Jeremy Gnozzo started a recruiting firm at his parents’ kitchen table with a rotary telephone and the Yellow Pages. Buffalo, 2002: the equipment list was short enough to remember without a spreadsheet. There is something rather bracing about an origin story in which the most sophisticated piece of technology requires you to wait for the dial to return.
The business became Search Solution Group. Gnozzo moved its headquarters to Charlotte in 2008, and the operation eventually stretched across the country. Yet the kitchen table remains a useful place to begin. Recruiting, stripped of its impressive software and elaborate vocabulary, still requires someone to begin a conversation with someone else. A directory can supply a number. It cannot persuade its owner to trust you.
That distinction runs through Gnozzo’s career. His work involves finding executives and specialists for employers, particularly in human resources and total rewards. His public writing returns to communication, expectations and the everyday business of paying attention. At home, where he is a father of five, even the title CEO has acquired a less ceremonial interpretation: “Chief Errand Officer.”
A kitchen table, then a different city
Gnozzo attended SUNY Potsdam from 1993 to 1998. His executive biography records a bachelor’s degree in political science and sociology, a combination concerned with institutions and the people inside them. He had recruiting experience before opening his own firm, with early work spanning accounting, finance, human resources and sales. The telephone at the kitchen table was the beginning of the company, rather than his introduction to the trade.
He founded Search Solution Group in Buffalo in 2002. Six years later came the move to Charlotte. By November 2014, the company was describing a team of 15 headhunters and executive recruiters. Its searches covered functions including engineering, manufacturing, legal and supply chain, alongside the financial and HR work. Expansion meant learning more kinds of jobs, with different vocabularies and different consequences when a hire went wrong.
Recognition arrived along the way. In 2014, Gnozzo received another quarterly Top Recruiter award from TheLadders, his fourth consecutive such award since 2013. The useful detail is the continuity. A recruiting business has to keep producing results after the introductory handshake, after the first successful placement and after the client has become accustomed to expecting one.
The next assignment is the compliment
Gnozzo’s stated ambition for the company combines the resources associated with a large recruiting firm and the attention expected from a boutique. It is an appealing promise, and a demanding one. As the number of clients grows, personal attention becomes something that must be organized deliberately. Remembering a conversation is easy when there is only one conversation to remember.
His particular territory includes HR, compensation, benefits and total rewards. These roles sit close to the questions employees ask about their working lives: how they are paid, what their employer offers and whether there is a future worth staying for. Recruiting the people responsible for those decisions gives his work a second layer. The person being hired will help shape how other people experience the organization.
In one public account, Gnozzo described a search for a director of benefits at an art institution. The candidates his team presented led the client to commission a second assignment, for its head of total rewards. He treated that follow-on work as a compliment. It is a revealing choice of example: the satisfying moment came when an employer entrusted the team with another consequential decision.
His firm now advertises executive search, direct hire, temporary and project staffing, recruitment outsourcing and fractional leadership. The service menu has become considerably longer than the original equipment list. The practical challenge remains recognizable: understand what an employer needs well enough to find somebody who can do it, then make the introduction worth both parties’ time.
Learning to let the company speak
Gnozzo has been candid about an early blind spot: marketing came well behind building his sales and recruiting teams. When the company entered a period of growth, he decided it needed someone dedicated to that work. Josh Mangum joined as director of strategy in 2016, and the firm changed its approach to social media.
The new emphasis brought employees into the company’s public voice. In 2017, Search Solution Group announced that LinkedIn had placed it sixth among staffing and recruiting brands in its North American engagement ranking. Its announcement credited creative content, employee participation and a small marketing team. Gnozzo, in turn, credited Mangum with making the business more visible.
There is a small founder’s lesson in that admission. The person who starts a business has to decide which jobs to stop doing alone. Gnozzo had first concentrated on the people delivering and selling searches. Bringing in a specialist to tell their story was an acknowledgment that the company’s next stage required a different skill. Even a recruiter must occasionally remember to recruit.
Twenty-two consultants, 309 placements
By its twentieth anniversary in 2022, Search Solution Group had accumulated six consecutive appearances on the Inc. 5000 list, alongside workplace awards. In October 2026, its executive search business ranked first on Charlotte’s list of the largest retained search firms, measured by local search consultants. The entry recorded 22 consultants and 309 executive placements by the local office during 2025.
October 2026 retained-search list. Rank based on local consultant count.
The distinction between those measures matters. Consultant count describes the size of a local operation; placements describe completed work over a particular year. Neither number tells the entire story of an individual hire. Together, they show the distance between the original solo operation and a business carrying many searches at once. There are more conversations now, and more people responsible for getting them right.
Gnozzo’s personal recognition has grown too. In February 2025, he was announced as the medium-business winner of the Chief Executives Council’s 2024 CEO Pinnacle Awards. That spring, he was named among Charlotte’s 2025 Most Admired CEOs. His response emphasized his team and included the joke about his children’s interpretation of his title. A little domestic editing can do wonders for an acceptance speech.
“I’m a direct person.”JEREMY GNOZZO · THE HR HUDDLE, JUNE 2026
Clear expectations, with room for an argument
In his June 2026 HR Huddle newsletter, Gnozzo described himself as direct and said he favors the STAR method for feedback. His concern was practical: people should understand their performance, the improvements expected of them and what successful work looks like. The emphasis suits a business whose product is, in part, an informed judgment about somebody else’s capabilities.
His company gives its operating values the acronym GRIT: grit, responsiveness, integrity and teamwork. Acronyms are plentiful in business; the interesting part is what anyone does with them. Gnozzo’s public hiring commentary gives one clue. When sharing a video about attitude and skills, he stressed that caring is difficult to hire for. He wants evidence of commitment alongside evidence of competence.
His interview videos also reveal preferences rather than a perfectly neutral checklist. He likes questions that show preparation and an interest in a role’s future. He values asking how someone corrected a mistake, going beyond the mere admission that a mistake happened. Those distinctions put the emphasis on thought and action: what a candidate noticed, what they learned and what they did next.
Such preferences invite discussion, as interview advice should. Hiring is a conversation with stakes for both sides. A candidate is trying to judge an employer while the employer judges the candidate. Gnozzo’s willingness to rank questions in public puts his own instincts on display, allowing the recruiter to become, briefly, the person being assessed.
The rotary phone meets the AI newsletter
The HR Huddle gives Gnozzo a place to work through changes beyond individual searches. His June 2026 issue discussed AI in recruiting, human judgment and performance feedback. July’s edition turned to working parents, succession planning and remote work. The subjects connect hiring with the circumstances that make people accept an offer, remain in a role or start considering another one.
His position on AI favors learning to use the tools while retaining human skills. In recruiting, he argues, software can assist with sourcing and screening, while trust, motivation and the decision to change jobs require personal judgment. It is a recognizable continuation of the kitchen-table premise. Better equipment changes the work available to a recruiter; someone still has to understand the person answering.
Outside work, Gnozzo follows the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres and enjoys golf. His public comments about fatherhood carry the same concern with communication that appears in his management writing: explain what you do, why it matters and why work sometimes takes you away. Five children provide a substantial audience for any explanation. They also appear quite capable of supplying their own job description.
From Buffalo to Charlotte, the company has acquired colleagues, specialist services, recognition and a much larger set of responsibilities. Gnozzo’s stated purpose remains to help employers hire effectively while keeping the relationship personal. The rotary telephone makes a fine opening prop. The harder part of his story begins when the call is answered, and somebody expects him to listen.