Rick is among the best known, most trusted, and highest performing executive search professionals in Minnesota. With more than 25 years of experience as a senior executive headhunter and sales recruiter in Minneapolis, he has earned his reputation as a direct, veracious and powerful producer for our clients.

A Passion for Extraordinary Hiring Results
As a former sales executive, Rick understood that any success he enjoyed as a leader was owed entirely to the collective talent, drive, and effort of his teams. Responsible for hiring and developing national sales teams, Rick was struck by the drastic performance differences between people who were essentially tasked with the same work. Determined to understand the mainspring attributes responsible for the differences in performance and to solve the pervasive challenges involved in hiring the right people, Rick developed a process and capability that led him to pursue a career as an executive search practitioner.

Rick founded Deare & Associates, Inc. in Minneapolis, MN in 1998. The recruiting, selection and hiring capability he developed as a hiring decision-maker and as an executive recruiter became the basis of our search methodology and the key to our consistently exceptional performance for our clients. Rick’s passion for identifying, recruiting and hiring “A-players” and building talent-based teams for his clients is at work every day in his Minneapolis office where he and a select team of Minnesota recruiters are dedicated to helping high-growth companies compel, attract and hire difference-making, course-changing talent.

Professional experience
• Owner/Practitioner – Executive Search Firm
• Executive Recruiter – Fortune 100 company
• Executive Recruiter – Fortune 500 search firm
• VP, National Practice – $20m IT solutions firm
• Principal Consultant – $40m national company
• VP, National Sales – $30m company
• RM/VP – $600m national company
• Div. Training Mgr – $600m national company
• Sales – $600m national company

Education
B.S., History, Towson University, Maryland