Challenged to find an exceptional candidate to lead a private equity-acquired company, Mandrake found a General Manager with extensive consumer marketing experience as well as the CA accreditation required by the client.

Our client, a direct marketing consumer product company recently acquired by a private equity firm, wanted to hire a General Manager to head up their Canadian operations. The ideal candidate would have the rare combination of a chartered accountant’s accreditation along with extensive consumer marketing experience. They would also have extensive cross functional knowledge and experience to effectively manage the stand-alone distribution, call centre, marketing, product management, creative, and finance divisions. As the company was going through a transition, the GM would have to restructure the organization, while motivating the team toward success.

We conducted an extremely specialized search to fill this role. Through a Canada-wide targeted search, we identified a small number of senior level finance and accounting experts with enough marketing experience in a consumer-driven business.

We found an energetic, profit-focused executive with a strong background in finance, who also demonstrated success in operations, marketing, sales, information technology, and administration. This individual leadership and strategic focus proved to be the “needle in the haystack” our client was looking for. After merging with a publishing company, our client went through another restructuring and the hired candidate went on to become General Manager of this new entity.