Paul Stefunek
Photo Credit: Paul Stefunek
Name: Paul Stefunek
Current Job: Vice President, Practice Leader at GattiHR
Favorite restaurant in town? I live on the west side and love supporting small hometown restaurants. For a few personal reasons, I love Nemo Grill in Avon. Everything I have tried has been fantastic and the service is second to none. There are so many others I also frequent as I travel throughout Ohio. It would be easier for me to answer it if we looked at each town or cuisine. Cleveland is definitely a foodie town.
Favorite thing about Cleveland? As a native New Yorker, I have made Cleveland my home for nearly three decades. I enjoy the warmth of the people and the ease of access to do almost anything you want. The convenience and simplicity of the commute coupled with the variety of activities truly makes me love this town. Coming from the New York city area, you simply don’t utilize what the city has to offer due to the challenge and expenses associated with it. In Cleveland you don’t have those restrictions. But, don’t ask me about pizza. Yes, I am biased towards New York pizza.
Q: Paul, you recently joined GattiHR. Why the switch and can you talk about your role there? GattiHR is a proven and trusted 35-year professional services organization supporting our clients with great leaders. We are a national firm with global partners. Our focus is human resources, analytics and technology. I am working with our team and providing the experience to conduct a broader array of C Suite and VP level searches across our existing client base. The leadership disciplines we now support are fully across the CEO and all of their direct reports including CFO, COO, CMO, CDO, CIO, CHRO, CXO, and CCO/CRO.
Q: I would imagine with many companies freezing hiring, your business has been significantly affected. How are you adjusting to the pandemic? The pandemic is definitely impacting many organizations and industries. Thankfully our business has broad mix of clients. Certain industries have had no impact while some have seen an uptick in their business from the effects of the pandemic. The technology sector, packaging, grocery and other industries, which we are active in, have experienced positive impact and we are blessed to have clients in these sectors. Yet, I have had many years of experience in the hospitality, food and facility services industry which have been significantly impacted.
Q: How are we responding to the pandemic? We’re the team that recruited and trained the 2,000 strong contact tracing operation in MA, and another 500 in Fairfax county VA. These are two of the most successful operations in the US. We’re currently building a Contact tracing operation that will support university clients across the US.
We have also provided our clients with a Pandemic Playbook at the onset of COVID to help them navigate their business.
Q: Many of the roles you source are for C-level executive roles. What advice do you have for someone looking to land their first role in the C-suite? To answer this as succinct as possible, stand out and fail forward. We all were trained to put in long hours, which most of us do. Yes, the pandemic and working from home has challenged us as individuals and leaders with the nuance of being responsive and working longer than usual hours. The advice many global leaders have shared with me, is work smart, outperform and push yourself. You may stumble and fail along that path, but if you want different results, you have to do different things to get different results. Push yourself, learn from your mistakes and drive results.
Q: Tech recruiters, for best or worse, don't have the best reputation. What are some of the misnomers about recruiting that software engineers don't understand? We all know that there are very strong professional leaders and some questionable leaders in every industry. The professional recruiters who are direct, open, honest, responsive, business knowledgeable, etc. are the ones you will want to build a relationship with. This type of recruiter, although paid by the hiring company, looks to align the talent (candidate) with the corporation and opportunity. If the recruiter is selling too hard, you should question the opportunity or the recruiter. When we are utilized as partners by our clients, we are true extensions of their organization and we attract the ideal talent and all parties benefit.
Q: What are some of the skillset requests that are on the rise among clients? Our clients are across several industries so we are asked for many skillsets. We are seeing continued requests for digital transformation leaders, artificial intelligence, robotics, and of course sales and marketing leadership. In our largest sector of human capital, we are seeing the need for diversity and inclusion leadership, total rewards and HRIS leadership.