Even CEO's Need Help
By Stacy Trevenon
Half Moon Bay Review

Kim Giannini matches CEOs with administrative assistants. “I meet the principals, I don’t just start faxing resumes. That isn’t the way to do business.”

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When InterWest Partners, a Menlo Park venture capital firm, contacted San Mateo-based Giannini & Associates, a retained specialty recruiting firm headed by Half Moon Bay resident Kim Giannini last November, it was déjà vu.

Giannini had already met InterWest. Two years previously, Giannini & Associates had done an employee search for them.

Now the firm was seeking an administrative assistant to support one of its partners.

That was right up Giannni’s alley. Her firm, she said, “carved a niche of being professional matchmakers for executive assistants and CEOs.”

To pinpoint the company’s needs for its new assistant, she insisted on interviewing the partners. And on the other side of the equation, she had coincidentally just interviewed for an assistant position – about whom she had a hunch.

Her hunch rang true. Within hours, it was apparent that the candidate was right for the InterWest job.

“She was a perfect fit,” Giannini recalled. “That was on of the rare ones, I had a good gut feeling.”

Stephen Holmes, a general partner with InterWest, agreed.

“She understood what we wanted.” Holmes said. “We’re pretty picky, and she came through. We want the very finest, the very bestest. It wasn’t an easy find?

But it was a testimonial to the fact that “the good old days” – when business balanced profit margins with the personal touch – aren’t a thing of the past.

They certainly aren’t to Giannini or to her high-end employment agency.

Founded in 1994, Giannini & Associates, one of the country’s nearly 8 million women-owned businesses, places executive assistants with top executives. Its territory spans five regions from the South Bay to Marin County to the East Bay, and includes the Peninsula and San Francisco to boot.

Tradition meets today in the linkages Giannini & Associates orchestrates between CEOs, partners and chairpersons and their assistants. Business smarts and sophistication are added to time-honored values like hard work and relationships in which the long term is the big picture.

“We strive for a true partnership,” Giannini said.

“The candidate will enjoy being a partner with the company and will be there for a chunk of time.” She continued. “The client will be relaxed, with administrative tasks taken off his shoulders, so he can do what he does well.”

Many of her clients are not only relaxed, they’re downright pleased.

“Using Kim, we didn’t have to interview too many people, said Holmes of InterWest Partners. “She made it easy. In my opinion, she earned her fee!”

It sounds easy. But doing it right is harder.

The traditional image of an employment agency is one of a clearinghouse, where bosses sift though files of hopefuls until the best one emerges.

But Giannini & Associates refines that process. It’s fueled by Giannni’s own 10-year experience as an executive assistant to CEOs, company presidents and board chairs in her native San Francisco and on the Peninsula.

“I tell clients that, typically, CEOs don’t have time for recruiters,” she said. “I say, it’s an important search, and if you want me to help, there’s no way I can until I meet the principals. I don’t just start faxing resumes. That isn’t he way to do business.”

Instead, Giannini plunges in on both sides. In two to three-hour interviews, she gathers information on the client company.

She knows the basics of what they want: accuracy, longevity, commitment, good references, appropriate skills, innovation to see and fix needs, and poise that won’t freeze, pie-eyed, if Tom Cruise walks into the office.

“CEOs have the oddest demands,” mused Coast side resident Mary Lehane, the office manager of one Menlo Park investment-banking firm that retained Giannni about a year ago. “They don’t want someone who will flinch and say, ‘What?’”

Giannini doesn’t flinch, either. She looks at the work environment and at the CEO’s personality, interest and idiosyncrasies. She assesses the company’s demographics and needs.

Jobs are attractive at the level Giannni is working to fill, carrying packages of $50,000 to $100,000 per year long with benefits, travel and stock options.

For all that, in addition to skills, Giannini seeks someone who chain handle email, voice mail and a million-dollar budget with equal dexterity, who can be a pit bull or a pacifist depending on what the CEO needs, and who can do it all with tact and Grace.

Down-to-earth values are key, Giannini said. Besides confidence, she looks for a sense of the genuine.

Like her own.

“I’m real with clients, with candidates. I might as well be myself,” Giannini said. I’m of a mindset to treat everyone equally, (whether) janitor or CEO, (with a) down-to-earth approach and sincerity.

“What I provide is honest assessment of putting all the cards on the table on both sides,” Giannini explained.

“She’s excellent at zeroing in on different personal traits in the people involved,” Lehane said.

Not everyone makes the cut.

“Some (applicants), the minute they walked in the door, I could have told them there was no way the executives would have talked to them,” said Lehane. “It takes a special person to work in this environment, not just a secretary. (Giannini) understood.”

It’s the delicate balance of professional and personal that Giannini perhaps understands best.

“No matter how fast we are going in the new millennium, customers aren’t going to become extinct,” she said. “There’s an element of personableness and mutual respect that should always be there. I think it’s an element that people appreciate.”

That’s not and idle boast. It shows in Giannini & Associates average turnaround: a couple of weeks to match client and candidate.

When she achieves a good match, Giannini responds with delight.

“I love it when people are satisfied with the partnership,” she said. “ I know I’ve done the right thing when there’s a partnership like glue.”