All three come from entrepreneurial families. That could well be the reason that Herman Rutgers Executive Search, founded the day the global credit crisis also reached the Netherlands, has never been in crisis itself. Petra Herman, Francine Rutgers and Nelieke Wismans on 10 years in business, the magic of a good team and the next generation.
Francine and Petra worked together at Mastwijk Consultancy for 8 years with great pleasure and success when, in early 2008, they decided to set up their own executive search agency for communications professionals. Small detail: they did not know they were heading for the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s.
In the summer of 2008, they found the perfect rental property on Amsterdam’s Parnassusweg for their newly founded executive search firm Herman Rutgers. They signed the 5-year lease with South As rate and in September they got the key.
On Sept. 15, they were painting the walls with the radio on. Petra remembers well what happened when they heard the news about the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. Petra: “We looked at each other and said, ‘Ah, that’s America’ – because we are two optimists – ‘that will blow over.'” Three weeks later, when Herman Rutgers BV was founded, on October 4, 2008, Fortis fell and the crisis was also officially a fact in the Netherlands and Belgium.
There was no way back, Francine and Petra realized, because they were locked into that lease for five years. Again they looked at each other. ‘We have one advantage,’ Francine said: ‘It can’t get any worse than this.’ Viewed properly, they reasoned, it was not so bad at all that they had started in times of crisis: now there were only two of them – had they started a year earlier, in 2007, when everyone still thought the economy was booming, they might have hired staff.
They were indeed at an advantage. It had been the good news show for many companies for so long that they had designed their communications accordingly. Now that the crisis had erupted, they suddenly needed crisis managers and issue managers and spokespeople who could deliver bad news in a good way.
Corporate communication always goes on, crisis or no crisis, they soon noticed. Francine: “When the economy is really bad, there is no more investment in brands, not in sponsorship and not in branding, because it all costs money. But in corporate communications, you do want to invest when your stock price is in danger of falling because of clumsy things appearing in the press. Good internal communication is therefore very important. Because if you have to lay off 30 or 40 percent of your people, you do want the good people to stay put. We were able to get started right away.
They started Herman Rutgers with nothing more and nothing less than their wide network of communications people, one bicycle, one laptop and two phones from the company.
From the beginning, Herman Rutgers had the sympathy of many patrons. Francine and Petra kept their appointments, had a good network and often received assignments based on personal recommendation. And that’s how it’s still going. Petra: “In our work, it really is that you are as good as your last assignment. It’s all about confidence.’
Their first assignment was from a publicly traded company. The two of them went there on the one bike. Petra laughs: “People thought we were immensely cool. They even literally said, I will never forget, “You are heroes, that you dare to do that: start in the crisis!” While we ourselves thought, well, that’s just the way it happened.’
They financed everything themselves, which is how they do it to this day, by the way. Their optimism, down-to-earthness and decisiveness are not only indicative of both founders, but also apply to Nelieke Wismans, who joined them in 2015 to expand the agency into interim search.
The first placement, for which they touted “quite a nice fee,” Francine and Petra celebrated at the bagel store around the corner from their office. There they had lunch with a bagel and a glass of fresh gravy. A bagel and a glass of fresh gravy, that was it? Petra, enthusiastically: ‘We were very happy about that! After all, we were celebrating, not sitting in the office with a sandwich.’ Francine: ‘Later we did sit in the champagne bar sometimes, when we had something to celebrate.’ Petra: “But by then we had moved on.
Do they never argue or at least have heated discussions? Petra: “People often ask us that. It has never happened before. We have our own theory about that. We are very different, but are also both the youngest child of a large entrepreneurial family. We more or less inherited the same set of norms and values. We only found that out later. That you shouldn’t spend money you haven’t earned yet is something we both take for granted. Coincidentally, Nelieke also comes from an entrepreneurial family. And she has learned, “If you like to buy something, walk past it ten times first to look at it – by the eleventh time, you probably think: I’ve seen it so many times now, I don’t need it anymore.
Francine and Petra have always worked well together, but when you start doing business together you really know what you can gain from each other. Francine is a “starter” and Petra a “finisher,” and it works. Not that Francine is not a “finisher” and Petra is not a “starter,” but Francine likes to do new things after a while. ‘At some point something of boredom or routine strikes me. Petra goes all the way. She always knows how to motivate me to look at something again with new energy. Very pleasant.’
Petra objects, “Francine is much more creative and broader than me. I’m really monomaniacal. I really like what I do, I have passion for it, but it is narrow. When we think about new concepts here in the office, Francine is much more the driver in that.’ And then there’s Nelieke. She and Francine are similar when it comes to creativity and coming up with entrepreneurial plans, but Nelieke is very structured. Nelieke: ‘I have everything in Excel, you can ask me anything, I know it down to the digit. In that, in turn, I resemble Petra.’
All three are MBTI-certified and have also measured themselves against the so-called Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This showed that their MBTI profiles complemented each other perfectly.
Nelieke: “However different we really are, the great thing is that our ambitions and drives are well balanced with each other.
So much for the psychological analysis of the women behind Herman Rutgers – a name behind which, of course, you initially expect a man; they liked that very thing, he sticks around. And you can finely aptly abbreviate it to HR.
Francine: “At the end of 2013 I started itching; something new had to happen. Things were going well, we had Herman Rutgers up and running, but we needed some new energy. So did Petra. The two of us sat down at the beach for a day and came up with about ten ideas to give the company an extra push.’
Of all the ideas, two remained. They wanted to establish an open collaboration with an international network to meet the increasing international demand in the market. And they wanted to expand into interim search. They picked up both ideas simultaneously and put out a search for themselves.
The choice for an international partner fell on Alex Gordon Shute, founder of Ithaca Partners in London. Petra: “Her way of operating is very similar to ours. She has a high standard of quality and is very professional. She has a lot of vision and is commercial; it’s just a good fit.’
To search for a third partner who could set up the interim search piece, Petra and Francine made a list of business and personal attributes they felt were important. Entrepreneurship ranked high, as did integrity, quality, ambition and having fun in your profession.
So they soon came upon Nelieke. They had met her years earlier at a dinner party and it clicked immediately; business and personal. Nelieke was working at a recruitment agency at the time. The contact had remained after that evening, Francine and Petra knew how to find her, so things moved quickly after that.
Enterprising Nelieke certainly is. In recruitment, she had worked in various roles: as a recruiter, as an entrepreneur and as manager of a team of consultants. In 2014, she was associated with a start-up that paired top Dutch companies with young entrepreneurs. She also had Get the Flow, her own business & community development company.
At the end of 2014, she quit the startup where she worked. Nelieke took a break and went on a six-week trip with her family. She was in Cape Town when Francine was on her voicemail. Just when Nelieke had resolved to start looking around for a new assignment.
With the recruitment and selection work she had done before, she was actually a little done, she says. ‘But that wasn’t surprising, I was working at a mid-market agency and there it’s all about volume, margins, master and framework agreements. I had a management position and was responsible for bringing in big contracts, key account management and managing margins. I learned a lot from it and it was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t what I wanted, in the end. I want to bring parties together, I’m a connector. And as you have more experience yourself, at a certain point it is also more interesting to talk to people who also have a bit more experience.’
Nelieke went for coffee with Petra and Francine and their ambitions turned out to be a seamless fit. Nelieke: “They wanted to offer a broader solution to clients in the area of interim management. And not just maternity replacements, but change management assignments in particular. There was not really a serious search firm operating in that market that could do nice heavy assignments.
They met several times and decided to go for it, because the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It was exciting for all three. For Nelieke because she entered a marriage that had now been in place for seven years, and for Francine and Petra because a third party suddenly came into play. Fortunately, a number of challenging interim applications came in immediately. Nelieke: “I could get right to work and be of value, I liked that. And we could see from each other how the other worked. How do you approach a client, how do you approach a candidate, how do you stand in your profession? You can talk about that for hours, but you just have to see it and experience it in practice.’
Francine: ‘It went so easily, smoothly and well. We found that very quickly – amazingly quickly in retrospect – there was a lot of trust, both ways.’ Petra: “Clients at one point also gave back, “You hired your younger sister!” We hadn’t thought of it that way ourselves beforehand, but that’s exactly what it was.
Within a year of starting Herman Rutgers Interim Search, Nelieke became a partner. Nelieke: “We complement each other, also for our clients and candidates, because we can look at a total picture of a department. We increasingly see candidates alternating periods of interim management with permanent jobs. When Petra, Francine and I have spoken to someone, we share the information among ourselves. I know all the permanent candidates and they know the interim managers I talk to.’
They do everything themselves: there is no secretariat, there are no searchers. It helps that they are not plagued by big egos; they have no problem playing each other’s assistant when a candidate or client visits. Nelieke: ‘Opening the door for someone and giving them a cup of coffee is very important. Because you have seen someone for a while and you exchange a few words with each other.’
Francine: “And don’t forget the important role of our CWO; the Chief Welcome Officer. Our office dog Doris is the first at the door to wait for visitors. It seems unimportant, but many people are a bit tense when they come here. The happily wagging dog immediately creates an informal atmosphere where people start talking about their own dog or pet. You see the business “mask” disappear and the atmosphere is immediately personal.
Everything they do is thought about. That’s why Nelieke, Francine and Petra make all appointments themselves, just as they work out candidates’ resumes themselves.
Petra: “It takes time and is stupid line work, but the devil is in the detail; sometimes that stupid line work yields invaluable information. You can sometimes hear by the intonation or reaction of someone on the phone how they feel about it. That’s how we keep a grip on a careful process.
The current boom period is being celebrated ten years after the fact as if there had never been a global credit crisis. Recruitment agencies are springing up like mushrooms, eager to make lots of money fast. That’s easy to do, because the jobs are there for the taking; there are just few candidates. At Herman Rutgers they are annoyed, but they know it’s like the ebb and flow: a lot of cowboys appear on the scene now, and when the economy slows down, they disappear like snow in the sun.
By the way, they have just as little to do with the other end of the spectrum: the super-exclusive agencies where you have to practically beg to be allowed in the card box.
Herman Rutgers is an emphatic niche player and they are proud of it. “We don’t want to be the biggest, but the best,” says Petra. Francine puts it this way, “Long-term relationships are much more important to us than quick success. Nelieke concludes: ‘The commercial interest is always secondary to the result. They want to do business carefully, towards both client and candidate. This is what ties the trio closely together, and it is one of the most important values on the wish list they have for the fourth partner they are looking for.
Francine: “Although we mainly work for the top positions in the market, we are always alert to new talent. In recent years, we have invested in a pool of “pearls.” Young communications professionals in their late 20s, early 30s who may become the new leaders in communications.
That is why they are now looking for a consultant who connects with that new generation. Petra: ‘We ourselves have grown with the current communications directors in all these years. It will be the same for the new partner.’
Nelieke adds, ‘Because a large part of our success is due to our personal relationships, the careful maintenance of our network. And that will be an important part of the new colleague’s work.’
They already have a list of names. Male or female, it doesn’t matter. As long as it is a connector at heart, who agrees with the motto to which they have been faithful for 10 years: “integrity, discretion and a genuine interest in people.
