Search Context
The client is a wood products company headquartered in the Southeast, with over a thousand employees across its manufacturing and distribution operations. The company retained RecruitSeed to place a VP of Technology. The role owns all of IT for the enterprise, and it opened as the company was starting up one of the most modern plants of its kind in North America, and this executive would make the decisions on the major automation projects going into it.
Why the Role Was Worth the Move
The client had a track record of investing in technology to stay competitive, and RecruitSeed had observed that record firsthand through a prior IT leadership placement there. Leadership that follows through on technology investment tells an executive something no offer letter can. We put that record in front of every serious candidate, along with the culture behind it: a stated operating order of people, process, performance.
The scope of the role was the other half of the case. Owning all of IT here meant one executive responsible for the enterprise systems of a business with plants, trucks, and a supply chain, for the software developers working within those systems, and for the automation going into a brand-new facility. That is an unusual amount of ground for a single role, and it set up the central judgment call of the search.
The Judgment Call
The VP of Technology owns all of IT and makes the calls on the major automation projects going into the new facility: evaluating vendors, sequencing capital, integrating data from the facilities down to the PLC level. That is non-trivial work for one executive, and it shaped how we read the spec. What the role did not require was a history of hands-on operational technology implementation. What it did require was fluency in industrial operations (a career in building materials, wood products, or industrial businesses broadly: companies with physical locations, trucks, and a supply chain) plus a computer science degree and experience leading software developers. We separated "must have done it" from "must be able to lead and decide on it," and screened for the second.
The pool math backed that reading. A computer science degree plus experience leading developers eliminates most manufacturing IT leaders in the South, and those who remain tend toward very long tenures. That shrinks the pool again, since long-tenured leaders rarely relocate. This is why the search demanded breadth.
Hiring Criteria
The profile required all of these together.
Sourcing Patterns
- Adjacent process-manufacturing verticals (building materials, metals, paper) produced the strongest pool: transferable transformation experience with learnable industry specifics
- Candidates from forestry and lumber backgrounds knew the industry but rarely had the enterprise technology depth the role required
- Technology leaders from discrete manufacturing (automotive, electronics) struggled to translate to process manufacturing environments
Decision Criteria
- Strong candidates probed the transformation roadmap's realism, leadership's commitment to technology investment, and the role's decision-making authority
- Culture fit and agreement on direction outweighed compensation at the top of the pool
The Relocation Conversation
The role sits at headquarters, and for most viable candidates that meant relocation, a serious life decision involving a family, a house, and in one case school-age children. Our job was to be informative and accurate enough that a busy executive would make a serious self-inquiry, have the family discussion, and sketch a contingent plan before agreeing to interview.
Along the way, solid candidates proposed negotiating a hybrid schedule built around headquarters visits. The case was compelling enough that it could have been sold to the client. We kept searching instead: the reasons for being at headquarters were many, given the nature of the business and the modernization underway.
The Placement
The placed executive matched the spec as written: a computer science degree, development teams led, and significant, proven IT transformation at a larger company in the building materials industry. Then they exceeded it. The search deliberately didn't demand a hands-on operational technology history. The placement brought one anyway, with strong shop-floor automation accomplishments in an adjacent building products category.
Over several hours of conversation, what stood out most was how they engaged the human side of an organization, including a firsthand account of breaking through with a key individual on a problem that, in many environments, would have stayed permanent.
The fit ran both directions. The company's story was part of how we presented the opportunity and part of why the candidate said yes: a family business that invests in its people, its communities, and its technology. Fifty-six days from kickoff to accepted offer.