiters

●      [32:39] Alex’s thoughts on behavioral interviewing

●      [39:18] Does behavioral interviewing accommodate different personalities?

●      [40:50] Does behavioral interviewing reduce the need for subjective evaluation by the recruiter?

●      [42:52] Alex’s thoughts on culture fit in a society that aims to have more inclusive and diverse workplaces

●      [46:07] Why Alex sets up his interviewees for “explicit and radical honesty”

Key quotes:

●      “Executive search consultants have such commitments to process—a clean, repeatable process that has some sort of real legacy behind it.”

●      “If you are someone working with a recruiter, whether internal or external, the quality of the relationship (like any relationship) is exclusively based on how much you put into it.”

●      “I think, as an internal recruiter, you have a little bit less in common with a consultant and more in common with a salesperson.”

●      “Behavioral interviewing is more accommodating than situational interviewing to a broader set of personality, communication, and even cognition types (or folks that approach problem-solving differently) because it gives them the chance to describe the way that something happened through their own words.”

●      Values are not necessarily the same thing as culture. Culture is the thing that forms around values.

Resources Mentioned:

●      Asana