The Story

Over 15 years ago, Intelisearch was founded by someone just like you

Intelisearch was founded by a top HR executive responsible for leadership acquisition, retention and succession planning for one of Sony’s three major businesses. In his capacity, George Rodriguez experienced the best and worst the retained search industry could produce. The breadth and consequence of his experiences exposed severe, costly flaws in the retained search industry offering: inconsistent results; lack of attention to compatibility in selection; and the frequent breakdown in fundamentals that often collapsed searches.

In many respects, George and his internal partners pondered an industry that–unlike so many others–greatly sub-optimizes client opportunities, operates to its own standards over those of the client and elusively side-steps accountability. In short, a provider mindset that sees as its mission fulfilling a consultative role rather than filling a critical leadership need.

Sensitized by the power of analytics and quality standards, and emboldened by a passion for his profession, George envisioned an antidote to his nosebleed experiences and satisfying a critical, unmet need in executive search. In 1995, he decided to create an entirely new kind of search firm.

A firm bent not only on doing things better, but doing better things

From day one, the firm aspired to offer clients:

• a strategic, nimble alternative to the traditional search model
• a partner that would truly embrace client side realities and the ‘your success is ours’ mindset
• a company ready, willing and able to measure and quantify their work through an analytically driven search model

Intelisearch is born

The new firm’s name, in and of itself, signaled the end of traditional search. Intelisearch marked the birth of what would become the next-generation model for the search firms of tomorrow.

Influenced by Sony’s quality model, Mr. Rodriguez broke down the search process and identified in each incremental step where value and quality could be improved or optimized. His experience and research convinced him that the search industry relied very little on process to drive better results, with no systematic way to link the need with actionable search and assessment strategies.

Where traditional firms continued mining existing talent pools and were content to rely on outmoded candidate evaluation criteria, Intelisearch set out not just to search harder, but to search smarter; to be more in-tune with the changing expectations of employers and candidates alike; to look at the problem from new angles, to see new solutions and create new opportunities; to represent a wise, high-yield investment.

The measure of success

In 1999, Intelisearch truly delivered on its founder’s vision by introducing a concept previously unheard of in the search industry: an architecture by which Intelisearch could measure and report everything it does–before, during and after they do it. Clients found it as refreshing as it was revolutionary.

The future is now

More than 15 years later, the vision George Rodriguez formed during his tenure at Sony is thriving. Along with it, are the careers of many tax executives placed by Intelisearch, leaders who have adapted to change and exploited opportunities, and are right now re-shaping the American and global business landscape.