Building Leadership Teams Through Trusted Partnerships: A Conversation with Allan Medhurst

 

A conversation with Allan Medhurst,  a Talent Acquisition leader whose career has focused on helping organizations build leadership teams during periods of growth and transformation. Today, Allan leads Global Talent Acquisition at MealSuite, following several years leading Talent Acquisition strategy at Eclipse Automation, which is where he partnered with Kitchener Executive Consultants [KEC] on a number of executive and leadership searches.

Beyond the organizations he’s helped build, Allan has become a thoughtful voice within the Talent Acquisition community, sharing practical perspectives on leadership hiring, trust, AI, and the importance of keeping people at the centre of recruitment. Those same principles shaped the way he approached executive search throughout his career.

As part of KEC’s 50th Anniversary and our Beyond The Placement series, we reconnected with Allan to reflect on that experience, how he decided when external search support made sense, what earned his trust over time, and what leadership teams can gain when recruitment is approached as a true partnership rather than a transaction.

 

 

Allan, do you remember how did your relationship with KEC originally begin?

Yes, the introduction originally came through one of our senior operational leaders, who had an existing relationship with Jim Fairfax.

That referral mattered because I trusted the person making the introduction. From there, I was able to develop my own relationship with KEC.

Working with Jim, with KEC, I really appreciated our conversations. I found I could be candid about what was happening and what we needed, and I would get a very candid response back.

That ability to have an open conversation became important as we started working together.

 

 

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Author’s Note:

This conversation reflects Allan Medhurst’s personal professional experience and perspective from his time with Eclipse Automation. The views shared are his own and are not presented on behalf of the organization.

 

 When External Search Made Sense

 

 

One of the searches we looked back at was a critical Director role in 2023. From your perspective as the Talent Acquisition leader, what made that a search where bringing in external support made sense?

It was a busy period for us. Our internal Talent Acquisition team was supporting significant hiring activity across the organization, including many director-level and manager-level searches, so we simply didn’t have the capacity to manage every search ourselves.

For that particular search, bringing in KEC made sense.

 

You had your own internal recruiting capability. How did you decide when something should stay internal and when it was time to engage an external search partner?

For me, it comes down to three things: priority, urgency, and how difficult I think the role is going to be.

There are roles where I’ll start internally and give the team an opportunity to work the market.

If we’re several weeks into a search and aren’t getting the traction we should be getting, and the business is telling me it really needs this person, that’s when I’m going to look for support from an agency that specifically knows how to recruit for that skill set.

There are other positions where you know from the beginning that the priority or difficulty justifies bringing in external support immediately.

My ego isn’t in play. The question is: what is the impact to the business if this role continues to lag?

 

When you do reach that point, what do you expect an external search partner to bring that your internal team hasn’t already done?

That’s important because generally, by the time we’re going to an agency, we’ve already done a lot internally.

We’ve worked the market. We’ve looked at the obvious candidates. If we’re asking for external support, there’s usually a reason.

I don’t need an agency creating more noise.

What I appreciated about KEC was that they understood both the value an agency should bring to a busy recruitment team and what we didn’t want.

When we went to an agency, it was because this was a difficult search. We needed somebody who could add something to what we’d already done, not simply send us more resumes.

 

You also spoke about stakeholder management as something you’ve become particularly conscious of as a Talent Acquisition leader. What did that experience reinforce for you about how an external search partner should work with an internal TA team?

With a senior search, there can be several stakeholders involved.

I was responsible for the recruitment process from the Talent Acquisition side, while the senior operational leader responsible for the position was naturally very involved in defining what the business needed.

What I appreciated about KEC was how that relationship was handled.

The hiring leader sometimes communicated directly with KEC. But rather than allowing that communication to circumvent Talent Acquisition, KEC would come back to me, keep me informed, and make sure everyone remained aligned.

I’ve worked with agencies where, once they develop direct access to a hiring manager, they start viewing HR as a gatekeeper they can work around.

That wasn’t my experience with KEC.

They understood who the stakeholders were and how to keep everybody in the loop.

I knew I could trust them to do the right thing.

 

 

When a Placement Becomes a Hiring Leader

 

That search ultimately resulted in the hire. From your perspective in Talent Acquisition, what told you afterward that the search had worked?

He ramped up very quickly.

My interactions with him afterward were primarily from an HR and recruitment perspective, so I wouldn’t try to speak for everything he accomplished operationally.

But it became clear quite quickly that he was a senior-level individual. He could put forward his own ideas while still respecting the perspectives of the people around him.

From what I could see, the skill set matched what the role required

 

One of the things you saw afterward particularly fits the idea behind Beyond the Placement: someone you had helped bring into the organization eventually became a hiring leader himself. What did that mean to you from a Talent Acquisition perspective?

Yes.

Later, when we were recruiting for a narrowly focused Management position, where the new Director was now one of the hiring leaders involved in building out his own team.

We worked with KEC again, and that search resulted in another successful hire.

 

From your perspective, what does it say when someone who came into the organization through a search eventually ends up sitting on the hiring side of another one?

I think there’s something to that.

With any hire, you want to see that the person is successful in the role and becomes part of the organization rather than simply filling a vacancy.

When somebody progresses to the point where they’re now building their own team, that’s another stage of the story.

 

 

What Earns the Next Call

 

 

You’ve worked with many recruiters and agencies throughout your career. When you have a difficult search and many firms to choose from, how do you decide who gets the call?

I need to trust them. That’s probably the biggest thing for me.

A referral carries a lot of weight. I have a strong network of Talent Acquisition professionals, and if somebody I trust tells me an agency is good and can deliver, I’m going to pay attention.

That’s how the KEC relationship originally started. Someone I trusted referred KEC to me, and then I was able to build my own trusting relationship with the team.

But a referral only opens the door.

The agency still has to earn that relationship itself.

 

Why is that trust threshold so important to you as a Talent Acquisition leader?

Because if I put an agency in front of one of my hiring managers or executives, my reputation is attached to that decision.

If they’re creating noise, if they don’t understand what we’re looking for, or if they’re not representing the relationship properly, that reflects on me.

My reputation’s at stake.

Trust takes time to build, and it can also be broken very quickly.

I need to know that the people I’m bringing into that relationship understand the assignment, understand the stakeholders, and aren’t going to create additional work for everybody.

 

What tends to break that trust?

Irrelevant candidates are a big one.

If we’re receiving people who clearly aren’t aligned with what we’re looking for, we’re spending time reviewing something that shouldn’t have reached us in the first place.

The other issue is how the relationship is handled.

If an agency starts trying to bypass Talent Acquisition to get directly to the hiring manager, that’s a problem for me.

The external recruiter and the internal TA team should be working toward the same outcome.

 

And on the other side of that, what makes a search partner worth calling again?

It’s whether you’re continuing to put deposits into the relationship.

There are thousands of agencies that can say they’re specialized in whatever you’re recruiting for. That’s not enough by itself.

I want to understand what companies you’ve worked with, what kinds of searches you’ve successfully completed, and ideally hear from hiring managers who’ve worked with you.

But ultimately, it comes back to the experience over time.

Do I trust you?

Do you understand what I need?

Are you bringing relevant people forward?

And can I put you in front of my hiring managers without worrying about what that experience is going to be?

That’s what matters.

 

Beyond the Placement

 

Looking back, what stands out isn’t simply the searches Allan worked on with KEC, but the perspective he developed through them.

A professional referral first introduced him to KEC. Working together gave him his own reasons to trust the relationship. Along the way, he saw one leadership hire develop into a hiring leader himself, bringing the relationship full circle as another team began to take shape.

Allan’s own perspective evolved too.

Today, he carries a clear framework for deciding when external search belongs in a Talent Acquisition strategy: understand the priority, the urgency and the difficulty of the role; recognize when internal sourcing has reached its limits; and consider the impact on the business if the right person isn’t there when they are needed.

His expectations of a recruitment partner are equally clear. Trust matters. Candour matters. Respect for the internal team matters. And every interaction either adds to or takes away from the professional relationship.

Those principles were shaped across years of hiring, different organizations and many recruitment relationships, including his experience working with KEC.

That is what we wanted to understand by going back.

Not simply who was placed, but what was happening when those decisions were made, what happened to the people afterward, and what the professionals involved carried forward with them.

Years later, the searches are complete. The people have moved forward in their careers. Allan has moved forward in his.

The experience moved forward with them.

That, for us, is what exists Beyond The Placement.