Insights from Alan Cullen, President & CEO
Since Alan Cullen founded Westwood & Wilshire in 2003, the firm has emerged as a star among life sciences executive search firms. Building on its reputation for finding the right people for clients in this particularly demanding market segment, Westwood & Wilshire launched:
a technology practice in 2018
a healthcare practice in 2019
AccelPeople in 2020 to help companies develop and nurture diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
The firm has grown to a team of 33 people—including executives, recruiters, researchers, project managers, and administrators—providing “white glove” executive search services to help companies in multiple vertical markets to find the right people to fill key positions.
We recently asked Alan for his philosophy on executive search and the importance of human capital in today’s ever-changing world of work.
Q. How do you see Westwood & Wilshire being different from other executive search firms?
A. The types of people we’re going after are very visible people: they’re respected, they have LinkedIn profiles, they publish and speak at conferences.
But anyone can look at a resume or LinkedIn profile and see the “what” of a candidate. At Westwood & Wilshire we emphasize the how’s and the why’s.
This is time-consuming, and it’s not easy. We spend a lot of time training our recruiters on how to vet candidates—to uncover the essence of who these people are and how they might fit into a role that a particular company needs fulfilled.
If you invest the effort, you can move beyond what a candidate offers on the surface and unearth the narrative and essence of who they are. That’s really the golden standard we strive to achieve.
Q. What makes someone good at recruiting?
A. Recruiting encompasses some magical combination of science and art. For starters, you have to be an excellent listener. You need to be able to deeply understand a client’s needs for a particular position, including things they might not even know they need.
For example, a client for a chief scientific officer search might specify that they need an expert in protein degradation. But if you have a solid foundation in proteins and biologics, you can really dig in and say, what else is synonymous with protein degradation? What else can you capture from looking through the publication records to offer up candidates who have equivalent expertise and who are the right fit for the client in other ways, as well?
Having a high level of social intelligence or emotional intelligence is good, and what really matters is having the mindset of working with your client to help them achieve the best outcome possible.
“Recruiting encompasses some magical combination of science and art,” said Alan Cullen, president and CEO of Westwood and Wilshire. “For starters, you have to be an excellent listener. You need to be able to deeply understand a client’s needs for a particular position, including things they might not even know they need.”
Q. Does that mean a recruiter needs to be able to “read between the lines” when working with candidates and clients?
A. Yes. For example, a client says they want somebody with a top-tier MBA. The first thing to do is ask why. In fact, they really want someone who has developed a robust network of institutional investor connections that would be valuable either for fundraising or serving as your external representative to Wall Street. If you bring those distinctions to your clients, they might admit they’ve never thought about it or heard it verbalized like that. At that point, they might consider candidates with MBAs from less-prestigious schools or experience for which “top-tier MBA” is just a shorthand.
Then there’s the issue of making sure that new hires will meld with the rest of the executive team, philosophically and personally. It’s one thing to hire a superbly qualified rock star for a key position, and another thing to hire someone who, while of course being supremely qualified, will also strengthen the entire executive team and make it easier for the company to achieve its ultimate business goals.
Q. Why does Westwood & Wilshire employ a research team as well as recruiters?
A. We have lots of relationships and great contacts, but it’s lazy to rely 100% on a database of contacts. The only way to look a client in the eye and say, “We are truly delivering to you the best available talent on the market today,” is to start from scratch for each search we do. And our team of researchers help us do that.
Q. What was the idea behind the formation of AccelPeople, the Westwood & Wilshire consultancy for “progressive people practices?”
A. I am personally—and as a CEO—very committed to DEI in the workplace, and I see most companies falling into one of three buckets. About a third are full believers in the importance of DEI; about a third think it’s a good idea but aren’t sure what to do; and about a third don’t care about, or don’t believe in, DEI.
Westwood & Wilshire overall, and AccelPeople in particular, focuses on clients in those first two buckets. The goal is to help companies embrace DEI wholeheartedly and achieve all the business benefits of operating a diverse and inclusive company culture.
Q. You’re a big supporter of the executive search profession and mentoring other search professionals. Why?
A. It’s important to have a presence that extends more widely in the industry. To that end, we sponsor a number of industry conferences, including the LEAP HR series and other healthcare- and tech-related conferences. In past years I’ve been a judge for MedTech Innovator, which provides grant funding for med tech entrepreneurs. I also mentor up-and-coming recruiters, both within Westwood & Wilshire and beyond.
Q. One last thing. Where did the Westwood & Wilshire company name come from?
A. As anybody who knows me even a little bit will tell you, I am a very proud alum of UCLA, which is located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. At the time I started the company, I was living near the intersection of Westwood Blvd. and Wilshire Blvd., which is kind of an iconic LA intersection. It’s one of the busiest in the city, if not the country, with a number of important businesses—major banks, popular restaurants, a Sears department store, Thrifty Drug Store, an old Fox theater, the Hammer Museum, and currently some significant office towers—having occupied space at or near that intersection.
To me, the name Westwood & Wilshire evokes professionalism, prestige, and personal connection. Which are appropriate for a successful executive search firm, don’t you think?
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