Julie Goldberg, managing director
Korn/Ferry

Networking at conferences can be a contact sport, especially when business-card-seeking attendees form scrums around featured speakers. That's why you might find recruiter Julie Goldberg, the managing director of Korn/Ferry International's office in Stamford, Connecticut, on a panel with you; after all, that's how she found Alex Schoch. "We were both speakers on a panel, and we stayed in touch," says Schoch, whom Goldberg recently placed as an executive vice president and chief legal officer at Peabody Energy, one of the world's largest coal companies.

Goldberg, 51, recruits chief legal counsels and general counsels for corporations such as Reynolds American, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco's parent company, and Coast Pharmaceuticals. With 21 years of experience and a reputation for cherry-picking lawyers from white-shoe firms and corporate offices around the U.S., Goldberg still treats an executive search as a numbers game and is open to meeting people anywhere. "There's no question that the more people you know in the business, the better you can serve the client," says Goldberg, who makes it a point to respond to unsolicited résumés that land on her desk.

A former attorney, Goldberg opened a legal search firm in 1986 and returned to law when the market crashed. She eventually made her way back to executive recruitment and has been at Korn/Ferry for two and a half years.

Throughout her career she's always looked for the same three things: leadership, leadership, and leadership. She'll ask how you define it, then probe deeper—it's easy enough to say you're a great motivator who is tough but fair. Then she'll ask what concerns you about your reports. If you say you're irked when a team member doesn't work as hard as you do or gets distracted by outside influences, she might read your attitude as impatience. "You have to listen for the facts, not necessarily the opinions," says Goldberg. "If you dig down, there's dissonance. A leader who's impatient isn't as effective."

To Goldberg, every search is unique, and she takes the time to flesh out her clients' needs and decode each company's cultural peculiarities. To candidates, that matters. "There's a general perception that recruiters are more interested in filling positions than in making good matches," says Schoch. "But Goldberg did a really good job of understanding what Peabody's expectations were and what their culture was."

Goldberg knows what she wants, but don't assume you do—presumptuousness will knock you off her short list.

"Candidates should come in with the idea of an open dialogue so we can focus on whether it'll be the best fit," she says. Be yourself, and perhaps it will.