Who is Dave Hill?

I have extensive executive search experience across a wide variety of industries, including media, technology (consumer/enterprise), retail, and healthcare. I’ve had the opportunity to support CEOs and their senior most leadership teams in companies of every size and shape. After spending more than 30 years in corporate recruiting, I am launching my own boutique executive search firm. We’ll see what the future holds, but for now, Blue Sky is a one man band. You can check out my LinkedIn profile here.

How is Blue Sky Different?

I have tons of respect for my friends in the industry - there are certainly some fantastic people doing executive search out there. One thing I have that very few of them do, is extensive experience doing this “in-house”. I understand how to assess talent for specific corporate cultures, negotiate complex compensation packages, and navigate internal processes, enabling me to deliver a better service on behalf of my clients.

I also lack the overhead that many of the larger search firms do. I don’t have the large offices in downtown New York/San Francisco, no admin support, no research teams. This means three things for my customers. First, if they choose to work with me, 100% of the work product is mine - I won’t be pushing that work to an associate or researcher to deliver. My clients get the full benefit of my experience. Second, I don’t have the desire to have a large client base - I just want to do great work for a small, highly curated set of interesting companies I can devote all of my time and attention to. Finally, the lack of large overhead allows me to offer more reasonable terms that the larger firms would find very difficult to match.

I am willing to think very creatively about the types of services I provide to my clients beyond traditional retained search. There are times when that is absolutely the right solution for a client’s need. Other times, they may need things like benchmarking, assessment or succession planning done - I am more than happy to do those things on a project by project basis. With my in-house experience, I am also open to fractional roles that involve building and leading internal executive search functions, training in-house teams and more.  

What’s in a Name?

“Blue Sky” just sounds plain optimistic and I am excited to be launching this venture. It is something I have considered for a very long time. Several years ago, we decided to leave our Redmond, WA home during those long winter months for sunny Tucson, AZ - meaning we live under blue skies pretty much year round, which didn’t jive with the “return to office” mandates prevalent across big tech. So, I am hoping to continue delivering big impact from wherever I happen to be. Finally (and I know it’s a bit corny), those of you who really know me, know I am a huge Allman Brothers Band fan and “Blue Sky” is one of my favorite songs they play. So, yeah - there it is.