The Business Value of Talent: Melissa Mounce of GTCR, LLC

“Talent acquisition is so core to the business…it’s not just nice motherhood and apple pie initiatives…it’s a critical business function”.  So says Melissa Mounce, the Managing Director – Leadership Talent and Diversity at GTCR, the Chicago based private equity firm which considers leadership the key to their growth strategy.  In fact, their approach to finding and partnering with portfolio leadership in core domains is actually trademarked as The Leaders Strategy™.  It follows that their Talent and Diversity Leader might have some interesting insights on finding and assessing executive talent to share with us, on Episode 24 of the Big Fish in the Talent Pool podcast.

No stranger to tough environments, Melissa started her career in Chicago with Motorola Solutions as a global business strategy “road warrior”, and then moved to a business process consulting role with EY/Capgemini.  PNC Bank was the beginning of her Talent Acquisition career where she applied her business skills to their large scale hiring challenges.  Then on to Aon Hewitt’s RPO, where she innovated the logistics of hiring 70,000 people annually across 23 clients.  Next Melissa led recruiting for Abbott Labs and then Baird Capital before joining GTCR, rounding out a career with the widest spectrum of hiring volumes, levels and roles of any leader on the Big Fish podcast to date.  

For TA Leaders who wonder what it would be like to “herd the cats” at a PE firm where basically everyone is a boss,  Melissa offers her perspective of the pandemic’s silver lining for GTCR talent. “The Covid environment has made our leadership very accessible.  We’re not on airplanes, so we’re using the time to deepen our diversity network and pipelines.”  Time well spent since diversity in leadership, as we know, leads to better business results.  For Melissa, TA Leadership begins and ends with business acumen and measurable results.  “TA Leaders,” she says, “who are extremely successful act and speak as business leaders and they know the impact of their team’s efforts on the business.” 

We hope you enjoy the fast-paced chat on Big Fish in the Talent Pool – the podcast for Talent Leaders.  If you do, please be sure to rate and review us.  We’d love your feedback and it will help others find us.

Erin McDermott Peterson is a Partner with PeopleResults, helping clients with global recruiting interim leadership, RPO advisory, and ensuring a great candidate experience.  Follow her on Twitter @ErinMcPeterson, connect via linkedin.com/in/erinpeterson or email at epeterson@people-results.com and listen to her Podcast for Talent Leaders: Big Fish in the Talent Pool on iTunes and SoundCloud, or wherever you access podcasts.