Episode 334 - Executive headhunter Gerard Miles explains how search firms identify, assess, and approach candidates, and what experienced professionals can do to become more visible, relevant, and memorable to the recruiters who matter.

Renata Bernarde (00:00)
This is an episode about how executive recruitment works at the highest levels. It’s about how headhunters think, how they build a search, how they identify talent, how recruiters assess whether someone is relevant for a role, and how candidates can build better, more strategic relationships with headhunters over time.

Today’s conversation is with Gerard Miles, a headhunter specializing in the games and entertainment sector and co-founder of Mission One. Now, before you think I don’t work in gaming, so this episode may not be for me, I want you to stay with us.

Because what Gerard shares today is much bigger than gaming. If you replace the word gaming with mining, education, retail, technology, financial services, health, government or any other sector, the principles are the same.

Gerard is very open about the process behind executive search. He explains how recruiters work with clients, how they map the market, how they use LinkedIn, how referrals matter, and why being visible in the right way matters more than being visible everywhere. We also talk about career positioning. Gerard shares how he moved from a broader tech search into a very specific niche in gaming and why niching down helped him become known in the market.

Now this part of the conversation is really useful for anyone thinking about their own professional positioning, especially if you’re in a senior leadership position trying to stand out in a competitive market. We also discuss what happens when candidates come from outside the recruiter’s niche. This is something many experienced professionals ask me about, especially when they want to move into an adjacent industry.

and Gerard will give you a very honest view of when that works, when it doesn’t, and what makes a crossover story more convincing.

So if you are actively job searching or quietly considering your next move or simply trying to understand how senior hiring really works, I think you will find this conversation really practical and grounding.

And if after listening to this episode you realize you need help working with recruiters, positioning yourself for senior roles or planning your job search, you can reach out to me. I’m a career coach. I’m specialized and experienced professionals in their 40s, 50s and 60s, willing to remain employable and in control of their careers. You can book a one-on-one consultation with me at any time through my website. And if you would like to work with me over your transition period,

say three or six months, you can book an introductory meeting with me so that we can discuss the level of support that will be right for you. All the details are available on my website renatabernarde.com. That’s R-E-N-A-T-A-B-E-R-N-A-R-D-E.com. There’s a link to it in the show notes. Now let’s welcome Gerard Miles to the Job Hunting Podcast.

Renata Bernarde (03:24)
All right. So let’s get going. Let’s talk about gaming and entertainment. Tell me how you managed to be in that industry.

Gerard Miles (03:33)
Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for having me on the podcast as well. I’m not so delighted to be here and to be talking to your listeners. So yeah, I’m a headhunter as you’ve identified it. I’m also one that works extensively in the world of games and entertainment. Pick that up. So I started doing sort of broader tech So I was doing CTOs, VP engineering, CPOs, product for.

Renata Bernarde (03:40)
Thank you.

Gerard Miles (04:00)
a lot of earlier stage series B, series D, venture capital backed, SaaS businesses, consumer tech, things like this. And I was doing that without a huge degree of passion. I’m honest, longest story that I was, I was actually trying to become a political advocate. And so I had a job in parliament writing speeches and I was trying to, that was kind of, that was sort of career plan A and headhunting was a part-time job to, to pay the bills. And so I was doing that. And then one day,

One of the partners came along and said, I’ve got a game search in Barcelona, it’s mobile gaming. And I said, that sounds really interesting. I’m a big gamer. I’ve never done a search in computer gaming before, but I used to play a lot of games as a child and as an adult. And took that on and it was a real baptism of fire in that mobile gaming is a very specific niche. There’s a lot of knowledge you need to know what’s going on there.

Renata Bernarde (04:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Gerard Miles (04:57)
And I was working with a CEO who was one of the original mobile games CEO founder. He knew everything there was to know about it. it was constantly, I’d be trying to research to make sure I was ahead of him saying, this game is terrible. Or don’t you know about that big scandal? Because there’s all this sort of internal knowledge. So I had to come up very quickly a curve around gaming and what it was about. And I had a real affinity with it. And I realized…

Look, a lot of people don’t know this niche. A lot of people think that’s for kids or, know, there’s a lot of, I think, views people had on computer gaming, particularly this is going back to 10 years almost there. And it was becoming a really explosive growth sector, particularly with the rise of mobile gaming, which is now the largest segment of gaming. went from nothing to hundreds of billions of dollars as a global industry in a decade. And I picked up that first search, thought this is interesting.

got extremely lucky in picking up another search very quickly off the back of that. And again, I wasn’t a revenue generator at that time. So I started generating revenue, which is a great way to advance your career if you’re in head hunting. And thought, wow, I could do this. And rather than being one of 1,000 doing SaaS CTOs across the world, I thought, wow, maybe I could be the number one at games. That’s a realistic thing. It’s quite a small.

number of people specializing in here. And that was also attractive to me to try and be the top in my industry and find a sub niche and be really the number one there. So that’s how started in, in gaming. And it grew from doing a lot of work in mobile gaming. then started picking out in Europe and then we started picking up clients in North America. ⁓ my co the co-host of my podcast, Dan Hampton, he’s also the co-founder of mission one. I started working with him at my old company. He’s based in North America. So the two of us together start to really own this niche. And then.

⁓ it grew and then I think we were sort of the the guys under the radar doing games and then at the time we picked up what was the largest retainer our search firm had ever done it was four hundred thousand dollars it was like a really big retainer and it suddenly goes on the map as like wow like games is really interesting and it sort of as a sector so ⁓ and that role was like a five to ten million dollar ⁓ compensation role really big international role there very exciting so

Renata Bernarde (07:12)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (07:21)
That then just grew and grew. Now we have our own company, Mission One. We’re across technology around gaming. So it’s a little bit just more than just game making. it’s technology around gaming. It’s around content in games. That’s PC, console, and mobile games. And then this kind of interesting area. I don’t know if you see this in the arts as well, but we see more crossover between games and other sectors. So you see companies like a fitness company or language learning company.

Renata Bernarde (07:39)
you

Gerard Miles (07:50)
or health company, fashion company, looking at games, either to sell into that market or to take talent out because it’s got usable techniques, monetization mechanisms, et cetera, to then go and bring into other sectors. So Duolingo is a good example of that. Or I’d also look at chess.com. There’s a lot of these very successful consumer businesses that have gamified one way or another. Gamified is a narrow term, but also looking at other ways ⁓ there.

Renata Bernarde (08:08)
Yeah.

Gerard Miles (08:20)
I’m based here in the UK, it’s big market in Europe as well for games. ⁓ My co-founder Dan is at Dan Hampton’s based over in So we’re across North America, Europe and Middle East as well. It’s a big area of growth as you might know. lot of investment ⁓ going into mobile games, particularly from Saudi Arabia.

Renata Bernarde (08:37)
That’s amazing. I’m so interested in this. It’s something completely foreign to me, which now I regret because I was born in the 70s, raised in the 80s. I love Halt and Catch Fire. It’s one of my favorite TV series. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Halt and Catch Fire, but it’s all about the beginning of the gaming industry in California and computers and finally internet. goes on for a few seasons.

And I was there. I lived in Silicon Valley. My father worked in tech and I never got into games. It’s quite bizarre. But what I love about your story is something that I wish a lot of my clients who are looking for work and looking for ⁓ to becoming thought leaders and experts in their fields, SMEs, to find a niche, to find a niche that gives them purpose, to find a niche that marries ⁓

⁓ revenue with something that you love, you enjoy, can talk confidently about. So that’s really lovely. What I love to hear more from you is for people that are outside of this headhunting world, especially outside of gaming, how does it work behind the scenes? How do you find your people? How do you find the right candidates for your clients?

Gerard Miles (10:01)
It’s a great question, Renata, and obviously one we get asked a lot. Probably the first question I always get asked whenever I explain something, have a head of this year, but how do you find the people? And it’s process, right? I’m a big believer that most things that are sound complex or strange are just unusual, right? Or like, know, they’re just a process that you sort of break down into smaller parts and there’s not a magic piece to it. I think headhunting is interesting in that

involves many different skills. So I think everyone is sort of probably quite good at bits of headhunting. I mean, everyone is quite good at some bit of headhunting, and probably everyone is quite bad at other bits. And I suppose a very few individuals get to be good at all pieces through work or talent. So it starts out with, I think, clear understanding of what you’re looking for, right? Like, clearly articulating with the client and understanding the market they’re going after.

And that’s why I a specialism as well, because you start up to speed. Whereas if you’re doing the broader you are, the more you’re, oh, interesting. And is this a good company? Is that a good company? You know, you’re trying to learn that story around, you know, if you’re doing something really niche that client does. So it’s thinking quite deeply about what are you looking for? Where are the talent pools that these candidates are going to come from? So is it going to be other large listed companies? That might be a factor. It might be higher growth companies. It might be people who have done a turnaround recently, right? So you’re trying to…

narrow it down to, where are the likely individuals coming from? And there might be creative ideas as well. might say, well, this is kind of analogous to that. So to get, know, to a games example, a big thing in mobile games is free to play games. Now some PC console games are also free to play as sort of games as a service. So you might say, actually maybe someone could cross over. They often don’t actually, but maybe at the more mid-core and I might be going to mid-core hardcore end of gaming, you might find a more crossover area.

⁓ So you start thinking creatively. So once you’ve got your target list of where you’re looking for, you then start to think about the levels of the kind of people that could be right. And then usually as a headhunter, you’ve got a strong network and a strong understanding. So you’re going straight away to who do I know already who’s either a good fit for this role or has employed people who are good fit for this role? Like whose advice do I trust? So that’s the sourcing part of the search that we go into. So we do a lot of sourcing, a lot of…

You know named referrals of people understanding where the best talent pools lie And then we’re also backing that up with a lot of desk based research So you’re going through linkedin your title searching on linkedin and you really what you’re trying to do is build up I like to think I was explained to be an old boss He says you’re trying to cut the cake in as many ways as possible. So sourcing referencing desk based research to try and find

the broadest number of candidates who could be excellent fits for that. And then you’re handing them over to the client and there’s a lot of work there in actually converting those candidates. I’ll pause there. That’s some of what we call this with identification piece, which is a combination of intelligence-based research around talking to people and desk-based research that complements each other.

Renata Bernarde (13:14)
Okay. I’m assuming that a lot of the great candidates come recommended. It’s such an interesting niche. How much does LinkedIn plays into your sourcing?

Gerard Miles (13:25)
Yeah, so it’s integral to helping build out that funnel. As I said, really is the two sort of horses pulling the cart really off as I

the human-based Intel that you’re getting, and then desk-based research. And that could be, it’s not just LinkedIn. think it’s, LinkedIn is clearly an important part of that, ⁓ to help find titles. In some ways, it’s also to help you find the shape of a company. So it’s not just the individual, but you’re getting a sense of leveling, a sense of, if you’re talking to a candidate, it’s really helps to know, go, I saw somebody who’s also an SVP here, who’s got a quite similar title. What do you do between them? And they suddenly go, yeah, well they…

They cover North America and I do Europe. So it helps you unlock and understand a candidate’s profile better ⁓ there. And then also, again, sometimes looking at websites, looking at annual reports, et cetera, can also help you understand, okay, how do they structure these divisions? Who’s really the GM, general manager, who’s in charge of that unit? And who do they report into? How does that flow? Were they in charge when they went through a particularly good patch or a particularly bad patch, right? And you can ask them about that. ⁓

I’d say ⁓ LinkedIn is probably our, of all the tools we have, it’s number one in terms of importance ⁓ there, but it’s also in combination or it’s not sort of LinkedIn alone in how you’re going about your search.

Renata Bernarde (14:47)
Okay. With the roles that you are assigned to do, do they get advertised? Because many of my listeners feel like these roles are not being advertised. Is that right?

Gerard Miles (15:03)
Correct. Most of these roles are not advertised or we don’t work on any advertised roles. And the reason for that, there’s a couple of reasons for that, but I think the main one is the candidates you’re often trying to get. So we work on senior level roles and I think it is different at anything below, below sort of director level. So anything that’s a manager, senior manager below lead into individual contributors. I think it’s a different type of market, but.

For us, it’s about identifying who are the top people. They’re probably very well settled in their role. They’re probably not looking. also, so you want to make them feel so special. You want to make them feel like this is the inside track, right? These are the jobs, as you said. These jobs are not being advertised, right? These are some of the most exciting, best paid, biggest opportunity roles in their sector.

Renata Bernarde (15:55)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (15:56)
So, so number is, is you don’t want the volume of just everyone applying, right? We used to, at our old company, we had a system where you could upload, it was board roles, it was a different product and people could upload or apply for roles they saw was interesting. And you used to get people from everywhere. Like a job would say, needs to be in Germany and somebody in Nigeria or Singapore would apply and you’d say, you have to review it. And yeah, it takes up a lot of human time, so politely, but you didn’t, you didn’t even read the brief. You just thought that sounds a good job.

So it can take a lot of resources and that means we might miss the most relevant profile. You’re then creating the haystack to find the needle, right? Rather than just going straight in to look. And also the company hiring might not want it to be public often, right? You might want to let anyone know this is, some of our roles are confidential. Even the person replacing doesn’t know.

Renata Bernarde (16:44)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (16:51)
You know, just can’t, you can’t be putting out there or there’s, you know, you’re deliberately keeping under the radar because you’re sitting on a gold mine. don’t want to tell everyone about it, right? Cause you want to mine that gold yourself before you’re telling everyone too widely. So, no, we don’t advertise in that people are right. These roles are locked behind. I, on our podcast, actually on the executive edge, a podcast that we have, we actually talk a lot about this as like, how do you position your career?

to ⁓ access those roles, how do you get on the radar of those roles that are not easily accessible?

Renata Bernarde (17:28)
Well, that was my next question to you. So if you have a senior executive that wants to be on your radar for these opportunities, what is the best way for them to reach out to you?

Gerard Miles (17:39)
Yeah. ⁓ a number of things. I mean, there’s, there’s the, lens of like, how do I get a hold of a headhunter? That’s, that’s a sort of a simplest sending them a message and hoping that, you know, their inbox isn’t too rammed that day and being a bit persistent. So that’s sort of the, easy connecting. But I think the bit behind that is understanding who are the relevant head hunters for you to know. Because again, sometimes I get emails from people saying like, Hey, I’m a CFO at a fintech.

Renata Bernarde (17:46)
Mm.

Gerard Miles (18:07)
business. I’m like, that’s great, but that’s not really my specialist, you know, you sort of politely again, so say, I don’t think I’m the best person to help you, you presume if they’ve emailed a list of people. But there are going to be headhunters that are hyper relevant to you as an executive and really know how to help you. So if you’re in games and sort of consumer around that, then I’m a great headhunter to know, right, like, like, and have a will have a relevant interest in if you’ve got a background.

those areas. If you’re doing industrials, I’m not the best headhunter, know, there are other people, right? So it sounds a basic point, but I see execs going wrong on that, right? Or again, it’s seen as maybe we’re seen as a bit generic. So understand the headhunter, I could go deeper on that. certain big firms, if you want to do big listed corporate roles, again, you probably want to engage with a very specialized headhunter on those kind of roles, or all the bigger, we call Shrek firms, that these larger

⁓ these multinational companies, again, they might be doing a lot of the listed work. If you want to go work for a venture capital business, business, Again, there’ll be niche, niche areas there and geographies and other areas. So I think that’s one of the bit is, just researching, you know, in your industry and it’d probably be only four or five people probably across your, your region. So if you’re in Europe, if you’re in Europe doing again, SAS, CTOs, there’s probably maybe a bit more, five to 10 top people at different firms.

Renata Bernarde (19:08)
Yeah.

Gerard Miles (19:32)
And it might be, you know, it might be at that lower end that you need to be on the radar of. You don’t need 20, 30 contacts ⁓ because they’ll be taking a lot of that market share.

Renata Bernarde (19:39)
Yes.

Gerard, but if it’s an adjacent industry, for example, I’m thinking of a specific client of mine. is a CPO, Chief Product Officer for a SaaS company with experience working with large and mid-sized SaaS ⁓ organizations. Is that close enough to what you do that you would be interested in talking to him?

or no.

Gerard Miles (20:14)
It would depend, probably not, to be honest. Again, it would depend a little bit on the nuance of, OK, well, is there applications for what they’re doing? So again, some areas have a lot of overlap, right? Or we might pick up a ⁓ SaaS client that’s mainly serving games but wants to look broader. But it’s probably not is the answer. again, it’s in the nuance of.

Renata Bernarde (20:15)
Okay.

Okay.

Gerard Miles (20:41)
Where’s the overlap, right? Are there a lot of clients that overlap? Are there a lot of similarities of the market or the approach to market? You know, the use case, if you’re a product officer, you know, the type of designing. If you look at someone who’s, you we were doing a search recently and we’re looking at some people from a consumer marketplace mobile app. we looked at, and just the way they do product is so different.

Renata Bernarde (20:48)
Okay.

Gerard Miles (21:09)
from what they were doing in games. It just didn’t make sense, even though the high level similarities were there.

Renata Bernarde (21:10)
Okay.

Okay, okay. So you’ve placed executives across, I’m assuming, North America, Europe, you said Middle East as well. What are the patterns that you see in the people who consistently land the roles that they want, regardless of geography or culture? Can you find patterns in your successful candidates?

Gerard Miles (21:42)
Yes, I think you can Renata. So some of the patterns would be they often have a career and a CV trajectory. And again, we talk a lot about this on our podcast. like, how do you shape your career narrative, right? To position yourself to…

really maximize your end goal, right? Like five, 10 years time. How do you think about how do I get to those top C level jobs, even when you’re five, 10 years away and you’re creating that art? So I think the best candidates often they’ve just got track record of success. So they’ve just gone to multiple different places for a good amount of time. So they’ll have gone for three to five years often. And they’ll be able to show they were part of some key transformational key

driving element there. It could be growth. That’s obviously lovely. It could be, look, actually in a difficult market, we reduce decline. It could be we managed to stay stable against a declining market. That can be a great story as well, right? But it has to be something where people, you know, we reference people a lot of this as well, where the referencing, the CV, the tenures, they all stack up to say, wow, this person, when they came into an organization,

their impact was felt and everyone was aligned around that and good people want to keep working with them. That’s another big part of it. You know, that sort of good people follow them. Hey, I’ve hired people out of that company before and I know they’re good. You know, there’s just certain areas within industries where like people come together and they create magic. And if you’ve done two or three of those, you’re proving it wasn’t just a one off link used to be in the right time and right place. It’s hard to do that. So

Again, it’s not easy to sit down and go like, right, I can’t join this XY company. But I think selection of your own companies, you go join, right? Because that will affect you, right? think sometimes people take a job and they regret it. Two years later, they’re out. And unfortunately, for a CV perspective, that is a bit of a… It can be a bit of a drag. It’s not fatal at all. You can get over that. But it can be a bit of a drag where it takes a shine off something.

I think being really selective about the quality of the people you’re working with, the opportunity that is there, the of the quality of the other people who are going to be in that organization, you’re building that narrative and staying at a good level of time and thinking, okay, what am going to own or what am going to really drive here so that if somebody references me, they can say, wow, this person was really critical. That will keep building your opportunities and keep making you the most desirable candidates in the market.

Renata Bernarde (24:18)
Mm-hmm.

And if you think about gaming and entertainment in the years ahead, 2026 and beyond, is this an area that is high growth so that if somebody is thinking about their careers and thinking about pivoting into games and entertainment, is it worth while pursuing that? Let’s say if they’re in SaaS or tech or something adjacent and they want to

jump into games and entertainment, is that a good investment of their time or do you think the market is already saturated for the industry?

Gerard Miles (25:05)
So right now, games is in a sort of depressed phase of growth. So post-COVID, there was a massive boom because everyone was inside and people had money to spend. So they were inside gaming, spending on games. So we have this huge accelerated sort of party rush of money into games. And everyone and their dog was buying gaming companies. Post-COVID, thankfully,

Renata Bernarde (25:10)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (25:33)
We all got to go outside and do other things apart from play games. And that led to games companies that hired on the premise that they were going to keep growing at X percentage. And even if they were growing, if you’re growing at 2%, but you hired to grow at 15%, right? You’ve got too many people in the org. So we’ve seen huge amounts of layoffs in the last two, three years, four years. Sorry, since COVID has three years, isn’t it? And also a big impact on the

Renata Bernarde (25:57)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (26:01)
quality of games and production pipelines due to work from home policies being shaken out again, people working from home, making games has been harder when people are working at home, that’s led to more costs, meant to more losses, things like that. So overall, even though I think the top line of the numbers are growth in the industry, it’s really been very low growth and it’s been very heavily weighted to a small number of players. And there’s been a lot of pain in the market the last three years. So it’s not a golden time to get into games.

Now, having said that, we’re very long on the opportunity around gaming because play, we sort of look at this play, play is essential to human experience. Like people enjoy playing and have done since the dawn of time, you see animals doing it and that’s going to maintain growth. I know you talked about sports and things like you’re on podcasts, right?

in other areas, we’re always going to be playing some sort of game and enjoying ourselves in a community and play and solo. So that market will grow.

Whether there will be a sort of a big shift, like a big tech shift that will create an explosive opportunity. My guess is yes, but I don’t know what that is. So again, going back to mobile games, mobile went from nothing to hundreds of billions. So if you could go back in time and get into mobile gaming in 2010, fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. You will, you know, a lot of people became multi multimillionaires or hundreds of billionaires right around that growth period, if you are in at that time.

And it was kind of funny because at the time it sort of mocked as a pathetic sort of, real games type thing, what’s going on here. People aren’t going to spend money on mobile gaming, what are you talking about? And then you have Candy Crush and the likes making billions and billions of dollars. it’s a hard industry to get into at the moment. I would advise you that, mean, again, if your passion is there, I’d say, don’t follow that. Find the niche, right? Like find the area that you can create.

Now, I think the more interesting area, is that this crossover. So we see companies like a Duolingo. They just acquired a games company based in London. Nextbeat, span out of SpaceApe. Really smart bunch of guys, but that’s kind of interesting. You see Geolingo. OK, Geolingo is buying a games company. Netflix also built up a games division, which you might know about. Now, that’s been a bit of a rocky.

I think, road for them. And it’s going to be how much they’re going to keep investing in there. I don’t know. So we’re interested to see. So there’s obviously a lot of interest from non-gaming companies about this sector. And I think if you could be at the intersection of that, then there might be something really interesting. I think how do you retain users’ attention? How do you keep people engaged?

Same thing twice, but you how do you educate people and habits? Those are three things that lot of companies are interested in regardless of what you’re ensuring Games knows how to do that. So Yeah, we have an app podcast a guy called John the Knight. He’s the guy who runs New York Times games so don’t know if you do wordle Renata or ⁓ Do you use any of their apps or? Yeah, that’s become a big revenue stream. Right? That is a that’s a

Renata Bernarde (29:03)
They’re very popular. Yeah.

Gerard Miles (29:09)
a company of very long history in media and those had the puzzle section. But now that’s a big chunk of their revenue. And they did that by hiring in somebody from the computer gaming industry, building that up, making a smart acquisition. And they’ve got, I forget the numbers, but think hundreds of millions of people use that. A lot of people, like tens of millions, are doing that daily. And that’s kind cool, right? That’s kind of to re-diversify your industry. And then you think, OK, what can we do on top there? Companies are doing it well. Companies are doing it badly, right?

Renata Bernarde (29:25)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (29:39)
I think people underestimate what it takes to make a game that’s successful and engaging and all the rest. So if you can do it in a serious way, as I said, Duolingo absolutely crushes its competition to an extraordinary extent because it learned how to gamify things. There’s crossover potentials with media. It’s a really good crossover that Supercell did, is a big Helsinki based games company and chess.com. They did some crossover awards where you could get awards in the game if you’re playing on chess.com.

That was a huge driver of growth for them. So if you’re completely unaware of it and dismissing it, I definitely say pay attention because, you know, there’s billions of games out there generationally. It’s only going to get bigger because you got, I realized you said you’re gonna have a grandchild soon, right? Like at some point that kid will be playing Minecraft. They’ll be playing roadblocks or their friends will, or the next generation of that. Right. So nowadays kids are coming up used to playing social.

games as part of their background in a way that sort 40, 50 years ago, it just didn’t happen in the same way generationally. So, ⁓ and it’s a much cheaper price point and you couldn’t play online because the internet didn’t really exist. Right. So nowadays that is a core part of a person growing up experience. And if you can tailor consumer experiences that feel like games and yeah, you, you know, that could be a big market. So I’d say stay curious. It’s not a golden.

Renata Bernarde (30:55)
Mm.

Gerard Miles (31:04)
⁓ easy trough of money to just fill yourself on it’s a tough gay industry and it’s It’s got a lot of nuances and it’s it’s unforgiving But there’s definitely gold to be mined if you can do it in the right

Renata Bernarde (31:15)
Gerard, I want to go back to that question that I asked you before about ⁓ people that want to reach out to you, job candidates that want to reach out to you. ⁓ I think you were very good at explaining that it needs to be within your niche. I get it. If they are within a niche. let’s go through ⁓ an example where they are in the games and entertainment sector.

They’re the right candidates for you. What’s the, from your perspective, and I know this varies from headhunter to headhunter, but what’s the best way for them to manage their relationship long-term with somebody like you? Because I feel a lot of my clients struggle with that, with maintaining a good nurturing and maintaining a good relationship with headhunters long-term. What is your advice? What works for you?

Gerard Miles (32:13)
So I think there’s an element of, I mean, asking them is sometimes, know, for simple advice, saying like, hey, I’d love to stay in contact. What’s the best way? And I think people underestimate the value of just saying, what’s the answer to this question that I’m wondering about? And that can happen in all sorts of things. So that could be one advice. And as you are asking me, right, you are asking me the question. So I would say being really clear about, okay, what the connection is, asking how many roles are you going to have for me?

Renata Bernarde (32:16)
you

Gerard Miles (32:43)
Because if the answer is, yeah, you are relevant to us, but it might be one role every 18, 24 months. That gives you a sort of a clue of like, I don’t need to check in with this person every three months to, you know, we don’t need have a call every week. you know, this is not efficient use of anyone’s time. It’s staying on the radar. And if you know, okay, they’re going to have one role every two years, I’ll send them an email every six months, saying, Hey, just reminding them alive. This is what I’m up to. Let me know if a call makes sense. Have you got any clients that are in this space?

Renata Bernarde (32:58)
Mm.

Gerard Miles (33:11)
Make it really easy for headhunters. like, you know, if there’s certain companies are interested in say like, Hey, these are the companies that are interested. Do you work with them? If you do, here’s an angle why I think I’d be interested in them. I’d love to get an intro. What’d you think? Something like that. If it’s also, you know, a niche or a genre or whatever it is. Right. So I think being very specific about what you’re looking for, what, what the kind of client who is going to be interested in, in their profile and a reason why that client would be interesting. So.

I introduced somebody the other day who messaged me. They’re a former C level exec from a multi-billion dollar media company. So not a gamer, but again, that entertainment world. And they said to me, hey, I’m advising a lot of private equity on some multi-billion dollar deals. I think this client who’s a client of ours might be interested if they’re looking at the crossover between music licensing and in-game.

use of music, it’s an area I’m next to, what do you think? And I messaged the CEO of that company and they messaged saying like, actually this isn’t something we’re doing. Fine. I was able to go back to the person saying like, raise your profile if they change their mind, they need you if they don’t. But it’s very easy for you to say like, here’s a very credible person with very credible reason why they’re contacting. And I feel good about putting that person on their radar regardless, because they’re a top level exec. Doesn’t matter, right? Like just interesting person to know. That’s really helpful to me versus

Renata Bernarde (34:27)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (34:37)
you know, the way, you know, to say something that I think people can sometimes go wrong is they try and think bit like, Hey, let’s push for a regular every three months. Let’s have a call. That can be actually not very useful for time consumption. And then you’re in a position of sort of saying, look, actually, let’s catch up in the summer or something like that. And, know, that’s sort of, again, you’re when people will reject it, but you’re just trying to manage their time really of saying, it’s just not a reason. So I think it’s being clear about why you want to have that relationship.

Asking them what’s the right sort of cadence for us to keep in touch because that will vary from person to person as well. Like some people I imagine love to do lots of emails or they love to do WhatsApp or calls or some people hate that they’re very much like I’ll call you when I need to type thing. So, know, again, we’ll all vary as the how we work. just getting a good sense of that. And then I think just being every six months, drop them a note saying, hey, without expectation, without an ask of let’s have a call.

Renata Bernarde (35:29)
Mm.

Gerard Miles (35:34)
Or just like, how are you seeing the market for my kind of profile? Do you think is it hot or not? Make it easy. No worries if it’s not. least get a sense of where the timing is on that. What do you think to that, Renata? I’m sure you know. How does that match against your clients’ experiences? Do they curse headhunters and say, ⁓ they’re all so hard to get on the phone and they only want you they have something hot? What’s the view from the other side, do you think?

Renata Bernarde (35:46)
I love that.

⁓

Well, that’s a very good thank you for bringing it back to me. Usually when I’m interviewing people, what I love about it and because I do some episodes with guests and some on my own, what I like is the episodes with guests like you, Gerard, to validate the advice that I’m giving when I’m doing my solo episodes. And what you’re saying is exactly what I tell my listeners and mostly and more bespoke my clients to do.

As we have this conversation, there’s an episode out for the podcast. It’s three 20. and it’s about the cringe, cringe as in, I find it so cringe to reach out to a headhunter or to a recruiter. found this, I find it cringe to post on LinkedIn or update my profile or people really want to play cool.

cool and unbothered, right? So that’s usually, especially in this space. I’ve never worked with ⁓ the gaming and entertainment. I have a client in entertainment, but not with games. But I find that all my SaaS clients, my techie guys, they don’t want to be out there networking, connecting and whatnot. And when they do, they overdo it. They overcorrect it by asking to have a coffee, by asking to have a meeting.

And that’s way too much for somebody like you who may not be as interested in that candidate as they are in connecting with you. So I think finding that balance in the reach out, the cold reach where you introduce yourself and you ask a question that’s easy for you to reply rather than asking for more of their time is probably the right thing to do.

Gerard Miles (37:51)
I think that’s interesting in

our turn. I think that’s a common theme of the extremities of action, either zero interest. People say this, like, I haven’t been looking for 10 years, I have a CV, and suddenly they now want to look. We do advise people to keep a gardening approach, like a little bit of maintenance. It doesn’t have to be with head-on. We say, think about your network most broadly. Who are the people you used to work with who have now gone to interesting companies?

that you would be like, OK, yeah, I could work with them. They’ve gone to a company and you’re curious about that. Checking with them. And that might be a really easy connection for you to make, because you used to work with them. Hey, how you doing? Let’s go out for a pint. Let’s catch up. And I think that’s right. And I’d also say, don’t go overboard with LinkedIn. I think sometimes it’s not a, and I’d say if you’re comfortable with feeling, I don’t think we look at LinkedIn from a head. I’ve never been sort of, wow, that person posts a lot on LinkedIn. They’re a great candidate.

That’s never been in my mind at all. I think, but, being sort of having something thoughtful, something really interesting to say is kind of interesting, right? If you’ve got a really high quality insight of, here’s this thing I actually care about and authentically this is kind really interesting knowledge on my sector. That is something I might read and go, I remember that person. They say, I’m pretty smart about that. And if that comes up, I might think, wow, I want to reach out to them because they seem to know about this area, right? And they might become a candidate through this or that, sort of reason. So, ⁓

Renata Bernarde (39:15)
Yeah.

Gerard Miles (39:17)
Yeah, I think that sounds really solid advice. ⁓

Renata Bernarde (39:20)
Yeah, thank you. I’ve had good, ⁓ very good results with clients for the past year and a half, two years on long form on LinkedIn. So you going on LinkedIn and writing a thoughtful piece, not a post, but more of an article style content where you showcase that you have.

⁓ expertise and a point of view about your industry, about your area of expertise. And I like that for my clients. ⁓ It’s not as easy as it sounds because they may not have written something like that in the long time. know, people write a lot of emails and internal memos, but they don’t put their thoughts into paper.

It’s usually when I’m having conversations in a private coaching session and I can see their eyes just light up when they’re talking about a topic that they’re really passionate about. And I’m like, we should put this into paper because I can see your expertise here and nobody else is seeing it. And your LinkedIn profile by itself is not selling you the way that this conversation that we’re having is selling you. So I find that.

a good article, a good couple of posts on LinkedIn that people like you might be interested in reading. That usually is all you need. You don’t have to overdo it on LinkedIn and be there every day writing. There’s no need for that.

Gerard Miles (40:44)
Yeah, and I think I don’t know your opinion. I think I can turn people off actually. That can be a sort of a suspicion of and you simply talk about conferences. think you know, you can sometimes they can be helpful, but you don’t. We’re going to see you talk about this the other week on Apple, because we were saying like, there’s people who always just go to conferences. They say, I never hire these guys who are like at every single conference and, you know, just just to all about the self publicity, right? It’s a balance of being somewhere for a purpose and leaving a thoughtful impression with some

I think is really impactful if you’re just being seen all the time and leave no thoughtful impacts. That’s actually degrading your own brand, right? If you think about it as a brand proposition, that’s something that’s interesting.

Renata Bernarde (41:23)
Yes,

yes, I like that. And you’re right. think depending on your level of seniority, where you’re at in your career, the industry you work in, that should be what drives your LinkedIn presence and your networking calendar for the year.

Gerard, as a final note, what piece of advice would you give job candidates looking for work, working with you or otherwise What are you seeing in the market there that maybe it’s a good opportunity to share?

Gerard Miles (42:00)
So it’s a tricky one, isn’t it? Because I think we’re all, because there’s so much information all the time. live in constant, there’s a market force of greed and fear, I think, are being stoked constantly within me. And you read one thing and you think, this is going to be exciting. You read another article saying that’s a bubble. You’re going to get burned if you go into that. I think, mean, at one level, no secrets, obviously, that the AI investment.

It’s just so much money is going into that. And we’re to see that feeding through. Now, again, is that a bubble? Will that suddenly fall out or there’ll be a lot of pain? mean, the answer is probably yes. Probably there will be a lot of pain because no industry, you see those explosions of interest. A lot of those companies don’t make it. And that’s not to say it’s not a real industry. It’s just like a car industry. A lot of them went bankrupt and you have a few small ones taking all the market share.

That’s just naturally what happens in these industries of growth and opportunity. But I still think that that is really interesting to watch with no secret source at all. I think it’s such a big question, Renata. The honest answer is I don’t know. I’ve sort of struggled with this myself. There’s some big things of geopolitically that can happen. mean, what’s happening with interest rates, what happens with war. There’s a lot of…

Macro, what are Trump’s policies on the economy? I mean, I’d say we’re still in an era where the weighting to what happens in America is huge to globally what happens in the economies elsewhere. We’re still in Europe in a lot of, I think, sticky waters with reasonable inflation and difficult to get interest rates down, a lot of debt, both nationally and at a personal level.

So what does that say? don’t, the odds are I don’t know. think, I technology, I, suppose the broadest advice, which is probably the evergreen advice is look at where is the, the disruptor, where’s the hot money going to flow into? Because you often have these windows of two or three years in a new space. Um, and whatever sector you’re in, try and think about, okay, what’s that next crossover place where it’s suddenly that innovation can be happening because that’s, that’s where it gets really exciting for people to,

catapult their careers to make you know really life-changing amounts of money in equity or whatever it is and and create a great story of growth. If you are in a company where you can sort of see the writing on the wall probably don’t hang on to be the last person standing right if you’re in a company you’re thinking it’s gonna be Kalt’s next two three years I’m probably well placed that they’ll they’ll keep me on to look after that I’d probably say is that what you want though right do you want to be

sitting with a brand that’s on the decline. If you believe it can be turned around, fantastic, right? That could be a great story. But if you sort of know the direction, but you’re saying, I’d rather sort of stick it for the 18 months, 24 months of paycheck I get versus finding something new and exciting and different, ⁓ then that might be the better mid to long term call for your career. And that takes a little bit of courage. again, don’t make a call if it’s not, know, get a few.

you’re about the mortgage or whatever, don’t go do it. What’s your risk appetite? And being very clear and understanding on that and being prepared to lose it all is why think we have to take that approach. Or if you’re comfortable taking that approach, then do it. ⁓ So that would be sort of evergreen advice. But no, I don’t have a particular market where I’d say, hey, you’ve got to get into this. But some themes are.

Renata Bernarde (45:19)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (45:45)
I could name you a number of themes, but also might say, well, I don’t know when that theme stops, you know, investment from Saudi Arabia, investment from the Middle East. That seems to continue. But could that slow down at some point? Potentially? Yes. Right. It’s affected by oil prices and other things. You know, could you know, AI, you know, which AI companies can do super well? I don’t know. Or what’s the next big tech innovation? Again, I have one theme, Renata, and I appreciate going here. But one theme is obviously, again, is the shorter attention spans.

Renata Bernarde (45:50)
Yeah.

Gerard Miles (46:14)
the sort of TikTokification of other media platforms. We sort of see that, right? Like the fact that you want that shorter dopamine here. How do you get the compressor out? Like the Twitter, X, TikTok, all these things are doing very good at condensing it. Then you see them sometimes going back to larger formats, but we see that sort of effect into other industries. And I think that’s kind of interesting. You can take a longer format and work out a way of really packaging it in a smaller bite-sized piece that hasn’t been done yet.

That’s really interesting. We see that with audio, for example. Audio stories are getting shorter and people are really consuming that in a higher volume. And there’s a lot of money, hundreds of millions to make out of that. that’d be an example, I think, of interesting areas to look at.

Renata Bernarde (46:55)
Okay, one final question. Do you see the Mission 1 2026 results being very similar to Mission 1’s 2025 results? Are you expecting growth or, you know, changes?

Gerard Miles (47:11)
I wish I could tell you. think the answer is we’ve grown every year. We’ve been going for three years and we had our best year this year, which is fantastic. So logic would say, we’re getting the brand out there. I mean, that’s also a slight question of our ability to build the brand and grow. I think the more entrenched you get, the more reputation you get, it’s better. Also, we’re very market dependent. The game market is slowly picking up. It’s slowly getting better, but it’s not revving up. But I think 2026 will be better.

Renata Bernarde (47:19)
Good.

Gerard Miles (47:40)
so I think it will be, ⁓ but I, I’m, very conscious that we ride, we ride and fall on the market a little bit. and, you sort of, you’re either comfortable with that in a feast and famine type type business, ⁓ or you look to diversify. are diversifying across more consumer pieces, particularly my colleague, Dan Hampton, he’s doing more consumer work in North America. So there’s also an element of.

Trying to broaden that out to make sure you’re not quite as up and down on one market. But no we’re in we’re hoping that that next year is even better up but but again, it’s it’s The nuances of headhunting I’d rather this is still a list is but new also headhunting is that you’re often It lots of people can like you but if they’re not hiring a CTO or a CPA or CEO that year, right? They don’t need you So it’s not a case of like are you liked are you skillful? Do people want to work with you? It’s more a case of do they then have a

a role and again, you’re not hiring a CEO every year. So that’s sort of, get repeat business, it’s kind of, uh, it’s a fluctuates with these. I find headhunting a very hard business to predict in terms of revenue. Um, the smaller scale you are, so we’re a boutique, we’re an international boutique, but we’re boutique. So if you’ve got thousands of people, you can aggregate it out a little bit more, but you know, our revenue can spike sometimes. Sometimes our fees can be, you know, um,

Renata Bernarde (48:56)
Mm-hmm.

Gerard Miles (49:05)
$200,000, $300,000 on a single placement. So again, whether those go off or not makes a big impact to our revenue or more. So it’s sort of, ⁓ there’s a big swings ⁓ that can push a year to being a bumpy year or not, right? Because a person might not get the job or whatever happens there that means it doesn’t come through.

Renata Bernarde (49:24)
Gerard, thank you so much for taking the time to have a conversation with us. I think these conversations really give my audience a lot of insights on how headhunters think, how they work, and this is invaluable information for people that are job-seeking out there. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

Gerard Miles (49:44)
It’s an absolute pleasure and I hope it’s been useful for your listeners and ⁓ yeah, good luck with the show. It’s really interesting. You’ve got a really broad range of listeners and views that coming on here. So thank you so much and ⁓ yeah, look forward to hearing perhaps from your listeners as well. If any reach out to me, I’ll let you know and we can actually help people. you’re very kind. Yeah, it’s Mission One, The Executive Edge and yeah, we hope people come on there to help. That’s for two purposes. One is to help people get

Renata Bernarde (50:02)
Okay. I’ll put the link to your podcast. Hello. I’ll put the link to the podcast.

Gerard Miles (50:14)
improve their careers and get better jobs and the second is to help people make better hiring decisions as well. So that’s the dual purpose of the pod.

Renata Bernarde (50:22)
Excellent. Thanks, Gerard.