hello@mercatortalent.com · (540) 875-8664

About Mercator Talent / Winchester, VA

I Left A Forty-Person Agency To Run One Search At A Time.

That sentence is the whole company. After a decade inside big contingent shops, I'd watched too many good roles get worked like lottery tickets. So I rented one room on Pennsylvania Avenue and started doing it the slow, careful way — for one client at a time.

The founder of Mercator Talent at their desk in Winchester 805 Pennsylvania Ave

The short version / why this firm exists

For ten years I sat on a sales floor where a search was measured by how fast you could submit a résumé before the firm across town did. The role itself — the company, the team it was joining, the comp that would actually close it — was almost beside the point.

I kept the candidates I respected and the clients who trusted me, and I left the rest. Mercator Talent is what I built instead: a one-person retained practice where the work is the product, not the speed.

The name comes from the old mapmaker. A Mercator projection trades a little distortion for a chart you can actually navigate by. That's the trade I make on every search — I'd rather hand you a clear, honest map of three or four people than a perfectly flattering pile of fifty you'll never read.

Everything still runs out of that one room. When you call, you reach me. When a slate lands, I wrote every line of it.

What I hold to / three rules I don't break

The Standards That Decide Who Makes A Slate.

I've talked to everyone I send

No name reaches your slate that I haven't interviewed at length myself. If I can't write a paragraph about why someone fits — and where the risk sits — they don't go on the list.

Comp on the table early

I bring real market and level pay data before we get to an offer, not after a candidate has already turned one down. The first number you put forward should be one that closes.

One client at a time

I take a single retained engagement at once. It's the only way I know to map a whole market for a role instead of skimming whoever happens to be looking that week.

3–5

Candidates on a typical slate — short on purpose, every one vetted in person.

6–9

Weeks from kickoff to a slate landing in your inbox. I'd rather be a week late than a name short.

1

Recruiter on your search, start to finish. The person you call is the person who does the work.

How I got here / the long way around

A Decade On The Floor, Then One Room Of My Own.

No dramatic origin story — just a slow conviction that the careful version of this job was the one worth doing.

  • /01

    Ten years inside the big shops

    I learned the trade on a contingent sales floor — fast, competitive, and built for volume. I got good at it, and I got tired of what it asked me to skip.

  • /02

    The Winchester office

    I signed a lease on a single room at 805 Pennsylvania Ave and decided the next search I ran would be retained, mapped properly, and entirely mine to stand behind.

  • /03

    How it works now

    Mid-market companies bring me one seat that matters. I map the market, build a short slate, write the interview framework, benchmark the comp — and hand it all over as a file you can defend to a board.

See how an engagement runs