Common Agenda, LLP

Common Agenda provides retained and contingency search and recruitment services to progressive companies seeking to recruit exceptional mid-to-senior level Engineering, Operations, Sales and Marketing professionals and executives. Common Agenda’s typical clients are executives at companies whose products and services enable and/or protect: Telecommunications Network Infrastructures, Internet Content & New Media, Security, Life Sciences, Consumer Electronics, Business, Insurance, and Intellectual Property…

Common Agenda has built and maintains a global network of relationships with people who share a common agenda. By treating each stakeholder in the search process as a partner, Common Agenda has built an impressive client list comprised of leading public, private and venture-funded companies. The firm employs “best practices” and proven techniques (e.g.; solid strategy, in-depth research, ethical candidate identification and recruitment, and knowledge management) as the means to deliver value to our clients. As a result, Common Agenda has completed more than 40 searches each year since its inception in 1996.

Historical Milestones

1996 - Common Agenda began operations in November of 1996 in classic start-up mode, (a vision and a couple of PC’s and phones in Mathew’s home office). The vision was to provide intelligent “executive search process” based recruiting services for specialized mid-to-senior level management and individual contributors in the rapidly converging communications industry (where wireline/wireless-public/enterprise networking converge).

With the aid of his sister Sarah, Mathew focused on developing business in line with company’s vision. He handled all aspects of search and recruitment, while Sarah took care of marketing and administrative aspects.

Success came almost instantly with the landing of custom search agreements with Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Ciena, and a number of promising start-ups in the Optical, Data Networking/IP and Wireless space. These were not typical one-assignment retainers but became multi-year multi-position agreements now known as “retingency” search contracts. This put Common Agenda on the map and fueled it’s growth.

In 1998, the company moved into real offices and added a few key team members. Among them were Kathy Vail and Matthew’s long time colleague Daren Eilert. Both played important roles in Common Agenda's development and are known and loved by many of our clients and candidates.

With dozens of successful placements under our belt and a strong business model, Matthew put to work his knowledge of the industry and his experience in market research and recruiting to craft the plan that drove Common Agenda's next strategic move.

1999 - THE STARTUP ERA…
In 1999, with the successful completion of dozens of searches in companies including Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, and numerous divisions of Lucent Technologies, a decision was made to break from serving large companies.

Our primary focus became Venture Capital backed start-ups where Matthew led the successful partnering and exchange of talent for stock options. Many of these little companies were led by the exceptional people Matthew had either placed or served as clients in prior years. Many interesting stories came from that era - just ask…

During this same time, our relationship with Ciena, dating back to 1997, blossomed as Ciena became a household word in the optical networking business. Under a variety of agreements Common Agenda successfully recruited almost two dozen highly specialized candidates for positions in Ciena organizations in the US and abroad.

2001 - Time for Diversification...
We watched from the sidelines as the Internet bubble burst. Our clients were the innovators of the equipment the “dot.coms” purchased. We knew big changes were in store for the segments of the Technology / Communications markets we had served since our inception.

By April of 2001, in anticipation of further erosion in the technology sector it was decided to diversify our operation. Our plan was to bring Common Agenda’s vision to a number of world markets both leveraging our strength in Technology and applying our unique business model to the Business sector.

Today, Common Agenda provides its services across a number of industries.

Years before Matthew Reaves founded the firm, a noteworthy placement with a telecom industry leader landed him an invitation by a friend, Rick Nickells, to participate in a unique executive search assignment with Northern Telecom (now Nortel Networks). The challenge was to recruit 7 VP’s to be Nortel’s ambassadors in the newly formed RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) and to help inaugurate a Canadian/American corporate culture merge. This was a formidable and difficult recruiting task.

The new client, a Group VP, proposed on the white board an organization that charged the new recruits with “Joint Leadership, Joint Responsibility sharing a Common Agenda!” Immediately, Matthew knew that it would be a great name for an executive search firm and began to plan...

Over the next few years, while Matthew continued his successful search and recruiting career, Common Agenda’s vision was defined and business plan was written. The dream of running his own firm kept calling until one day in 1996 the death of his friend Rick inspired him to leave his employer of 13 years and start up Common Agenda.

In Memoriam - Robert F. “Rick” Nickells, Jr. - July 31, 1943 – May 26, 1996 -- In the five or so years before his untimely death from cancer, Rick, who was Nortel’s Director of Fiber Technology Planning and one of Matthew's valued client's also became a father figure, mentor, and a best friend. As a longtime advocate of Optical Networking and one of the forefathers of SONET and numerous OA&M standards, Rick’s vision and nudging inspired Matthew to form Common Agenda. Rick will forever be remembered for his visionary contributions in the telecommunications field, and for his kindness and giving nature in the human field. You are seriously missed Rick!

Common Agenda was formed with the mission to serve two parties that share a common agenda.

Our primary focus is the identification and recruitment of superior professionals in the industries we serve.

For our Client Companies, our agenda is to serve by providing effective intelligence based search and recruitment services in an ethical, timely, and creative fashion, thereby helping them to achieve or maintain their competitive advantage…

For our Candidates, our agenda is to serve by helping them to advance and enhance their careers in a strictly confidential and honest manner...

We seek to embrace our clients and candidates as partners and actively participate in each other's success. We succeed through combining our industry knowledge with vast resources and varying perspectives - in applying those to fulfill the Common Agenda of all parties.